Some notes on Judah

I've been realizing that the main thing I do with my life is raise Judah, and yet I hardly ever talk about him here: how he's doing, what he's up to, the things he's learning. Here's what's been going on recently.

Judah initially handled the move the best of all of us (I think I'm handling it the worst). He loves the new place and enjoys exploring it and likes the big backyard where he can ride his trike and "play golf" and throw his ball around. The first couple of nights and days here he slept really well, as he always has. But he had begun to climb out of his crib and fall to the floor and hurt himself a couple days before we moved, and the climbing and falling continued here even though we lowered the crib mattress as far as it would go. So about the third night here we took his mattress out of the crib, shoved it into a corner on the floor, and pushed boxes up against the edge of it so he wouldn't roll off. And that arrangement worked really well until we got our hands on a toddler bed. Because Judah's room is near the top of the stairs and he's not quite used to the setup, I was worried that he'd get up in the night and fall down them. So we bought child safety handles and put one on the inside of his door. BIG mistake. Huge. The first morning he discovered he couldn't get out of his room he freaked out and hasn't slept well since. He's always been really reliable about going to sleep right when we put him down without crying, and getting up at a decent hour. For the last few days now he's been taking horrible naps, crying for a long time at night and getting out of bed, and then waking up for the day at 5:30. It's thrown us all for a pretty bad loop. My parents took pity on us last night and kept Judah overnight so that we could get some sleep, and that was so great. We decided today that the toddler bed is being set aside for a while, and Judah is sleeping in his pack and play, which he can't get out of. I think he just got too many changes at once. So we'll let him get used to the new place, get back into a routine for a while, and then try the bed again in a month or so. I know it's going to be hard no matter when we do it, but right now we all just need time to settle in.

Judah amazes me every single day. He's talking so much, putting words together into three and four word phrases, and he speaks pretty clearly. One thing he says all the time is, "Watch the fish movie?" which is Finding Nemo, and if we say no he immediately says, "Watch Cars?" And it's just so cute! He loves all his cousins and talks about them, and gets along especially well with Leah, who is only three months older than he is. They're having a blast lately, since they're both at the phase where they're starting to actually play WITH each other instead of just NEAR each other. They had fun this morning at my parents' pretending to sleep on a blanket on the floor. Judah has known all his numbers for a long time now, and loves to identify them wherever he sees them. He can count to twelve perfectly, but after that it gets a little shaky. And, thanks to Nathan's mom, he knows all his letters by sight and can tell you what sounds they all make.

But my favorite is his newest trick: when we're riding in the car sometimes he pulls off his shoes. Then he sticks one leg straight up in front of him with the bottom of his foot flat toward the ceiling, and then he balances a shoe on the bottom of his foot. While we're driving. And then he says, "Look at that! That's amazing!" And I have to agree, no matter how many times I see it.