In the nearly 6 months since Kate was born I have never been alone in our house before today! It's so weird but so nice to not have to worry about the next thing that's going to happen. It's just me, doing my thing, however I want. Wow.

 

I just got home from soccer and showered. Jay and Kate are at the birthday party, and I hope everything is going ok. I left about an hour into Kate's long (~2 1/2 hours) nap, and she had woken up unhappy. We weren't sure why - it's possible that I and my teammate that carpooled with me disturbed her, but I hope that wasn't the reason. I'm also hoping that she went back to sleep ok...poor Jay, I make life so hard for him.  Anyway, I'm expecting them home between 4:30 and 5, so I've got about an hour on my own.

 

The trip prep is going well. We're about halfway packed, and the house is totally ready for us to walk out - that's pretty unusual for us. I said to Jay yesterday that we should always have company right before we leave town! It really forces the cleaning issue to be done in a timely manner. How sad it is that I need company to motivate my cleaning spirit...Our visit last night, btw, was really fun. Those Australian folk sure do have a nice way about them.  Although, that being said, Greg did repeatedly insinuate that I complain too much about Kate in my blog entries...I couldn't tell if he was just giving me a hard time or being at least half serious...do you all think I complain about her? I don't feel like I do! Well, there's the sleep thing, but that's not really complaining about her per se...(on that note, we've had 3 complete nights of sleep again! yay!)

 

OK, I should go utilize my time on my own. Wish us luck tomorrow with the traveling - I had considered the bottle feeding possibility before Claire mentioned it, but I'm still undecided if that's the right way to go...

Besides the fact that I need to pack for the three of us to be out of town for two weeks, there's plenty going on this weekend to keep us running. Jay and I are both getting our hair cut in the morning, and we're having Greg and his family over for a goodbye dinner tomorrow evening - they're moving to California on Wednesday! So sad!! Sunday I have a soccer game and Jay and Kate are going to a birthday party for the son of a co-worker. There is, of course, a lot of trip prep to do besides packing. Luckily a lot of that will overlap with having guests tomorrow, so maybe things won't be quite as frantic as normal when we leave town. I've done some cleaning in anticipation, but there's definitely more to do tonight and tomorrow.

 

Our flight is at 8:30 Monday morning, but we're getting a ride there with a friend at 5:15 (!) because he has an earlier flight. We don't mind having the extra time in the airport - it's amazing how much more complicated everything is with an infant - but it is awfully early for all of us. I'm planning on putting Kate to bed in her traveling outfit and then just moving her straight to her car seat when it's time to go. Hopefully she'll just keep sleeping, or will fall back asleep pretty easily during the drive. She's generally up around 6:30, so maybe we can kind of approach that time. Since we have so much time at the airport before our flight, feeding her and getting her situated for the day shouldn't put a crimp in our activities. Even if she does wake up and stay up when we load up in the car at 5:15, she generally doesn't have any interest in eating for about a half hour, so she's definitely not going to be fed before we get to the airport.

 

I'm getting pretty nervous about the flight. Our trip to Chicago in February was fine, but we were in first class. This is a coach trip (back to the real world!) so there's already way less room to function, and I'll be in the middle seat...I think nursing her is going to be really challenging, particularly when her head is near the stranger next to me. And actually, she's constantly squirming and kicking while she nurses, so I that stranger is in for a heck of a time no matter what side she's feeding from. *sigh* To add to that she's been feeling pretty punky off and on this week; I think we're definitely in a phase of getting teeth, although they don't seem to be anywhere near poking through at this time. I'm just envisioning a long flight (to Philly, 5 hours), in cramped coach, with a baby who may or may not behave herself. Ugh. The trip from Philly to Rochester is very short, so that shouldn't be an issue. (Oh, and as an aside, on the way home we have TWO LAYOVERS. Double UGH!!! Stupid frequent flier trip...) Anyway, hopefully it'll all go fine, but I'm bracing myself for a very long day.

 

OK, I should go be productive on the home front. Today was Jay's last day at work for 5 weeks, and I just heard that he had a terrible day. When he gets home I know he'll want to just have a quiet, relaxing night - cleaning will cease! I'll try to blog again before we leave town, but you never know...have a good weekend!

Kate normally sleeps about 4 1/2 - 5 hours a day during her naps, and frankly, I love that. It sounds like an insane amount of time, I guess, but it really isn't that much. The first nap is when I shower, eat breakfast, check my email and blog, so that hour doesn't really even count. The long nap is the one that I love. It gives me lots of time to have lunch, putz around a bit, and still get something accomplished. Well, today what I really wanted to accomplish was cleaning the bathroom. Now, I haven't really complained about the layout of our house, but it does generally impede our function when Kate's asleep. It's a "four square" house: there are four main rooms that all connect. There are no hallways, for example. The living room connects to our bedroom in the front of the house and the kitchen at the back. The kitchen connects to Kate's bedroom in the back. Our bedrooms are connected through the bathroom. Just to be explicit, the bathroom and kitchen abut Kate's nursery. Let's just say that this is far from ideal. (Oh, and an aside - the attic entrance is inside of Kate's room, so Jay hasn't used his office in months because he's so scared of waking her up.) Luckily she generally sleeps through my cooking of dinner, and she naps through my shower fine. I hadn't ever tried to clean the bathroom while she slept (which means that it really needed to be done!), but I thought I'd give it a whirl. It was all fine until I started to scrub the tub. Anyway, her long nap was cut short by almost an hour because I woke her up. UGH. I figured she'd just add an extra nap at the end of the day, but she didn't want to sleep when I put her down at 4:30 although she was clearly tired. 4:30 is my limit - no naps get to start after that. So, that was that, no extra nap. Then I was in a pickle. She had woken up at 3:15, and I know her well enough to know that there was NO WAY she'd make it until her 7:00 bedtime. So, I moved up the schedule. She was in the bath at 5:20 and in bed at 6. So that's how I've reclaimed my missing hour (and you see how I'm using it). I'm hoping that she doesn't wake up thinking that she's just napping...this is where I hope the bedtime ritual helps her to understand that it's really time to stay asleep now. *crossing fingers*

 

After I posted earlier I happened to go visit Yvette's space - I'm not sure that I ever have before. She had written recently about missing her sisters and Claire had left a heartbreaking comment. This was all after I had just said that I was thinking about moving back east, so it really hit me. Then she left her comment here, and now I'm going to go assess the job market in the DC area...

I just finished installing Kate's new car seat, and man, that thing isn't going to budge if we get into an accident! There's a strap to use to tether the car seat to the floor of the vehicle, and it just so happens that we have the perfect spot for such an attachment even when the seat is rear-facing. That strap worked wonders - it stabilized the seat even more and brought it to the correct angle. Very cool. I suppose most of you have no idea what I'm talking about and can't envision it, but trust me, this chair is not moving anywhere. Kate has yet to ride in the seat, but I have a feeling that she's going to prefer it over her carrier (which she's always just tolerated). The seat is darn cute, too - maybe I'll take a picture of Kate in it on her maiden voyage.

 

I went out last night and ran a few errands. I went to Target and just happened to come across the infant sunglasses, and they had one pair of the pink ones so I snagged them. I put a picture in the album of Kate wearing them. *lol* I also bought a $10 umbrella stroller. I was planning on using the Moby Wrap in the airport for our trip, but I'm debating that. Either way, an umbrella stroller is going to be a necessary part of our gear arsenal at some point, so I grabbed it when I saw it. I think we might bring it next week - there's something to be said for simply being able to put her down occasionally, particularly on layovers.

 

Part of the reason that I went to Target is that I'm trying to find some little gifts to bring for Anna and Molly. I'm having a heck of a time! Now that they're old enough to understand what kind of gifts Aunt Megan brings them, the pressure is on. The big problem, I'm finding, is that I don't know them well enough to know what they would like.  I wander up and down aisles thinking, would Anna like that? Does she already have it? And I can't answer either question. It's making me really, really sad. For holidays I have no qualms asking Claire what they would like or need, but those are real gift giving times. Now I'm just wanting to give them each something little that they'd enjoy, and I'd like to think that I don't need their mom to tell me what that would be! *sigh* I can't wait to see everyone, but I kind of don't want the trip to get here because that means we're that much closer to spending time apart again. And I have no idea when we'll see Claire and her family next...it's times like these that make me really want to move back east...

 

OK, enough sad musing for now. Kate woke up again this morning at 5 and was awake for about a half hour. And to answer Claire's question, no, she doesn't just fall back asleep. We try it every night, though. That's part of the reason that she's awake for so long - I don't go in there until it's been about 10 minutes of chatter. Well, that's not quite true. When she wakes up, Jay goes and gives her the pacifier and tells her to go back to sleep. Then there are 10 minutes of chatter, then I go pat and quiet her. I haven't been picking her up, though, and I feel like that's an improvement. Even so, standing by her crib this morning in my nightgown without my slippers on, I was thinking, why can't I just be in my warm bed right now? *lol* I have hope that there will be more continuous days of sleep in my near future...

 

The kiddo is having a rough morning with her teeth again. When I massage her gums those little teeth are quite visible...

After last week's frustration, Kate slept through the night three nights in a row! Jay and I were so excited, as you can imagine. Then, Saturday night Kate woke up around 3:30. She was up for about 6 or 7 minutes, and Jay just went in there briefly to give her her pacifier and tell her to go back to sleep. So, that wasn't too bad. Sunday night she woke up at 5; Jay gave her her pacifier again, and she was awake for only a couple of minutes. Last night, though...she woke up at 2:30, and was just wide awake. I went in, talked to her, patted her, and realized that she was wide awake. I turned on her lullaby mobile and left the room. She was quiet while the mobile was playing, but then started chatting again once it stopped (automatically, after 15 min). I went back in and patted, rubbed, and sh-ed her. She went back to sleep, but all told I think she was up for about 40 min. We could definitely tell the difference in her this morning - she wasn't nearly as chipper, and she went down for her first nap 20 min earlier than normal, and now it's lasted 20 min longer than normal. Maybe she'll learn the lesson - you feel better in the morning if you sleep all night! I'm hoping last night was just an anomaly, but I have this fear that the improved sleep was actually the anomaly...

 

(BTW, I added more pictures to the album...)

Claire's daughter Molly has pink eye, and that caused her to go off on a little rant about why we aren't better able to fight viruses with medicine. My Aunt Carol left a comment questioning the truth in the 'antibiotics don't fight viruses' mantra. I'm a biologist, yes, but not trained in either microbiology (bacteria) or virology (viruses) - still, I'll explain what I know so that maybe some of you will start to better understand the viruses vs. bacteria issues. I know that it's a major source of confusion for people. I'll try to not go on and on and to keep it all relatively simple. Feel free to follow up with questions...

 

So, the first and most important thing to recognize is that viruses are NOT ALIVE. This is a really hard thing to fully grasp, believe me. Inside a virus are a few genes (either in the form of DNA or RNA, a derivative of DNA) and a couple of proteins (the downstream products of its genes). These bare essentials are packaged within a shell or 'coat' of proteins (also made by its genes). That's it. There are no internal organelles (maybe you remember the mitochondria, for example, the 'powerhouse of the cell') and there is no machinery to utilize the genes that are enclosed. Viruses typically have a mechanism of binding to our cells and injecting their genes into the cell interior. They then take over that cell - biologists say that the virus will 'hijack' the cell's machinery. Different types of viruses operate in different ways, but generally they force the invaded cell to make copies of its genes and produce some of the proteins that it needs (for the structure of the coat, for example, and the ones that function in that initial injection step). The cell is then forced to package the newly produced genes and proteins into new virus particles (individual viruses), and these viruses then (generally) burst out of the cell and move on their way to invade other cells. In the process, the invaded cell dies. It's this repeated process of invasion that makes us sick until our immune system can destroy all of the viruses. The thing is that, without cells to invade, viruses are 'stuck' - they are unable to multiply independently.

 

Bacteria, on the other hand, are as alive as you and me. They are entirely self-sufficient and are able to divide at their own leisure. And boy, do they like to divide (just to be clear, when one bacterium divides, two are produced, each of which can divide, etc.). Large numbers of bacteria can be produced in an extremely short amount of time from a single cell, and this pool is called a 'colony.' So, once a bacterium encounters a hospitable environment, it will happily divide and divide and divide...and suddenly there are millions of bacteria present. Bacteria are everywhere, and our bodies are constantly killing them off (there are good bacteria also - for example, our gut is its own bacterial environment, and those bacteria are necessary for our health). Killing off bacteria is a pretty easy thing for the immune system to do - as long as there aren't too many of them. Bacterial infections arise when the body simply can't keep up with the rate of bacterial division.

 

OK, so with that very basic description of the difference between bacteria and viruses behind us...why can't medicine fight viruses as well as they fight bacteria?

 

Bacteria, while self-replicating, are very simple organisms. They are categorized into a set of classes based on common structural features. One of the most susceptible features is their cell wall. There are a number of antibiotics that pretty much poke a bunch of holes in this wall, and once that happens, the bacterium dies. I think there are other types of antibiotics (and certainly, an antibiotic that pokes holes in one class of bacteria won't work on all bacteria), but I don't know much about drugs. So, bacteria are susceptible to killing even when they aren't inside of our bodies. Viruses, on the other hand, aren't functional until they enter our cells. The drugs to fight them have to target only the cells that are occupied by the virus and not the billions of other healthy cells. This isn't easy! There are some anti-viral therapies on the market (again, I don't know much about this, but herpes has a treatment now, and the HIV drug cocktail is well known). Another big problem with treating viruses is often that they collect mutations in their genes at extremely high rates, so their proteins - the target of the drugs - are constantly changing, thus rendering previously useful drugs useless. That's been the huge hurdle with HIV, for example.

 

Anyway, that's what I know of the biology of bacteria and viruses and the basics of the medicines that kill them. I hope that you recognize now, and let me reiterate it to be sure, that ANTIBIOTICS DO NOT TREAT VIRAL INFECTIONS. Period. The overuse of antibiotics is a well recognized and very worrisome problem, and many scientists believe that we are not far off from having to deal with bacteria that are completely immune to all antibiotics. We'll essentially be back in the era before penicillin when small bacterial infections spiraled out of control and caused death. We each have the ability to slow this terrifying development: don't take antibiotics without having been seen by your doctor (ie, don't call in and ask for them sight unseen), do take the entire regimen of antibiotics exactly as prescribed, don't use anti-bacterial soaps (ALL soaps are anti-bacterial!), and don't support the usage of antibiotics in farming.

 

OK, that's it for your lesson. Class dismissed!

The kiddo must have known that I was one step away from disowning her (*lol*) because she slept through the night last night! I actually did a little cheer this morning when I heard her wake up and saw that it was 6:15. That was fantastic. And, actually we had a good day yesterday. After I blogged I got a 2 hour nap in - that totally fixed me up to be a happy mom for the rest of the day.

 

Did you see the picture of Kate in the high chair? That's actually Tyler's high chair - when we visited last week I was going to ask Carmen a question about it, but before I could finish the sentence she was telling me to take it home (Tyler is in a booster seat; actually, they're borrowing that from us!). Isn't that great? So now we don't have to worry about getting a high chair, and this one is really nice. I guess we'll get one for the next child...I'm totally obsessed with giving Kate food. I've been reading about introducing solids, and I simply cannot wait. I think it's going to be such fun! I know it's messy, but man, food covered babies are really darling. *lol* I'm so excited about it. She's going to be 6 months old (the magic age) on 4/7, and we'll be back from NY on 4/10. On 4/14 there is a "First Foods" seminar that we'll be going to, and I bet we'll give her some food that evening or the next day. Her next pediatrician's appt is on 4/17, so maybe I'll be patient and wait until then. Ooh, I cannot wait! She's so into our food and drinks, it's really hysterical. She'll stop whatever it is that she's doing to watch someone eat. It happened the other day at our moms group and they all got a kick out of that; one minute she was totally preoccupied with her toy (sitting up, of course), the next she was open-mouthed watching Erica eat a granola bar. *lol* What a cute little squirt she is! Anyway, I think she's going to love eating...

 

At Kate's 4 month check up she was 24 3/4 inches long. Her infant car seat limit is 26 inches...I thought we'd have a little time yet, probably until she was 7 months old. One of the boys in our mom's group is a month younger but a big kid, and he just outgrew his seat. It made me wonder...so yesterday I measured Kate - she's 25 1/4 inches! Ay, we need her new seat. So we're going to take a trip to the store this weekend to check them out. I mean, maybe it's not necessary just yet...she grew 1/2 inch in 1 month, so another 3/4 of an inch...maybe it can wait another month. Hmm. I'll have to think about that. Either way, she's due for a new seat very, very soon. If they weren't so expensive it would just be kind of a fun milestone.

 

OK, Kate's asleep and I need lunch!

Various titles I came up with for this post: "An exercise in frustration";"so tired I'm shaking";"you have GOT to be kidding me!";"crappy day ahead";"can I send her to a foreign land?"...

 

Do you remember how I pointed out that I didn't write about Kate the other day? Well, what I didn't say was that I was too annoyed to write about the little twerp. I'm not going to drag out my description of what's been happening (Jay has said that my posts were getting overly detailed), but suffice it to say that Kate's middle of the night wakings have gotten much worse. We're up for at least an hour in the middle of the night every night, typically between 2:30 and 3:30 or 4. She's still not nursing overnight, but I find little solace in that fact. Sunday night was awful because, now that my body is used to getting up in the middle of the night, I woke up at 3, surprised that she hadn't woken up. Then I couldn't fall back asleep. Then she woke up at 3:50. I was back in bed around 4:30, and simply couldn't fall asleep. I ended up reading for awhile, and fell asleep around 5:45. She was up for the day at 7:30, and you can imagine how happy I was about that. Last night was, unbelievably, much worse. She woke up at 1:55, and I was back in bed at 2:35 - the little twit kept waking up when I put her down and cried if I just left her there to fall asleep! I fell right asleep, only to be woken up at 3:20! WHAT??? I was so pissed, honestly. She was cooing and happy, so I figured, let her lay there. Jay finally got up at 3:40, and at 4:15 I joined the party; I dosed off and on during that hour, but I wasn't sleeping by any means. I got her back to sleep around 4:30, and then...I couldn't sleep again. Totally impossible, can't fall asleep. Again, I ended up reading for about an hour, and at 5:45 I turned off the light, hoping that I could get an hour of sleep before my alarm went off at 6:45. I fell asleep around 6:10...and then she woke up for the day at 6:20! I was ready to cry, honestly. Jay got her, and I laid in bed until 6:45, not really sleeping, but at least still horizontal. I managed to shower and then grudgingly fed the kid. What a day to have an 8 am dentist appt! I figured out that I got about 3 1/2 hours of sleep last night.

 

So now here I am, home from the dentist, exhausted and with a sore mouth. Jay takes off for work while I'm feeding Kate. I expect her to go down for a nap soon, but first, a diaper change...and lo and behold, our first poopy blowout in the cloth diapers! Really, am I having a day or what??? Earlier I had a sense that she might be pooping in her Jumperoo, and I should have yanked her out so her diaper had more space. But I ignored my instincts and paid a big price.

 

Anyway, I'm so peeved that I could spit. I don't have the ability to coherently deal with this right now, but I wanted to vent. I'm going to try to get some sleep while the twit naps...*yawn*

That's the name of the weather system that we're in right now. The system comes in off of Hawaii (although Hawaii is so far away that I don't see how that's possible...), so it's really warm and very wet. It rained almost all of yesterday and today is even worse. But, the upside is the temp - well, the Weather Channel says it's only 50 out, but it seems warmer than that. Yesterday was definitely warmer.

 

I had soccer last night, and man did I get worn out. It was nice and warm (although SO windy!), and the rain had stopped by the time the game started at 6:45. Soccer has been so much fun - I didn't realize how much I missed playing during my pregnancy. It's just great, and we're going to the Division 1 championship game next weekend! Woo-hoo! We're a bunch of pretty competitive women, so although it is just a recreational league we take our wins very seriously. The team we're playing on Saturday tends to beat us, though, so we'll have to be on our toes. I have noticed that there is a big difference between playing on one team vs. two (like I did before I was pregnant). I'm not nearly in the shape that I was in before...I keep thinking that if I could only exercise on one other day of the week I'd get back to that point. With that in mind I'm kind of thinking that I might go out for a run one evening a week after Jay gets home and Kate goes to bed. That's not too big of a goal - one night of exercise - so I'd like to think that I will actually do it. I really would like to be in better shape on Sundays for my games. And, who knows, maybe if I get in the habit of going running once a week that will turn into twice a week...

 

I'm starting to get into a panic about finding work. I applied for a job two weeks ago (for a job that I'd love and think I'm qualified for), and my resume is posted on Monster. There are a couple of job postings that look like they might be ok, so I'm going to send my resume in today. I'm pretty much ready to go back to work at this point; while I love Kate dearly, I really just am not cut out for this staying home thing. The problem that I'm scared of is that I won't start work - or have any prospects for starting - before May 1, Kate's start date in daycare. We won't be able to afford to send her to daycare if I'm not working, but if we don't send her then we'll lose her spot. It's a situation that I really don't want to have to deal with. May 1 sounds far away (to me, at least) but it's not at all - only 7 weeks...Ay. Melinda and I went out last weekend to find me an interview suit, and I got a pair of shoes on Saturday. I'm going to drop it off at the tailor's today so that I'm ready to go should any exciting phone call come in. Cross your fingers for me - I need some good luck here!

 

OK, Kate's up. (Did you notice that I haven't talked about her?) Hope it's drier where you are!

bla bla bla bla...

 

Jay is out for the evening and I'm bored! I'm sure there's something that I could be doing, but eh, why bother...

 

We've had a good last few days. Kate's sleeping continues to go pretty well; she wakes up every night, but she doesn't eat. In my mind this is a vast improvement over before - I can't believe it's only been a week since we started this! Eventually she'll stop waking up, I suppose, but for now it's not too bad for Jay because she takes less than 5 minutes to quiet down and fall back asleep, so that's not bad. It would be better to get uninterrupted sleep, but for now, that's life.

 

Kate and I went to visit Carmen and Tyler yesterday. It was great to see them - it's been way too long. Tyler is so adorable! He's 16 months old and the sweetest little boy. He really wanted Kate to play with him - he kept bringing her toys, which she of course sometimes would take and sometimes wouldn't. It was pretty cute. She took a nap in his crib for a bit, and he was pretty distracted by the fact that she was upstairs and not with us. *lol* Kate was a big show off, too, with her sitting reaching new heights.

 

We were supposed to get together with Allison and the twins today, but all three girls had messed up nap schedules so we had to cancel. Allison and I talked for a while, though, and it was good to get caught up. It's been a long time since her, Carmen, and I have gotten together, and actually, the three of us haven't gotten together yet with the kids - we've always had husbands in tow. Not that that's a bad thing, it's just different than our old methods. Something to put on the to do list, I think.

 

Since we ended up not getting together with Allison, Kate and I made a trip to The Right Start to get her some fun toys. She's now old enough to actually 'do' stuff with her hands, etc., and we don't have much for her. Mostly we have little critters that rattle or crinkle or something. I had a good time picking out a few things for her, and her initial reaction to them at home was very positive. I'm excited to see what happens tomorrow as she'll have more time to explore them. Maybe I'll shoot some video so you can see how well she's sitting...

 

Alright, that's enough randomness from me.

Today Kate is 5 months old (I can't really even grasp that fact...), and well, it started off with a bang.

 

Last night the baby went to sleep at 7 and I gave her a dream feed at 9:45. Then, at 12:15 we woke up to her crying. Odd, for two reasons: 1., it was too early for her to be waking up 'hungry' and 2. she never wakes up crying. Jay went to work, and it just escalated. I let him work on his own for 45 min (probably too long, really, in retrospect). Then I went into the nursery to see if I could help. (I think I was just afraid that I would cave in and feed her if I stepped in.) Well, she was one very upset little girl. By that time Jay and I were both pretty much convinced that she had some gas pain, but Jay had been trying to burp her (in vain) for a long time, so I figured it was lower down in her system. She was definitely in that purple faced, hysterical mode - the poor little thing. Her legs would kick, then go ramrod stiff, and she kept screaming. We gave her the gas relief drops that we have (we still have no idea if they're useful or not, but the taste of them at least distracts her for a few moments), and I just kept trying to soothe her while Jay got out of the room to rest his ears. Around 1:30 I laid her down in the crib and started bicycling her legs, and she liked that, so I just kept at it. She did pass a little gas, so maybe that was a helpful measure. She eventually stopped crying altogether, but she was so tired by then that she still wasn't very happy. I turned on her mobile with the quiet lullaby music and tucked her in while I rubbed her tummy some more, and then - wonder of wonders - she smiled and started cooing! What a sweet sound after an hour + of crying! She fell asleep, and Jay and I climbed back into bed a few minutes before 2:00 - almost two hours after we'd gotten up. UGH.

 

Then, a great thing happened - she slept until 8:30! I'm sure that she slept so late because of her midnight crying jag, but either way we were glad because we all needed a little extra sleep. We've had a good day so far; her naps have skewed late today since she slept in, but the pattern is the same. Well, pretty much. I needed to go to Target, so we raced there and back in the time between her first and second naps, so she was up longer than normal. She actually didn't seem to mind because she was up for almost an hour after we got home. In any case, she's due to wake up from her three hour nap in a few minutes. I think we'll go enjoy our beautiful weather once she's up...

 

With the start of spring I've been thinking that Kate needs sunglasses, and I saw a darling pair this morning at Target. I made a quick call to Claire to confirm that I probably should get a pair that strap onto her head instead - bummer. Claire said that she had seen such an item at Target, and I managed to find them in my store. Kate tried them on...First of all, she's too cute in sunglasses. Second, though, they were too big on her, so I didn't get them (they also were out of the pink ones, and the kid simply wears too much pink to not have pink glasses to match!). There were these darling floppy brimmed hats there as well, so I put one of those on her and just about busted a gut. The hat was size small, 13-22 lbs. Kate is pushing 16 lbs, so maybe we expect it to be a bit big, but certainly do-able. Well, with her tiny noggin (remember, 10-25%) it was just enormous! *lol* So, no sun protection just yet. Finding sunglasses is definitely on my to-do list, though.

 

OK, just a few minutes of Kate-free time remain, so off I go...

 

PS -  I just wanted to mention that, although the only pic of Kate sitting shows her leaning forward on her arms, she sits up completely and uses her arms for balance (in the air) and to bring things to her mouth. We're beyond the tripod phase - actually, she just kind of skipped that whole thing! Just wanted to brag a bit...

Last night Kate went to bed at 7 without eating, so I thought that we were definitely in for a rough night. But nope, just the opposite. She was waking up just as I went in to give her a dream feed at 10:20, and then...*drum roll*...she woke up again at 6:10! I was so excited this morning. I'm hoping that it wasn't just a fluke of some sort, but either way it gives me hope that she will sleep through the night. I feel like doing a little jig!

 

I'm feeling pretty perky after getting 7 1/2 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Lucky me, because I have all of this time on my hands! You remember last week I said that I was going to make an effort to let her figure out her daytime sleep patterns? Well, they've been figured out now, and I still can't believe it. Here's her day, in a nutshell...

 

Wake up, eat, play: one hour

Nap: one hour

Play and eat: 90 minutes

Nap: 2 1/2 - 3 HOURS

Eat, play: 90 minutes

Nap: one hour

Play, bath, eat: 2 - 2 1/2 hours

Bedtime

 

Did you catch that point, there in the middle? That crazy long nap that she's taking??? On the one hand, I'm loving it - I have so much free time! On the other hand...I'm totally stuck at home. That nap starts between 10 and 11 and goes until 1 or 2, and it always is that long. That's the heart of the day! Besides, with her only being up for a pretty short amount of time between her various sleep sessions, I really am stuck at home. We've started taking walks after her last nap to pass some time, and while that seems like a nice chunk of time after that nap, it's right when the traffic gets horrendous, so it doesn't make any sense to go out then. In any case, the timing of that big nap is breaking my heart - it interferes with both of my support groups and the scheduled walk on Wednesdays. I think that today we might go late to the support group - since she got up pretty early the schedule is skewed to the earlier side, so maybe we'll only miss the first 20 or 30 minutes. Oh, the other point about squeezing in outings is this...the kid is only awake for what, 6ish hours a day, and I'm going to strap her into her carseat and drag her on errands during some of that time?!? No, I don't think so. It's going to be a wonder if she can learn to crawl with so little time awake...

 

On the topic of learning - Kate is very close to being an expert sitter! She has developed her balance very quickly, and will even right herself if she starts to topple over. She can sit unassisted for minutes on end, and it's so cute! She plays with her toys and generally loves life while she's sitting. She's still refusing to recreate her rolling show, but she is starting to twist around a lot more when she's on her back.

 

OK, that's it for me. Now that I know I have so much time on my hands in the middle of the day I feel like I really have no excuse to not get things done!

OK, so last night was just strange, but I'm not sure if I should 'blame' Kate or Jay. Jay went out with work friends and apparently drank a bit - past experience says that he goes from sleeping like a log to sleeping like a...rock, maybe. Totally out of it. I was asleep when he got home, so I didn't anticipate any issues. Kate went to bed at 7, I gave her a dream feed at 10:40, and then she woke up at 3:15. So far, as expected. Jay stumbled out of bed, and he was back at 3:22. I was a bit surprised - I mean, I know we need to reduce the amount of time that he spends with her, but that seemed fast. As he's getting back into bed and I tell him that I'm surprised he says, well she's still awake. What? Her eyes are still open. OK, I think, he wants to speed up this process. He's asleep the instant he hits the pillow. Cut to 4:03 - she's awake again. Again, he stumbles into her room and is back at 4:07 - 4 minutes?? She's silent, but again he tells me that she's still awake. Hmm. At 4:12 she starts making whimpering noises, and he heads into her room at 4:18. I must have fallen asleep, and at 5 I wake up - where the heck is Jay? It's been quiet for a long time...I go into the nursery, and he's sitting in the glider. As best we can figure, he didn't want to leave so quickly, but then he fell asleep there. *lol* At 5:30, doesn't she wake up again. Ay! He goes in for less than a minute, I swear, and now I'm just totally confused because she's clearly not asleep. As he's laying down he says, I had some alcohol. AHA! Now it all makes sense - he's just not able to cope at all. So I figure that maybe I should see what happens if I go in. Well, that didn't work. It just got her all the more excited and after about 5 minutes she was ramping up to cry - I needed her to hold out for 15 min to get to 6:00. Jay came in and said, let me do it. So he sat down, I went to bed, and she went back to sleep too. I woke up at 7:25 to her cooing. I'm figuring she slept almost an hour longer because she was tired from waking up so much!

 

Now, I don't know why it should matter if she falls asleep with him next to her or on her own, so maybe she just kept waking up for no good reason and would have regardless of Jay's behavior. In any case, it wasn't a great night, but she still didn't get to eat, so that was good.

Well, I think we've definitely proven that Kate isn't actually hungry in the middle of the night! What a sucker I am...*lol*

 

Last night Kate went to bed at 7, and I gave her a dream feed at 10:10 - this time she woke a little more than the night before, but it was still pretty much dreamland the entire time. She woke up at 2:50, and Jay went to work. From 3:05-3:15 she was mostly quiet, with just an occasional cry or whimper. At 3:15 she was totally silent, and he was back in bed at 3:25. That was it. She woke up this morning at 6:35, and didn't eat for 20 minutes - yet more proof that she isn't hungry overnight! So, here we are, not eating overnight. Now I'm just hoping that she'll just stop waking up altogether at some point in the near future.

 

I was talking to my mom about this yesterday, and she was fit to be tied. I, as a baby, got up in the middle of the night for 2 years (although I wasn't eating). She can't believe that I, who was so indulged as a baby, am now laying down the law with Kate. *lol* She said she wished she could go back in time to see if this technique would have worked with me...

Well, last night we did it - Kate ate once and only once overnight. It wasn't even that traumatic!

 

It started with a dream feed at 10:30. What a crazy thing to take a sleeping baby, feed her, burp her, and put her back in her crib, all while she continues to sleep! So that went well, and Jay and I were asleep around 11. Kate cut the 8 hours between feedings in half: at 2:30, she woke up. Off went Jay, to get her back to sleep. Kate doesn't cry when she wakes up in the middle of the night, she starts making this funny noise. So, I laid in bed and listened to her making noise while Jay talked to her and rubbed her chest. (Oh, and I pumped because I knew there was no way I was going to be able to make it until 6am!) At 2:45 there was silence. Jay told me that she fell asleep but was tossing her head back and forth, so he stayed put by the crib. At 3:15 he came back to bed...At 3:30 she made a little noise, so Jay gave her her pacifier and she quieted down. At 3:40, she started crying. She cried until 3:55, and this was true crying. Not hysterical, purple faced crying, but crying nonetheless. Jay left her room at 4:10, and that was that. So, in all, the two of us were up for almost 2 hours, although it didn't seem that way (at least to me, from my perspective laying down in bed! ). Kate woke up at 6:30, and I fed her. So, it didn't seem too bad, having to endure her upset state just once. We'll see what happens tonight. 

 

So Jay got a taste of what it's like to be really up in the middle of the night. He hasn't been getting up since Kate was just a couple of weeks old, primarily because I don't really see the point (in a practical sense; emotionally, well, maybe there's a point). When he came back into the room at 4:10 he said his mind was totally active, and so he was just going to stay up. So, while I'm tired today having only gotten 5 1/2 hours of sleep, Jay is in a whole other place having only gotten 3 1/2 hours! I'm hoping that he'll take a nap this evening so that he can repeat his performance flawlessly tonight. *lol* I told him that he can sleep in tomorrow, since he's bearing the burden on this. I was so happy that Kate responded to him. It always has been the case that the nights when she wakes up just a few hours after bedtime, she totally freaks out if Jay intervenes. The thing is, he's always picked her up. We're thinking that she gets picked up, so she expects to be taken care of, but there's this man involved that can't feed her, and things just escalate from there. Anyway, I was glad that just talking to her and rubbing her chest worked for him. Now, in theory, she'll do this for a couple of days and then will cease to wake up so fully. We'll see what happens.

 

It occurred to me this morning that the end result of all this is that I'm going to be able to sleep for 8 hours at a stretch! Somehow that fact hadn't even really entered my mind. What bliss that will be...

Claire had loaned me the book "Good Night, Sleep Tight" when I was visiting in September, and I read all of the chapters that pertain to newborns on the flight home. I really liked the philosophy, and it definitely shaped my initial approaches on Kate's sleep. For example, one of the author's big mantras is to put kids to bed drowsy but awake, even though it might be hard initially. I started doing that with Kate when she was about 6 weeks old, and now she pretty much insists on being put in her crib while she's still awake so that she can fall asleep on her own. The timing on moving her into her crib full time also came straight from this book, as did our bath and bedtime routine. So, I went back to the book this morning - I haven't looked at it since she was about 3 months old, at which time she was right on track - to see what I should do about her nighttime waking.

 

I mean, the thing is that I know she doesn't need to eat more than once overnight at least partly because she's had that routine before! I know that she can sleep for 9 hours without eating. So I don't have any of those typical worries about whether or not the baby's starving overnight. She's definitely improved her daytime eating in the last few weeks - it's kind of like she's said, yes, there is a world out there and there are things going on all around me, but right now I'm just going to eat because I'm hungry! So her intake during the day is totally fine, and I know that she isn't hungry in the middle of the night. She's just eating so that she can fall back asleep (which is so confusing to me since she goes to sleep on her own so well.) I particularly know that she isn't hungry when she wakes up 3 hours after her bedtime!

 

So, with all of these things in mind and some reinforcement from this great book, I'm resolving to 'fix' her nighttime wakings. My goal is to reduce her to one feeding by the end of next week - from what I've read, this seems like a very generous amount of time for Kate to adjust. Then, we'll see if she drops that feeding out (apparently many babies do) or continues it - either way will be fine with me. The author says that five month olds should be able to go for 10 or 11 hours overnight, but I'm not going to aim for that - if it happens, well, I'll be thrilled.

 

Jay is on board with the plan, and he knows that he will have to bear a lot of responsibility for soothing her, especially in the first few days. I think we'll start tonight; that way, if he doesn't get much sleep tonight he'll only have one day of work to get through before the weekend rolls around. So, now we just have to pick one of three approaches...

 

1. Give her a dream feed at least two hours after her bedtime (I'd probably go 3 hours, at 10pm) and then don't feed her again until after 6am. It's seems kind of extreme in some ways, but it's the easiest to stick to because it's a very simple rule.

2. Feed her once when she wakes up, as long as it's at least two hours after bedtime (it always is for Kate). The problem with this approach is that she might eat at 10 or she might eat at 12 - there isn't going to be any real consistency.

3. Choose to feed Kate only once, and figure out when out by counting backward from when she gets up for the day. Because she's slept 8 hours before, I'd feed her when she wakes up in the middle of the night, 8 hours before she gets up for the day. The problem I have with this is that her get up time is a little erratic (it's ranged from 6 to 7:30 this week), so calculating that 8 hours backward isn't always obvious.

 

Right now I'm leaning toward the don't-feed-her-before-6am approach, but I'll have to talk about it with Jay to see what he thinks. It's seems like the easiest one to stick to...

 

So, one overnight feeding is the aim. Actually achieving that goal is another issue altogether. This author doesn't advocate 'crying it out' per SE, but there will be some crying involved. We'll soothe her with talking, patting, and holding if necessary. It's a little nerve wracking to anticipate...Kate woke up last night at 9:45 and Jay went in to quiet her and she freaked out because she wanted to eat. Although I'm not sure what would happen if I had tried to get her back to sleep without feeding her. In any case, it's likely that we're in for a few rough nights ahead...wish us luck!

 

I'm hopeful that dealing with this will also 'fix' her naps. Right now she gets up for a little over an hour, naps for an hour, then is up for 90 minutes and naps for 2-3 hours. What the heck is this? She takes another hour nap in the afternoon, and sometimes another nap in the early evening. I'm thinking that because she's waking up so much overnight she's very tired in the morning (it's either that or she's waking up so much at night because she's not tired because of all her naps!). At her age she should nap for 4-5 hours during the day, but I think she's generally at 5 1/2 or 6. Right now we're at the 2hr 15min mark on her second nap. I never know if I should go wake her up or just let her go - I almost always let her wake up naturally. I'll bet she's up in the next 10 minutes - 3 hours since her last feeding. That'll be at 1:15, and I'll predict that she'll be up until 2:45 and will sleep until 4...I'll let you know if I'm right!

 

Isn't parenting fun?? *lol*