Luke says Good Morning

Latest Activity: Practicing standing on the couch

He can stand for at least a minute on his own. He just needs to focus on not putting his feet close together or on top of one another.

I have a hard time getting him to smile, laugh or 'talk' like he usually does for the camera. He just gets too interested in what I'm doing and what the camera is. But here's a video anyway:

Another thing we've been working on is his sleep schedule. I wish that I had read more books about parenting and baby schedules before I had Luke. I have disliked almost every book about babies and sleeping that I've read so far. Attachment Parenting and Babywise are both written with such a condescending tone, each critiquing the other's philosophy and implying that their method is the only right way.

Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child is better in that regard, but it's horribly written. It's really dense and almost cryptic in its explanation of how one should structure baby's sleeping. You have to read the book for nuggets of wisdom. One sentence will jump out at you every few pages, and you'll think, "Ah! Yes! This is my child! So that's what I've been doing wrong..." I really like the way Dr. Sears writes and the way his books are ordered, but I feel like he doesn't go far enough in explaining the importance of training your child to sleep.

I might believe that it doesn't matter what you do with your baby; we all learn to sleep eventually. Yet, #1, even if that is the case, I would rather my child learn sooner, rather than later, because the lack of extended sleeping periods is wreaking havoc with my ability to think, and #2, my aunt just told me in August about how her daughter didn't learn to fall asleep by herself at a normal time until the age of 5. It took my aunt developing a very intense and deliberate training scheme that lasted for weeks to get her to go to sleep on her own.

So all this to say that my friends babies are all sleeping through the night (with an occasional and unexpected single wake-up every once in a while), and Luke is not. One night he may sleep 6 hours, but the next night, he may wake up every 2 hours. It's just not predictable. I'm working hard to establish a daytime sleeping/eating routine. According to Babywise, which thousands of parents swear by, this will get baby to sleep through the night within a few weeks. I'll let you know how it goes.