Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Things changing overnight

Things have totally changed overnight for us here (no pun intended!). It seems like our little baby has changed into a little girl!

She's now rolling from back to belly all the time. Although she still isn't quite sure how to get from belly to back, so she often gets 'stuck' on her belly - I'm sure she'll figure it out soon though!

She is also sitting up on her own quite well. I still have to put a pillow behind her to alleviate the head trauma of falling backwards every once and a while, but this is a skill that it seems like she mastered in all of 2 days. I'm guessing it's all the time she spends in the jolly jumper and exersaucer that got her practiced up for sitting on her own - who knows - but she love love loves it - a new way to play with her toys and look at the world!

We also have a little chatterbox on our hands now - this just started last Friday while I was in the grocery store. I'm not sure if she was bored or tired or what, but there I was pushing the cart, when she started going "Ay yayyayayayyyaayaa, Baa bababababababa, Ayyaaayayayay". It cracked me up - I was literally laughing out loud for the last 10 minutes of shopping while she just babbled away. It could be one of the coolest developments so far - I just wish I knew what she was saying, because I know it's something. She just looks at you so ernestly, babbling away, you know she's trying to tell you something.

And last but not least ... the SLEEP! It started late last week - I was nursing her upstairs in our bed and like usual, she was falling asleep, but I wasn't tired at all and the thoughts of all the things I needed to do around the house before the weekend kept running through my mind. I laid with her for a bit, then decided to take the chance of sneaking out of the bed and seeing how long she would sleep on her own. Turns out - 2 HOURS! Thus began our new nap routine for Maddie. I nurse her in our bed, wait for her to fall asleep and then sneak out. She sleeps on her own in the middle of our bed for 1-2 hours at a time. I know I need to get her into her crib for her naps - but for now I don't care. She's so much happier getting 3 solid naps a day. I'm able to get things done around the house. It's fantastic.

And on the sleep front - after considering how well she was sleeping in our bed, I started to think of how I could replicate that for her crib - so she could sleep better at night. Our bed has a soft pillow top, which in my opinion is way more comfortable than the hard-as-a-rock crib mattress that she has - and probably a big cause for the difference in sleep between our bed and the crib. I mean, she's learned to sleep 'on her own' - just not in her own bed yet. So I took the comforter blanket we had from the crib bedding set and put it down on the mattress and pulled the fitted sheet over it. Kind of like a makeshift pillow top for her crib mattress. I'm sure the SIDS police would have a field day with that, but I think she's gotten strong enough to pull her head up if she needed to.

The first night we tried this, she woke up 3 times - midnight (found her own binkie and put it back in herself and went back to sleep without me entering the room), 3:30 (for a feed) and 6:45 (to get up for the day). Last night wasn't as great - I felt like I was in and out of her room 6 times by 2am. But then she work up at 4-ish and had already put herself back to sleep before I got to her room, then up again at 6-ish (I think she's hearing Seth getting ready for work - which she'll just have to get used to). So we've finally got her spending the whole night in her crib - and hopefully these numerous night wakings will start to fade away. The crazy thing is though, is that she is actually going to bed awake - very sleepy, but awake. She rolls on her side, grabs her lovey and pets him until her eyes start to shut. From the crying of just 2 weeks ago, or the 2 hour routine of just 4 weeks ago, this is crazy different! It's like she's decided sleep isn't such a bad thing - perhaps all my hard work paid off (although I expect it's more of a 'she grew out of her sleep issue' type thing).

I'll leave you with a cute pic of our little family from Saturday night (Seth's 30th birthday party) - it was a good time and it was great to have a bunch of our friends up to visit. I miss entertaining - can't wait for the nice weather to come so we can do more of it!

xxoo.S

1 comment:

Deb said...

Glad she's sleeping better. I know how hard it is to have a non-sleeper of a kid. I laughed when you wrote she can get from her back to her tummy but then gets stuck. Austin used to do the same thing, and for about a 3-4 week period, he would wake up in the middle of the night because he'd roll in his sleep and then be stuck on his tummy. We'd have to go in and roll him back over so he could go back to sleep! Thankfully that didn't last long.