ABD Celebration!

Paul had the oral part of his comprehensive exam yesterday from 1:00-2:30pm. In the words of his advisor he "passed with flying colors." YAY! The stress level in our house has gone WAY down. YAHOOO! This is a huge relief. Paul is now ABD (all but the dissertation), which means he can give more time and energy to his research. To celebrate we went to a local carnival last night. Nadia had fun playing on the playground and riding three amusement park rides. Nadia and I rode the carousel and shared a strawberry shake. She also enjoyed seeing lots of dogs participating in the pet parade. We gave Paul 2 gifts I had bought for him at CVS (50% off) on Saturday - NY Giant coasters and a NY Giant welcome mat for his office. I loved it when Paul told me that if he hadn't passed he would be comforted by that fact that the most important title in his life is Dad. Having kids is far more important than having a PhD.

Other updates would include that Nadia didn't have any accidents the last three days. Yesterday she peed in the potty once. Mostly she just holds it and uses her pull-up during her nap and her diaper at night. Ian has been getting progressively worse at night. Sunday night he woke up every hour the first few hours. I had decided that I would start letting him CIO if less than 4 hours had passed. He started out well as his first stretch was 5 hours long, but then after being up for 75 minutes he only slept one hour. I let him cry. I am not sure how long he cried as I fell back asleep. Thankfully his crying didn't wake Nadia. Because he went down later than usual (8:50pm), the 2:00-3:15 feeding proved to be his only one as the next time I got him it was 6:15am. If he goes down earlier I will feed him twice in the night, but that's the most I'm going to do. I'm  not feeding him 4-5 times a night any more. He's almost 6 months old. I'm looking forward to the day he starts sleeping 11-12 hours straight. The last update would be that as of yesterday morning he weighed 15lb 2oz, which puts him at the 15th percentile for weight -and that's not even using his adjusted age! I realized how big he is when I saw a 3 day old baby girl (a neighbor) on Sunday night. Even though Dee gave birth 11 days past her due date, Adelaide weighed 7 lbs at birth. Seeing that little newborn made Ian seem huge and made me want another baby.