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I sound like a broken record December 30, 2005

Posted by a1291762 in : emily, isaac, v220 , add a comment

Gee, it seems that all I’m posting about these days is Isaac’s sleeping. Unfortunately that’s not about to change just yet because there’s more news. Isaac ate big (180ml) at 6pm tonight. I suspected he was gearing up for another big sleep. Sure enough, at 10pm he was totally uninterested in eating. Luckily I’ve been through this before so I didn’t fight him like I did with Emily.

Emily is still in her bed. She hasn’t got out of it yet but people keep telling us to wait for a bit longer and she’ll do it. The worst thing she’s done is to lie against the wall and bang her legs on it. We’re giving her books for the morning again because she’s waking up before 7 and we don’t like being woken up to banging. Last time she had books in bed, we had to take them away because she was waking up at night to read them. That was quite a few months ago so hopefully she’ll be better this time. She pooed in the pool at swimming again today. I thought she was a bit off during the lesson and I guess that’s why. Emily can grab things off the bottom of the pool (I have to push her down there) but she won’t grab things off of the step. I think it’s too shallow. She gets all panicy because the top of the water is just above her. She’s also annoying about swimming to the edge of the pool. When she swims to me, she’ll keep going as I move away but when she swims to the side of the pool or to the step, she stops after a few strokes and pretty much expects to be there. It’s a bit annoying because she’ll sit there about to drown when she’s literally centimeters from safety.

My phone has been sent off. I’m now using the Qtopia phone, which I’m not happy to report has a measly 2 days standby time! By comparison, the V220 gets 10 days. I’ve been trying to get my home machine setup to use it. Unfortunately I only have Windows 98 lying around (I’ve been a Mac user for a while) and all the PC stuff requires Windows 2000 or XP. I am using my Windows machine at work to get some files like the Motorola Java SDK. It comes with an emulator that needs Windows 2000 with is fair enough but I can’t even get to the .jar files at home. I mean, Java is Java is Java and it runs in Windows 98. It even runs in Mac OS X! I found a linux version of the p2k (the OS that Motorola phones use) drivers and a program that gives me filesystem access. It looks pretty comparable to the Windows programs I’ve seen. Of course, I’m not really a big Linux user so the only stuff I had lying around was from Redhat 6. Way too old. I borrowed some CDs from work and I’m now running CentOS 4.2 on my old PC.

Oops, Isaac sleeps 10 hours December 30, 2005

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Ok, we’re tired. When Emily had dropped her 2am feed we had to stay up till 10pm or we would sleep through the alarm and she’d wake up starving in the middle of the night. Worse, she’d be bad all the next day. Luckily she dropped her 10pm feed 2 weeks after the 2am feed.

So far, we’ve been able to wake up to a 10pm alarm with Isaac which is good because it lets us get an extra hour or two of sleep. Last night that ended. I do remember the alarm going off and I think I even got the sheet off of me but I never actually got out of bed and neither did Bree (but I think she thought I’d gone and fed him). At 12am I woke up wondering why Isaac wasn’t crying but I still didn’t have the energy to get out of bed. I figured he’d cry soon and that would force me to get out of bed.

Isaac didn’t wake up till 5am. I was still unable to move so Bree fed him. He’s been good today so I’m almost tempted to think he’s ready to drop that feed. However, he’s only taking 120ml each feed and 480ml total in a day seems like not enough. Mind you, he was taking less than 100ml when he dropped the 2am feed and increased his meal size over a few days.

I think we’ll keep getting him up at 10pm for a while yet. If he’s serious about dropping that feed now, he can just be like Emily and refuse to eat.

Isaac really sleeps through December 23, 2005

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Just like Emily, Isaac has stopped waking up for his 2am feed after 3 days. This was the fourth night so we pretty much expected him to sleep through. However, we weren’t sure if he would because he was handled a lot yesterday afternoon (family Christmas party) and that tended to make Emily unsettled. Isaac woke hungry at 5:16 this morning. It’s not quite the 6am we’re hoping for but it’s a whole lot better than the last few days when he woke up out of habit and wasn’t hungry till around 6.

We have been trying a new nipple with Isaac. We got Avent bottles with Emily so we were using them with Isaac too. The problem seems to be that he doesn’t have a strong suck like Emily does so it’s really easy for him to sit there sucking while getting no milk. I think this is why his feeds take so long (up to an hour). Pigeon makes a nipple that is supposed to be just like a real one. It’s really popular with breastfeeding mums that don’t want their kids to have a different sucking action when they eat from a bottle. Of course, we never really thought about it because we aren’t breastfeeding. The key aspects of the Pigeon nipple seem to be that it stretches and that it’s easier to suck on. Since Isaac is having trouble sucking, we figured we’d give it a go. The Pigeon stuff is compatible with Avent so we just got the nipple and used it in our bottles.

The difference is really striking. We are now finishing feeds in 20-30 minutes and he’s even taking more formula than he used to (I think he got tired from all the sucking before and gave up). We only have one Pigeon nipple now but I think we’ll be replacing all our Avent ones real soon.

A bunch of updates December 21, 2005

Posted by a1291762 in : emily, isaac, v220 , 1 comment so far

My V220 arrived. It’s everything I hoped it would be. However, there’s a little problem with it. The 0 key doesn’t click. It registers when you press it but it doesn’t click. All the other keys click. I rang up to see how I can get them to fix it. As far as I can tell, the procedure goes something like this:

1) Virgin sends me a post pack
2) I send Virgin the phone in the post pack
3) Virgin sends the phone to Motorola
4) Motorola fixes the phone
5) Motorola sends the phone to Virgin
6) Virgin sends me the phone

What a waste of time! Worse, it means I will not have a phone for a few weeks. Luckily, we have some spare phones at work and I can borrow one of them. It runs Qtopia, which I guess will make me one of the first people in Australia to use a Qtopia phone :)

Isaac woke me up at 4am but we wasn’t crying. He was awake and I heard him through the monitor. The room had got cold too which is probably the main reason I woke up. I left Isaac since he wasn’t crying. He started crying at 4:30. We did the “please go to sleep” dance till 5:30 (he was just awake, not hungry) when I gave up trying to go back to sleep. I fed him and then he sat in his chair, content to look around for a while. I put him down and we went down with barely a murmur. That’s 2 days in a row. I’m expecting one more day of this till he just stays asleep until around 6.

Isaac is getting to be a pro at going to sleep. Bree puts him to sleep the most since I’m at work all day and it’s becoming really easy. Just put him in his bed when he’s had enough wake time and he goes to sleep. Sometimes he cries but it’s almost nothing.

Emily’s bed arrived the day before yesterday. We were going to wait till Christmas to put it up but Bree hadn’t seen it and she decided she couldn’t wait so we put it up last night. Emily immediately jumped in and wouldn’t get out again (she cried when we removed her from the room). Strangely though, when it came time to go to sleep, she decided that the cot is where she wanted to sleep (she cried until we put her in it). I guess the bed was fun and all but perhaps a little strange. Bree will get Emily to sleep in the bed during the day (when it’s not as important for her to actually sleep) and if she can’t handle it, we’ll just leave her in the cot at night.

The drainage is almost finished. The pipe is laid and buried, it’s just a matter of finishing the end where it will drain to. It looks a little strange with all the squares of grass. Hopefully it’ll connect to the rest of the grass again quickly. We haven’t done the bit under the footpath because that requires ripping up concrete and we don’t have the tools for that. With a bit of luck, the pipe will redirect the water before it can pool under the house. Time will tell…

The back ramp is done. It’s absolutely amazing. It’s both wider and longer than the other ramp. The slope is more gentle and the decking slats were put on with the right way up so it’s not slippery anymore.

I just fixed up the spelling on my posts. I don’t use Internet Explorer (because I don’t use Windows much) so the Blogger spell checker doesn’t work. Luckily, Safari can do spell checking of text fields.

Emily absolutely loves the Wiggles, High 5 and other such things. Strangely she does not like to watch them on TV but then we never encouraged TV, preferring creative play instead. I’ll try to get a clip of her dancing to her favourite Wiggles song. It’s absolutely hilarious.

Isaac sleeps through December 20, 2005

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In the last few days, Isaac has been dropping hints that he’s ready to drop his 2am feed. Last night we decided to let him sleep through. It was mostly a success. He woke at 3:30 but was asleep again within 10 minutes. He woke again at 4 and fussed for a while. Just when I had given up and made his bottle, he went to sleep again. I didn’t think it’d last long so I stayed up to wait for him. He finally decided he was hungry at 5:40.

I’d say that’s not a bad effort for a first attempt. Emily took 3 days to stop waking at night so hopefully Isaac will do the same.

There’s some that would say it’s luck that a 41 day old baby can sleep through but those people ignore the effort we’ve put in every day and night for 41 days. The result of a (flexible) routine feeding schedule is a well developed metabolism, which is essential for babies to sleep through. It’s why most babies without a routine don’t reliably sleep through till they are much older.

Isaac's sleeping improves December 19, 2005

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While he’s not much better at eating (it still takes an hour and he tries to fall asleep), Isaac is getting better at sleeping. He generally settles himself within 5 minutes.

If he wakes before a feed, he’ll usually decide he’s hungry early but that doesn’t happen too much. We are putting him in the Laundry after the 2am feed though because the light and birds wake him up early. After 2 nights in the laundry, he can get to 6am fine. He even went to 7am one morning (we were totally buggered and didn’t want to get up). We have use the baby monitor because the laundry is just a bit too far away to hear him. We have the monitor set at the lowest volume and we can still hear him just fine.

Emily is eating like a horse December 19, 2005

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Emily is eating as much food as I do! She was eating 2 weetbix and milk for breakfast but now that’s now enough. Now she wants 2 weetbix, milk and a piece of toast with vegemite.

She’s not even 2 yet!

Lunch and dinner are equally large. The thing is though, she’s not putting on weight. I think she actually lost a bit of weight. All I can say is that she’s either about to grow heaps or she’s doing something that’s really burning energy. Perhaps it’s the jumping? She likes to do that all day.

Emily also started feeding herself recently. After months and months of occasional, supervised feeds, she’s finally at a point where she can eat some things without making an absolute mess. She still makes a bit of a mess but it’s generally contained to hands, face and bib. When you go to give Emily food, she’ll generally point and tap the highchair which means “put that down and I’ll eat it myself”. Emily is good at, and generally gets to eat by herself: weetbix, toast and sandwiches. She can do some dinners, it just depends on how easy it is to spoon up.

Work on the house December 19, 2005

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Even though I started looking at drainage a while ago, it was only today that work finally commenced. Two of my younger brothers turned up to dig the trench today. It turns out that our block doesn’t really have dirt, it has clay instead. That made the digging hard so the trench isn’t finished yet.

Work also started on a replacement for the ramp at the back door. The old ramp was virtually dead when we bought the place so it was always on the cards to replace it. The new ramp has a more gentle slope and the wood isn’t smooth side up so hopefully falling down the ramp will not be a concern any more. The new ramp is also wider than the old one, making it easier to get up and down when carrying washing baskets.

The front stairs are going to be done too. The steps are cement so I guess they’re ok but the frame is as rotted as the old ramp.

My V220 is on the way December 18, 2005

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The Motorola V220 is not available from retail outlets… I had to order it direct from Virgin Mobile. That’s done and I’m now waiting for it to arrive. They say it’ll be Tues or Wed.

I found a really nifty thing while looking around. Opera Mini is a Java app that basically implements the frontend of the Opera browser. The heavy lifting is offloaded to a server that preprocesses the pages for you (handy, since phones with Java but no browser typically have really slow CPUs).

I don’t know how much it costs but it’s very tempting. I can’t stand the thought of using a WAP browser and my phone isn’t beefy enough to come with a real browser.

I need a new phone December 17, 2005

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I managed to lose my phone on Monday (no, not as a result of the spider incident). I had a crappy Motorola phone (T190). It worked but it was very basic. The case I purchased for it (came with a belt clip) had disintegrated so I was using some PVC tape to hold the belt clip to the phone. I’ve been waiting for a Qtopia phone but I still have no idea when I’ll get one of them :(

So I looked around today to see what phones were available. I can’t believe how expensive they all are! I realise most people buy them on a contract but I need an unlocked phone so I can resume my previous service. I finally figured it’d be best to pick one from my carrier, Virgin Mobile. Of the phones they have on offer, two struck me as good. The Motorola V220 and the BenQ M315. The BenQ phone is interesting. They’ve sacrificed many features in order to bring bluetooth to a cheap phone. If I wanted a bluetooth headset I’d definitely get this one. However, I don’t really care about headsets.

The Motorola V220 continues a long line of hackable phones from Motorola. I’ve just scratched the surface of the available resources on the net and I’m mighty impressed by what I’ll be able to do with it. To me though, the ultimate draw is the promise of being able to write programs to run on the phone. Of course, I’m talking about Java here so it’s really only games that can be made but the fact that it’s even possible is terribly appealing to me.

I’ll brave the Christmas crowds tomorrow to go and get one of these phones. I’m excited already!