My Little Fox Cub

I realized that if I wanted to get anymore pictures of him in his fox hat I'd better do it soon since he's just about outgrown it already with his trademark giant Elkins/Anderson noggin.

We've had a bit of a rough last couple of weeks as this little guy has become a lighter sleeper.  His favorite place to nap is still (of course) in my arms but it's been impossible for him to nap as long as he needs while his brother is around since Bears is quite the active, boisterous little fellow.  So I realized that it was time for him to nap in his own quiet space.  This resulted in a dilemma since I couldn't soothe him to sleep while Bears was around and I couldn't just lock Bears away for the 5+ hours a day it was taking to keep Fox sleeping.  But I was determined to continue on this fool's errand because most of the literature I've read on the subject indicates that leaving this young of a baby to try and soothe themselves to sleep would result in them forever dealing with feelings of abandonment and also heightened cortisol levels leading to brain meltage.  Or something.  I found out that when you're trying to keep two babies happy who are each demanding 100% of your attention, it leads to them both pretty much constantly crying.  After over a week of this and a couple of meltdowns of my own, I decided to let little Fox cry a little in his swing to see if he could eventually put himself to sleep.  It just so happens that he actually can do it and cries for less than 2 minutes on average and sometimes not at all.  So I try to console myself with the fact that letting him cry on his own for a little has resulted in much less crying overall vs when I tried to do everything for both of my boys.  Plus, now that he's napping on his own, I actually have time for things like blogging and laundry!  Amazing.


I still spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to soothe him to sleep at night but so far it still works out because Bears is already asleep for most of it.  Right now the process takes an average of 2-3 hours.  Hopefully we can streamline that soon but for now I'm trying to enjoy all the extra baby cuddles.

 The above picture shows off his typical expression.  Ryan claims that Bears never made that face and thinks that Fox will have this expression well into adulthood.  Maybe we'll have to recreate this picture when Fox is 18 or so to see if he can still pull it off.

Here he is trying to act sophisticated and hoity toity. You'd never guess that this haughty-looking gentleman insists on spending just about all his waking hours cuddled up to his mommy.

This one is really similar to the first picture but I couldn't resist posting it as well.  I love his sweet smile.