You Would Think He Would Be Tired

As of late, we have realised that little Parker has been making it very difficult for us to put him to bed. I am not exactly sure what it has been lately but he screams and yells as soon as he gets in to his room just after eight. Parker takes his two naps each day, one around half past ten and the other closer to three in the afternoon. So we know he is not over-tired. We have noticed that Parker has begun cutting his second tooth. It resides on the lower part of his mouth adjacent to the one that came through a few weeks ago. Yes, I suppose a new tooth can be painful, but to be honest, my son deals with pain very well. With that, I doubt the pain of cutting a new tooth is what is causing him to throw a tantrum. We did not see this when he cut his first tooth.

What we have started to notice is that Parker is beginning to have separation anxiety when he is left alone to play with himself. He cries and wants to be picked up almost immediately when we place him in his Exersaucer. He knows that Exersaucer time is for him and not for Mommy or Daddy. So he starts to cry and puts his arms up in the air begging to be picked up and held by his Mommy or Daddy. Usually, if we are fast enough at distracting him to play with his toys in the saucer he will recall that it is fun to play with the saucer while mommy or daddy does something else close by. Yes, we do succumb to his request to be picked up quite often. We always want him to know that if he wants us that we are there.

For that reason, we are starting to think that that is what is causing him to get upset when it is bed time. He knows that he will have to be by himself for quite a while. Last night, he awoke around midnight as he had some gas from his 300 mL feed prior to bed. The little monkey was so upset when he awoke that he cried, and screamed as he tried to crawl up my chest as I stood there holding him close to me. He was so wound up that when he did belch he spat up on his daddy at the same time. It was dark, and I could smell regurgitate formula so I thought it was much more than it actually was so I called my wife to help me. After, the lights finally went on we realised a second set of hands were not really needed as it was only about a teaspoon. A couple more versus of Blue Christmas and Parker finally fell asleep again. From my reading, we are quite sure that it is around this time that babies begin to get anxiety when they are left without their parents.

We did not take very many pictures today, but I did take a few a couple days ago just before Parker awoke for the day. The images that you see in this article were taken over about 10 seconds. They were literally taken one after the other as Parker squirmed around trying to find a comfortable position to sleep. If I can use the words of my father-in-law, "Parker is a man much like myself", he absolutely hates having covers on him when he sleeps. If he is awake when we put covers on him, he kicks his legs until they are finally under him. You can see by the pictures Parker is definitely not under the covers. Let's hope that Parker has a restful sleep tonight. He has a big day ahead of him as it is Septra and ADAGEN injection day tomorrow.