Thanks and giving

Luke has decided that sleeping through the night like he has done for the last 3 months or so is lame. Boo to sleep, I like waking up every 2-3 hours to chat with my mommy! I'm not complaining, the first few weeks of him sleeping through the night, I missed him. But by now, I've gotten spoiled sleeping through the night for weeks and weeks, so this up-every-3ish hours stuff is making me a tad sleep deprived. The real problem is rolling over. Luke rolls over and then wakes himself up and then I guess thinks, "Hey, I'm awake, let's chat and play for awhile!" He's never crabby though he will cry if I don't get him. I know some or a lot of people are fans of cry it out, but I'm adamantly against it and not willing to consider it no matter how tired I get. (Though I'm not opposed to taking a nap on the floor while he plays next to me!)

But anyway, I didn't have kids so I could get a full night's sleep. Secondly, oh, what I would have given to have Olivia wake me up 3 times a night...I really can't complain about Lucas doing it. Lucas slept through the night for a pretty long time before this and is such a good, happy, easy baby overall that it's pretty lame to complain about this, especially since at least when he wakes up at 2 or 3 am, he falls right back to sleep the second I pick him up. He's pretty good about only wanting to get up and play at reasonable wake up times (like 9/10/11/12 ish- when I'm still up usually anyway.) Today we took an awesome nap together from 2 to 5 pm and it was MUCH needed and I feel a lot  better overall. Anyway, sleep or no sleep, we are so lucky to have him and he's such a great baby.

On that note, he is getting so mobile. I just watched him pull himself ACROSS our living room (10+ feet) and then when he got to his desired location (Koda our husky who is none too pleased with this development- he watched Luke warily as he got closer and then when Luke was a few inches away, jumped up and moved several feet farther), he pushed himself up to sitting and started playing with a box of diapers instead. (I'm pretty much over cloth diapering.) That's the first time I've seen him manage to push himself up to sitting all the way from laying. So for now he's army crawling and pushing himself along but he gets up on his hands and knees and is not too far from real crawling. Again, it's so much fun to see him figuring out new things and his personality emerging, but wah, he's getting so so big! I think he's going to have a blast for Christmas with all the wrapping paper this year. We are so incredibly thankful that he's here and happy and healthy.

Today I picked up an angel tree child. For those not familiar, a bunch of places and the Salvation Army gets names of needy families/children, and those more fortunate select a child and buy Christmas gifts (needs and wants) for them. Last year, we were so focused on trying to survive the holidays and also so scared what was going to happen with my pregnancy that we just couldn't do anything but get through them. This year, we are in a much better place and decided we wanted to do it. So we are buying gifts for a 2 year old girl...although it's going to be a little tough because their list was so vague...needs: "stuffed animals" (really?) wants: "toys, blanket"...so hopefully we do okay. (Other people had specific stuff, clothes sizes, etc. which would have been a little easier maybe but this was the only 2 year old girl option and the listed wanted/needed stuff is kinda sad, I think. (I mean others were asking for things like a Nintendo DS, etc.) But a blanket and stuffed animals and toys, I think we can handle. I'm not sure how ready I am to look at two year old girl stuff, but I will suck it up and do it (maybe online, luckily if I order stuff through JCP- which is where I signed up for my name anyway- they will ship anything I buy for gifts to her/the salvation army for free.)

Anyway, I'm done babbling for awhile, I hope everyone has a nice Thanksgiving. And for my babyloss mom friends who may not be feeling especially thankful this year (oh, have we been there), I will be thinking of you through this upcoming holiday season, I know it's not easy.