Looks like the little man wants to eat with the senior citizens.

 

Jacob and I fell victim to a “witching hour” . . . or three . . . almost every day last week. He’d wake up from his afternoon nap about 3:30 with his cranky pants on. Nothing I tried seemed to help. With a fresh diaper, plenty of toys, and a bucketful of snacks, he was still whiny like I’d never seen him before. Friday I snuggled with him for an hour, and he cried through most of it. At that point, I’d given in to desperation and turned on Netflix, so at least I had Miss Bennett and Mr. Darcy to keep me company.

 

Sunday afternoon, John and I put a lot of the pieces of the puzzle together and thought that maybe Jacob needs an earlier dinner. He’d been eating so many snacks in that late afternoon/early evening window that I was freaking out about how little he ate at dinner proper. When I thought about it, I realized breakfast and lunch are served immediately after he wakes up—either from the night or from a nap—so maybe the timing of his snack and dinner needed to be switched.

 

We tried it, and while he didn’t eat a whole lot of dinner (ironically he ate it for snack later), he did do something else.

 

He walked. By himself. A lot. (Video coming soon, we hope!)

 

Now it might have been that after a full five weeks of a few steps here or there, he was ready to show us what he could do.

 

It might have been that the Jets were heartbreakingly crumbling under the pressure of the Patriots, and he knew we needed some good news.

 

It might have been that Daddy was home and we finally had a good chunk of time, just the three of us, at home.

 

Or it might have been that there’s more magic in the early bird special than we not-yet-seniors realize. Maybe I need to start eating dinner at four o’clock, too.