*Baby Steps* Milestones and Benchmarks...2 MONTHS OLD

And it continues! Here are some of the amazing moments we have been blessed to experience with Vaughn:

- 12/14/09: Vaughn grabbed a toy for the first time. He has a little ball that is on his changing table. It has many little spots for his tiny hands to grab. He was stretching when he reached up and grabbed the ball. Then he moved it to his chest when he realized it made noise.

- 12/15/09: Vaughn slept nine hours! He has consistently been sleeping through the night for ten days now. The minimum he has slept is six hours. Not too bad for a two month old.

- 12/16/09: Memories to be cherished! Dave, Vaughn, Rocco and I laid on Vaughn's floor for about thirty minutes. We were supposed to be getting Vaughn to sleep, but instead, we all laid on our backs and looked up at the blue glow on the ceiling. Vaughn kept talking with lots of oohs and ahhs. It was such a special time for our family to just love on each other.
- 12/23/09 (night of): First time we were able to get Vaughn to sleep before 11:30pm. He went to bed at 10:15pm! And to top that, he did wake up around 11:30pm as we saw it on the video monitor, but he fell back to sleep all on his own. No walking, bouncing, patting, or rocking needed.
- 12/24/09: Vaughn lifted his head completely off the ground today during tummy time. He lifted himself into a push up position. Tummy time is not something he enjoys, but when he was in this position, he was not crying and actuallly seemed a little content!

- 12/28/09: Yesterday and today, Vaughn now can focus on brightly colored items. He loves looking at his lime green and yellow turle and bright blue and white tucan on the toy bar of his swing.
- 12/30/09: Vaughn found his hands! During dinner, Vaughn sat in his swing that was on the kitchen table. He likes to be near us when not in our arms. He was looking at LuLu when he suddenly went cross-eyed as he brought his clasped hands up to his eyes. Looking at his hands is one of his favorite things now.

- 01/04/09 (night of): We decided to start weaning Vaughn from the swaddle blankie. Both arms were out and he did great. I actually think he's ready to sleep more freely. Also, we tried the "cry it out" sleep training method. It worked! He went to bed around 9:45pm (another first), woke up at 11:00pm, cried for about eight minutes, fell asleep, woke up again around 11:30pm, cried for about four minutes, then went to fell asleep until 5am! We were supposed to wait for fifteen minutes. We thought we were doing that but realized we were going to get him way too son. We'll see how tonight goes.

- 01/05/09: I tested the "cry it out" method for naptime today. Ideally, at this age, we'd like for him to take two long naps; one around 12:30p and the other around 5p. Today when I put him down for a nap, he cried for the entire first 15 minutes; I went in to comfort him but didn't pick him up, and he cried for 19 minutes before falling asleep. It was awful listening to him cry.

*he's doing great being weaned from the swaddle. He actually sleeps better with him arms out. We'll attempt taking it away altogether next week.

- 01/07/09: This week, we started doing the "roll over plan" during tummy time. Babycenter.com recommended having the baby do this naked. It totally works! He loves tummy time now. I even let him go diaper free for about 1 minute out of the 30-40 minutes of tummy/play time.

After we got back from our walk today, we got on skype with Grammy. She got to see Vaughn roll over again and again all on his own. This was the first time he consistently and continually rolled over. He gets up on his forearms and then flips over. A few times he banged his hand pretty hard on the ground, which made me nervous. His smile, though, convinced me he was fine.