It only took 10 months and 11 days

But Katie slept through the night.

THROUGH.

That means from 7pm until 7am - no wake ups.

*happy dance*

Of course I woke up at 2am, 3am and 4am ... because, you know... I'm a trained seal.

And yes, I realize I just jinxed myself and she won't sleep through again until sometime past her 2nd birthday. But last night? LAST NIGHT SHE SLEPT.

*random high five*

xxoo.S

To nap or not to nap...

I've been quizzing all my fellow moms out there lately about just when their toddler gave up their afternoon nap. After a few months of bedtime worries - fighting Maddie to go to sleep by 8pm, dealing with a thousand requests after she's actually in bed, listening to her play around and read to herself in her room sometimes up until 9:30pm - I finally realized, huh, perhaps she's getting ready to give up her afternoon nap.

Thing is - I'm not so sure I'm ready for her to give up her afternoon nap. That time is precious to me. During the week, with her coming home from daycare after lunch, it means that I still get a few hours just with Katie. Whether that's spent eating lunch, doing errands around the house or just napping myself - it's still time.for.me. On the weekend (and non-daycare days like Friday) it gives us a bit of a break after a full morning of toddler energy.

I like that break. I need that break.

I'm told if she gave up her afternoon nap, she'd likely start going down in the evening much earlier (like 7-ish) - but really? That only gives me an extra hour in the evening. And it would mean she would see her daddy for approximately 30-45 minutes every weekday.

Ah.... nope. That's not for us. To be honest, she's stopped with the full-on-body-attack-refusal of bedtime that she was giving us during the summer. And I really don't give a damn if she sits and reads to herself between 8-9pm. She's not coming out of her room. She's not requiring me to read beyond my requisite 1-2 stories per evening. She's just sitting up reading to herself until she gets sleepy. Not the worst thing in the world...

However, she has started doing this at naptime as well (to the point where I have to go up and sternly tell her "that's the last story - go to SLEEP"), so I can see how we may be transitioning to a couple of hours of just "quiet" time in the afternoon. BUT when she does finally fall asleep, she's down for a solid few hours and I'm usually having to wake her up at 4pm. So I'm just not convinced she's ready to give up that rest period.

So yes - this is me - resisting change. Fighting for the afternoon naps to stick with us for a little bit longer. Fighting tooth and bloody nail to keep that "me time".

xxoo.S

It's all about the swaddle

I have never really bought into the whole "Oh you gotta swaddle, swaddling keeps you sane, keeps them asleep, what you don't swaddle? Sacrilege!" dealio. Yeah, we swaddled Maddie... for a while... with receiving blankets. So, um, not for that long I suppose.

It always felt a little "straight-jacket" to me. I think I would go effing bonkers if I had to sleep pinned down like that. I'm very much an arms-above-the-head-at-all-times sleeper. (And yes, I get the whole, being pinned down, bunched in makes them feel like they were in the womb and that's cozy for them and inhibits the Moro reflex and yadda yadda yadda) (I'm not a rational thinker - don't you know this by now?)

And it doesn't help that Maddie (and now Katie) was an expert swaddle escape artist. It really didn't matter how tightly she was wrapped, she'd wiggle her arm out, start punching herself in the face, and LO and BEHOLD! Awake baby.

So, yeah, I was not so much into the swaddle...

Until I saw a post on a loverly blog I read regularly, Listen to Lena, who (amongst other things) posts various product reviews and cool deals to be had on the Interwebs. She had written a review about the HALO Sleepsack Swaddle and included a contest to win one. The swaddled pictures of her little one looked, tight, to say the least - so I figured, huh, let's enter this contest...

And guess who won?!!? Woot to the woo - yes indeedy, 'twas yours truly. (And I never win ANYTHING, so yes, I was a TITCH excited). And at the very least, even if the swaddle dealio didn't work out - because it's a removable attachment, I figured I at least had a sleepsack to use through the winter.

Well, my friends, the swaddle ROCKS THE CASBAH.... seriously. While it is more than a little straight-jacket-esque - that velcro is strong - she ain't moving baby. And because the other part is a sleepsack, you can do diaper changes without messing with the swaddle. Or you can undo the swaddle and just have the sleepsack part keeping her tootsies warm while she say.... nurses and bedshares in the early morning hours.

And guess who's sleeping for 5-7 hour stretches at night now*? Go Katie! Go Katie! Go! Go!

Needless to say - I'm a fan. Loving it. Loving the not worrying about her smothering herself with loose blankets, or being cold, or punching herself in the face and waking up anymore. Loving the SLEEP.

Thank you to HALO. And thank you to Lena ... seriously. Y'all have changed our lives over here.

xxoo.S

I think I'm supposed to put some kind of compensation disclaimer here? I dunno - I think I was pretty forthright about the fact that I tried the product because I won it in a contest. And because the product rocks some serious ass, I am recommending it. That legal enough for ya?

*As this has only been happening for the past 2 nights I expect I have just jinxed myself yet again and she will now stop sleeping altogether and force me into another round of sleep deprivation torture...

Bedtime routines

We started our bedtime routine with Maddie at a very young age. I think she was only a few weeks old when we started bathing her every night, doing baby massage/lotion etc afterwards in a desperate attempt to make her understand that this meant "bedtime" and bedtime meant "sleep".

As she got older the routine expanded - books + bedtime bottle + rocking chair cuddles were added. When we changed her room over to "big girl" status, we got rid of the bottle + rocking chair - but somehow more books were added to the routine and a sippy cup of milk became a requirement.

It got to the point that it was taking almost an hour from start to finish to "do" bedtime. Which meant we needed to get started by 7:15 at the very latest to get her down for 8pm.

That was - until last week. You see - Maddie spent the past two weeks at Gramma V's. And god bless her heart (because thank you to any grandparent that will take an almost-3-year-old for an extended visit!)... but now we have a toddler with a 10pm bedtime, who wants her overhead light to be on all night and who is demanding about a thousand books to be read to her before night-night.

And that? Makes for an almost two hour bedtime routine. And we were thinking one hour was excessive.

So the past five days since being home, we have been working on ridding Maddie of these habits.

First to go was the overhead light being on. (Sidebar on this: not sure how or why, but Maddie developed a fear of the dark during her stay in Kingston. Which meant she asked for the overhead light to be put on before going to bed. Which then meant she either woke up to bright shining light at 4am and wanted to play, or woke up to it being turned off sometime before the adults went to bed and screamed bloody murder for it to be turned back on. It was..... in a word.... NOT fun). I wasn't about to let her get into this same habit at home - I figured if we had any chance of getting rid of this habit, it would be in her own room, where she felt most comfortable and where I felt most comfortable letting her cry if she didn't like it. It took one night to break this habit.

The additional books in the routine were a little harder - but we've just been consistently firm - she gets a total of 3 books ONLY and she chooses which books these will be before getting into bed. There have been tears and tantrums about more books, but again, with us holding firm she seems to be getting the picture that we're not giving her an endless supply of stories at bedtime.

And the last little wrinkle is moving the bedtime back up to where it needs to be. This has been trickier - and she can fight (oh she can fight) going to bed like no one's business. Requests for more milk, a glass of water, one more story, just one more kiss, a hug from daddy, please mommy - don't leave me here... we've heard it all. And being told that "Please don't leave Mommy, I miss you" is a bit heart-breaking when you need to walk away.

But the temper tantrums have been epic. There have been time-outs. There have been cry-it-outs. There was even one small (diapered bum) spanking administered by Daddy. (Yes, I can't believe I'm even admitting it out here in blogspace - let the vultures now rip me to shreds) But we're making progress. She went to sleep last night by 9pm with barely a complaint. If we can shave another 1/2 hour off in the next week, we'll be back to normal (since 8:30 is acceptable in the lighter days of summer)...

Here's my question to the moms out there though ... how long is your bedtime routine? What does it involve? Are we insane to be happy enough with a 45 minute routine that includes 3 books? Or is that normal? (Is anything really normal?) ... tell me peeps... I want to hear your opinion on this.

xxoo.S

Why I'm a bit crusty today...

• She cut my lawn again. Yesterday. For the record? This time our lawn was actually shorter than hers - as we had recently cut it... so no, this is not a "they are sad pathetic lawn-keeper-uppers" and more "I'm a crazy neighbour that needs this particular patch of grass to match my lawn perfectly". And while I've spent the past 2 times turning the other cheek as so many of my good and wise fb friends suggested, this time? It will be discussed. The very next time I stalk see her.
• Maddie has taken to waking up and PLAYING in the very wee hours of the night. Why? I have no 'effing idea. And while Hubs is officially in charge of the monitor for Maddie's room, he has this one small fault: he could sleep through a tornado funnel being balanced on his nose. So the wee-hour parenting seems to fall to me a bit more.
• Last night was the 2nd night I spent (attempting to) get back to sleeping in my own bed. For the past five weeks I've either shared my bed with Katie while Hubs sleeps on the couch, or I've bunked out on the daybed in her room. Guess what I forgot? How incredibly much (and loudly) the Hubs snores. It's like sleeping next to a clunky 1930's freight train. Front, back, side -- he's perfected the art of snoring in any position. Suggestions as to actual tried-and-true remedies would be MOST appreciated!

Reason why I'm not taking today's crustiness out on my 5 week old?

• She's only a baby and of course doesn't deserve it.
• She's cute and adorable and even her poop smells sweet.
• She's started to smile at me more and more and more these days, and fuck me, those gummy smiles melt my heart.
• She slept like an 'EFFING CHAMPION all on her own, in her own crib, last night: 9-1am, then 1:15am-4:30am. Note this is particularly during the periods that I was mostly awake due to the 2 other ingrates I live with...
• When I gave up and decided to bunk in with her during the 4:30am feeding, she snuggled into me, belly to belly, and gave the happiest, most adorable, little snuffle-sigh as she latched on. And that? THAT is why I enjoy co-sleeping. That, and she doesn't snore.

xxoo.S

Three weeks

Well, I knew it would happen. But perhaps I didn't think it would happen as quickly as IMMEDIATELY after I wrote the braggarty "sleep-sleep-sleep-all-the-time, don't stop sleepin', lovin' the sleep" post. Yes, sleep is for the weak.

I am weak.

I now live in the haze of that sleep-deprivation - lose your temper at the most minor of things, forget to do things like brush your teeth that day, or where you just want to break down and cry (or yell) because someone (you) forgot to buy more milk.

It's a low point. It's lonely. It's bleak and dark and (sometimes) scary because 2am-5am is a time in the day where the minutes feel like hours and the horizon of change seems very, very far away.

And unlike Maddie, you don't have any interest in pacifiers. Or swaddling. Or "shushing". You want to be held, and then you don't want to be held. You hate the Ovol drops that are supposed to help with those pull-up-the-legs-gas-cramps - so you spit out half the dropper back at me. You want to nurse so badly sometimes it's frantic, and then you pull and bite and clamp down and scream like it hurts. And then gobble-gobble you're back in there and fighting me when I try to de-latch for a burping-break.

Three weeks is hard, really hard, this time around. And you're not happy lately, and I haven't figured out the magic ingredient that will make things all better just yet. But I am trying, Katie. I promise I am trying...

xxoo.S

Edited to add: I realize this post sounds a bit down. But I want this blog to be honest, not just a "look how wonderful you are week-after-week" recap of my girls' lives. I'm F.I.N.E. And I know things will change again - probably soon - maybe tomorrow. But in the meantime, this is our now. This is where I am. And hell - you're just lucky I didn't write the post at 4:30am this morning after being awake for 2+ hours of crying. Because this? Is effing Pollyanna-esque in comparison.

Early morning adventures

So aside from being super-awesome of late, in a great mood, sleeping like a demon and potty-training like a rockstar, Maddie has learned another cool trick.

Getting out of bed, opening her door, and wandering around the house in the early-morning hours.

I remember all my anxiety leading up to the transition to her "big girl" bed - would she fall out, would she hate it, would she jump out of bed every chance she got and never sleep. And then the transition turned out to be the easiest thing in the world... and I was all like, what's with the hoopla people?

Now I get it.

She's known how to open and close doors forever. And she learned how to climb in and out of her bed fairly quickly (why did I ever praise her when she was doing this??).

And then last weekend, she put two and two together. For a while (before she got comfortable with getting out of bed on her own) she would just sit up in bed and call out for me in the morning. Then she started getting out of bed and going to her door, knocking on it, calling for me.

Either of these two was entirely acceptable ways to wake up in my opinion.

Waking up to a stealth-like-ninja-child creeping into my room silently and staring at me from the side of the bed? Not the most relaxing way to wake up.

Even less relaxing? Waking up to an open-doored, empty bedroom and having to search the upstairs for my toddler, who has been up for who knows how long? Very much not relaxing.

Am realizing, as I type this, that I sound like the most irresponsible parent in the world... I'm actually a very light sleeper and have a pretty good mom-sensor as to her wakefulness, so I'm pretty sure she's only ever been up for 5 minutes on her own at the most...


Anyhoo - I should probably note, we ALWAYS have the child-gate secured at the top of the stairs. And all the bathroom cupboards are child-locked. So the worst she can really get up to is pulling out all the towels from the linen closet, going into the baby's room to snoop around the new toys/clothes/bags strewed across the floor, or climb up on the blanket box to look out the hallway window. Pretty benign adventures.

But still a little jarring and so looking online as to what other's suggest I come across two options. Either lock (or secure) the bedroom door (i.e. using those child-proof door-knob covers), or put up a child-gate on the outside of the kids door.

Now the first option, essentially locking the child in their room, while the safest of all options, is not an option (for me). Not that I have an actual phobia about being trapped, but holy shit, that would scare the hell out of me personally and so I really don't fathom doing this to my little miss.

The second option - the baby gate outside the door - well, more humane in at least they see why they are trapped - but still... I can't help but feel like we're moving backwards a bit? And also, the baby gates we currently have from the earlier baby days are too thick to work in the door jamb with the door closed, so yeah... it means we have to go out and buy a new safety gate, just for this.

Unless there's another suggestion that I'm totally missing?

xxoo.S

How to torture oneself in 7 easy steps

1. Decide to have an early night, because it's been a long week and you're tired.
2. Enjoy a nice cup of hot milk prior to bed (yes indeed, I do this often - it's cozy and warm and helps me sleep, so shut it).
3. Fall asleep instantly and enjoy said sleep for 1.5 hours.
4. Be awoken by a call over the monitor... "Mommy.... Maddie want milk".
5. Realize as you awake that, shit, you drank the last of the milk before you went to bed.
6. Try to explain this absence of milk to an increasingly demanding and irrational toddler.
7. Deal with the fall out for a full THREE HOURS while you seriously consider just driving to the local 24 hr shop to buy the milk that will just.shut.her.up. (But don't actually do it - because that would be c.r.a.z.y.)

Yes, we still give Maddie a bottle when she asks for it when she wakes up in the middle of the night. Yes, we realize how ridiculous this is for a 2.5 year old.

But in fairness - we have been discussing (for about a year now) just how to stop this. And due to the fact that she is so against drinking milk during the day (remember? I've whined about this a few times I'm sure), it's always been easy to rationalize giving it to her before bed and at night time.

So last night - well, I guess that was just fate stepping in and forcing us to play the tough love card. Because there was no way in hell we were driving to the local convenience store to buy milk at midnight. Not that we wanted her to cry - but really? At some point you just have to say no - and I get it - and we've sucked as parents - and taken the easy road until now - especially as she only wakes up like 2 or 3 times a month for milk, it's not an every night thing. So it was always easy to just do it "one more time" every time.

For the record? We are idiots. So all you experienced moms that are silently rolling your eyes at our weakness right now? We KNOW, okay? We totally should have stopped this habit ages ago. 

Because a tired, demanding, irrational 2.5 year old is a far cry different from a 1.5 year old. At least from what I can remember. 

Let's just say, there was a lot of crying last night. And yelling. And screaming. And hitting. And temper-tantruming. A good 3 hours worth, in fact.

But in the end, after a book (reading Cinderella TWO TIMES IN A ROW at 2am? a.w.e.s.o.m.e.) and a few sips of juice (don't judge don't judge don't judge - it was all part of the hostage negotiations - sweet, blessed sleep, being the hostage) - we got the little monster back to bed and content with going back to sleep.

She then continued to play with her dolls in her crib for another 1/2 hour or so. Reenacting essentially the entire milk drama-rama of the past few hours. With "Dora-baby" playing the roll of the milk-demanding child and Maddie playing the Mommy trying to reason with her that "there's just no milk right now - we're all out - it's allllllllll done!"". 

It was all a bit surreal. Until I turned the monitor off...

xxoo.S

Belly sleeping

Our little Miss Maddie has started to sleep on her belly as of last night. She actually slept almost all the way through the night. She slept from 9 to 2am, was up very briefly and then back down until 8am (I KNOW! Shocking) ... I'm not sure if it was because she was just exhausted from our weekend visitors or she actually does sleep that much better on her belly? And honestly - how cute is she sleeping like that? Yes, those are a million binkies you see floating around her - she's a pro at finding one and putting it back in now - my little genius...

We spent the weekend having Grandma and Grandpa Vallier up visiting us. They were nice enough to babysit for us while we went out to a friend's birthday party in the city on Friday night - that was a blast, but I 'enjoyed' myself a little too much, making Saturday a bit more difficult to face than it needed to be.

Monday we start our first baby signing class - I'm excited about it, although I wish it was not smack dab in the middle of her morning (and best) nap time ... we'll see how it goes.

Other than that, we're just enjoying the beautiful weather we've been getting - going outside for walks often and exploring our neighbourhood a little more. I bought a jogging stroller off kijiji this weekend, which means yes, I am that mother than owns 3 strollers. Whatever. Now I can go for long walks (or runs!) and not feel like she's going to be 'bumped' to death.

In other news - the Ireland trip is booked and Liz is joining us - woo hoo! That is in the first week of June - so coming up fast and furious on us. May is looking to be pretty busy with a trip to Kingston coming up in the first week and a trip to Bancroft for the long weekend. That's a lot of traveling around for Miss Maddie before our overseas trip - hopefully it will get her used to sleeping in her playpen (sorry, play yard).

Hope you all enjoyed this fabulous weather and had a wonderful weekend as well!

xxoo.S

Have we turned a corner ...

s...or is it just a blip? I'm not sure - but I put lil miss Maddie down for her morning nap at 9:30 sharp - she went down in just 6 minutes (as in, went so asleep that her binkie fell out of her mouth and she didn't care) and she's STILL asleep!?! It is now 10:45 and counting...

I usually have a quick bath or shower while she has her morning nap - and so for the past 45 minutes I've been sitting here in my bathrobe deathly afraid of going into the bedroom to get clothes in fear of waking our little sleeping beauty up.

Instead I uploaded all my recent photos to Walmart for printing, checked my email, posted on friends' blogs and am now posting this. About 20 minutes ago I heard one loud cry and I thought that was that, but she seems to have fallen back to sleep...

Sorry to ramble - it's just so shocking, and a little unnerving... but don't worry, I'm not going to do anything crazy like go in and check to see if she's still breathing. At least not until 11:30...

xxoo.S

New pics posted ... oh and still no sleep

I'd love to give you all an update on the sleep and say that my 'tactics' have started to succeed ... sadly they have not. In fact I have given up entirely on the crib as I didn't want it to have a negative association for her and that seemed to be the direction we were headed in. So she takes her morning nap in the cradle and all subsequent naps have either been in my arms, on me, beside me (in the bed) or in the carseat (while we're out). I took the advice of a few friends and decided that I'd worry about breaking bad habits later and just do whatever it takes right now to get some sleep - at least for the next couple of weeks until we're all back on an even keel. So for now, we're back to getting her more sleep and hopefully we start to see that positively affecting her nighttime sleep ...

As promised, here's a few pics from the past couple of weekends (lots more uploaded on our Flickr account)....

Big smiles for her Auntie Liz

And more big smiles for Auntie Steffie (she loved all the attention for girls' weekend)!

And last, but not least, here's Maddie in her brand new baby sled (a gift from Grandma and Grandpa Vallier) - we pulled her around the backyard in it last weekend...

Maddie and I went to a movie today (love the movies for mommies idea - although I missed a bit of dialogue from all the screaming babies, but couldn't really be annoyed as Maddie was one of them a few times) - Definitely, Maybe - good chick flick. That's all the updates for now, nothing much more to tell.

xxoo.S

Busy weekend, busy baby

We just got through one of our busier weekends in a while. Spent Saturday doing stuff around the house and trying to convince Maddie to sleep. I don't know what was going on this past week with our little girl, but she was really out of character. A lot of crying in the early evening. Some temper tantrums. Weird feeding habits (one day going for 4 hours at a time without eating, the next day eating every hour on the hour). In general when she wasn't sleeping or feeding, she was whiny. Like half crying, half moaning, half squealing (but not in a good way usually). And hard to console. Try to give her more food, she'd get angry. Try to cuddle her to sleep, she'd get angry. Try to leave her to play on her own, she'd get angry.

I tried using Camilia a few times (it's a homeopathic remedy for teething that has been suggested to me by a lot of moms) - I think it worked. Or we started using it just as she was coming out of this weird phase she was in.

Saturday evening we had plans to go to a friends house from some poker playing and getting together with a few couples with babes (or ones on the way). It was good, except for the first time, like ever, Maddie was not the most well-behaved person in the room. In fact, she was the crying, fussy baby. Not that I care, I realize we've gotten it super easy so far, so a few fussy nights when we're out should be expected. It's just a bit disconcerting when you're in a strange house and she's wailing and you can't do anything to calm her down ... fortunately Seth seemed to have the magic touch that night and was able to get her chilled out enough to fall asleep for a little bit. She didn't want anything to do with me - that's okay, I wasn't offended... ;)

But since we got home kinda late on Saturday night, her sleep schedule was thrown right off on Sunday and she slept most of the day away. In my lap - ha. Which means I didn't get a whole lot done around the house like I wanted to before we headed out to a Superbowl party at a friend's house. Another child-friendly event, and this time Maddie got totally dressed up for it. Will have to post the pics soon as her little sweater dress is the cutest thing you've ever seen.

The party was good and we got to see a bunch of friends we haven't seen in ages, which is always fun. Maddie was behaving much more normally last night, so she wasn't too whiny and didn't have one temper tantrum (yay!). And even though she was out later than her bedtime again last night, she seems to be back on her sleeping schedule now. Currently down for her morning nap - actually I think I hear her waking up on the monitor.

So this week we have all sorts of things on our to-do list. Her doctor appointment is tomorrow - 2nd round of immunization shots ... scary! We were planning on going to the movies (mommy + me movie thing) tomorrow afternoon, but I had forgotten we had the dr appt in town, so we'll see what kind of mood she's in afterwards. Although this time I'm going to be smart about it and give her some tylenol BEFORE she gets the shots, which will hopefully help ease up the discomfort that she felt last time.

My plan for this week is to FINALLY finish the thank you cards for all the baby presents we received. Yeah, she's four months and I still haven't sent those out - yikes. Better late than never though I guess?

At last thing on the agenda - we are truly going to attempt to get Maddie sleeping in her crib this week. For naps to start with. We'll see how that goes. I'm silly nervous about it. Maybe because I realize that it's the first step to her leaving our room and I'm not sure I'm ready for it. I fully expect that she'll take the transition like a champ and I'll be the one sleepless and upset. Sad mommy.

Anyways - she definitely is awake now so I better go get her. We'll post more updates soon. Love to all!

S&S

Loving the sleep!

Our little Madds slept from 10:30pm last night until 6am this morning. Got up for a quick feed and went back down until 10am. Got up again for about an hour and then went back down for another 2 hour nap.

Not sure why I felt the need to document this - but I'm loving the new sleeping (and happier) Maddie. I doubt it will last as I think this is just the tail-end of a growth spurt (they say babies always sleep lots for a couple days after going through a growth spurt) - but regardless, it's great. It's actually hard to remember those days when she hardly slept at all - not days that I would like to live again that's for sure. I'm sure she probably feels the same way - she's definitely loving her sleep nowadays, she's soooooo happy when she wakes up. Even happier than normal.

We're so lucky. :)

S&S

Sleepaholic

This week has been amazing for sleep (that is, when we finally convince her to go down - a little more fussy in the evenings than usual) - last night Maddie slept from 10pm - 6am. And if I had actually gone to bed when I put her down, that means I would have gotten 8 hours. Too bad I didn't get to bed until half past midnight...

She didn't escape from her swaddle last night (for the first time in like, ever) - which makes me wonder if that's why she slept longer? Or if she was just so worn out from yesterday (it was a bit of a tiring day - she fussed A LOT, although she did take 2 proper naps in her bassinet) that she didn't wake up enough to try and escape her swaddle. Not sure, but definitely trying to swaddle her extra tight tonight.

The other thing I was thinking is that she has had a bit of a cough (started yesterday - the day AFTER the doctor's of course), and maybe she's got a small cold which made her sleep longer? Who knows - let's just hope this is a trend that continues - and she's in a great mood this morning - all smiles and coos - currently staring at me from the swing while I'm typing this with eyes that say, you're supposed to be eating breakfast ... eat up mom so you can take me out of this...

S&S

PS - trying the mini-posts this week, as I never remember these little details for the longer ones - and it's the little details in life that you usually wish you could remember ...

The amazing sleeping baby!

The growth spurt that I was mentioning in the last post culminated in a rough Monday for me as all she wanted to do was feed - constantly! Good thing we picked up a tv/dvd player for the bedroom on Sunday - so I didn't have to leave our bedroom on Monday. Literally watched a tonne of movies and tried to get some sleep when Maddie did.

The growth spurt didn't do much for her stretching her feedings out to every 3 hours - for some reason she's an every 2 hour baby - I think we have a touch of thrush (in her mouth) which may be affecting it, and making her gassy, so we'll have that checked out by the Dr this week.

But we are now consistently getting 4-5 hour stretches of sleep at the beginning of the night now. We've finally fallen into a consistent routine - Seth gets home around 7:15, he helps get dinner ready + we eat while Maddie sits and watches us from her swing. Then we watch a bit of tv while Maddie naps + eats - head upstairs around 9-ish for Maddie's bath. Then she gets a baby massage and we do a bit of tummy time - that brings us to around 10 - I try to feed her again to 'tank her up' and put her down in her cradle. Then she sleeps until 2 or so and wakes for another feeding (and then we're up every 1-2 hours from there - but still, that 4+ hours at the beginning of the night has just given me a new lease on life - I guess one cycle of REM sleep really does wonders for a person!)...

What else can I tell you about the week - the days seem to blend together and the weeks are flying by (not really flying, but just melting away in a haze) ... Seth got very sick and was off work for a day - just a terrible cold, but he was sleeping in the spare room to make sure he didn't pass it along to Maddie - and so he could get uninterrupted sleep - lucky guy, even if he was sick!

I finally got her room organized and all the gifts from the Kingston shower put away and her crib set up with the new mobile and stuff. She loved it - take a look at the pic of her enjoying herself. We went out for a big walk on Wednesday (she slept REALLY well that night - I really wish that winter wasn't coming and we could go out like that more often!). On Friday we had our first "lunch date" with an old colleague from mine - met at Markville Mall and did a bit of shopping (window shopping, no $$ to actually buy anything on our new budget!).

That's about it - Seth had to work yesterday (Saturday) so Maddie and I had a bit of a quiet day - then when Seth got home he took her so I could take a bubble bath - my first alone time all week (as he was sick, wasn't holding her at all - I have tonnes of respect for single parents out there now - it was a tough couple of days not being able to 'hand her off'). The bath was delicious and when I was done Maddie I took a 2 hour nap while Seth raked up the leaves from our trees in the front and back yards. Last night we watched a movie and were in bed by 11 - wow, the exciting life of new parents.

Today is a bit of a milestone though - I have a date with Liz to go out for the afternoon - the ENTIRE afternoon! So we've taken a bottle out of the freezer for Seth to feed Maddie with and I am going out without her. It's weird and I'm nervous about it (I know they'll be fine - but this is my first time leaving her for an extended period of time - god, I got my hair cut when my mom was up and left her for only an hour and was nervous the whole time). But this means I get to go to a movie and do some xmas shopping and you know, enjoy a bit of freedom. It will be weird, I'll let you know how it goes.

Leaving you with some pics of our munchkin - holding up her head like a big girl during one of our 'tummy times' this week. Oh and couldn't resist posting her shoe collection - she's definitely mommy's girl - look at that collection so far! I can't wait to start seeing them on her - although you'll see in the pic above (in her crib) she's wearing her first pair with her little dress - she was all dressed up for our Friday lunch date - so cute! For more pics take a look at our Flickr site (www.flickr.com/photos/thevalliers) - we'll continue updating that.

S&S

Feeding frenzy

The weekend after the last post Maddie and I spent in Kingston for a meet + greet shower that my Mom hosted. Not going to lie to you - the drive to Kingston with a 3-1/2 week old is not something I would happily repeat. Something that should have only taken a couple of hours (at most) turned into a 4 hour exhausting drive due to rush hour traffic and a 1/2 hour feeding that had to take place at the rest stop in Trenton.

It was nice to see everyone though, and for Maddie to meet everyone (and be SPOILED with presents). But I learned a few things... a) she doesn't like her playpen for sleeping, b) she will however sleep in her carseat - um, ok whatever works, and c) she will also sleep forever folded up like a pretzel in the baby sling I bought.

Because Friday night was a sleepless one, I kept Maddie in the sling for the most part of the shower - otherwise I think there would have been one FUSSY baby on my hands for the afternoon. So she slept through most of her shower - but as the end of the shower coincided with her feeding time, she did make an appearance right at the very end and got passed around to many women's arms in a matter of minutes. She handled all the attention like a champ and then fed for almost 45 minutes - I guess all the love makes one hungry!

Saturday night was a bit better for sleeping - probably because I didn't even try to get her to sleep in her play pen, instead letting her (gasp!) co-sleep with me in the bed ... whatever works people, whatever works. It's so funny how you can have pre-conceived notions of things you would never do with your baby that quickly get ignored when you realize it could give you a blessed 2 hours of sleep. 2 solid hours? Like heaven in a jar...

So that was our weekend - on Sunday Gramma Vallier joined us on the trip back to Brooklin as she was coming up to stay for the week with us. She spent the week cuddling Maddie and making Seth and I dinner - needless to say we were all quite spoiled.

And she got to join us at Maddie's 4-week doctor's appointment - yes, our little girl turned 4 weeks on Tuesday (Nov 6th) - wow how the time has flown by! For the record, she was 9 lbs 8 oz and measured 21-3/4 inches. That's over 2 lbs gained (from her 7 lbs 3 oz birth weight) and almost 2 inches grown (she was just over 20 inches when she was born) - who says breastfed babies are scrawny!

Seth had this Friday off and so we headed into the "city" to attend the Baby + Toddler show at the MTTC. We almost didn't go as Maddie was clearly starting a growth spurt and was feeding every hour to hour and a half, but then thought we might as well go and see what free samples we could get. Well, the show was nothing like the one that I had attended back in the spring when I was pregnant - it was smaller and had very little in the way of free samples. It would have been a great show if we were going to shop - lots of cool little vendors selling some adorable things, but luckily we had left our wallets in the car.

Anyways, after a little over an hour, we called it quits and headed back out of the city. Unfortunately it was 3:30pm on a Friday afternoon, so it took us 2.5 hours to get home (that's with a few feeding stops for Maddie - watching her cry for food while on the DVP was heartbreaking - again, not a trip that I will happily do anytime in the near future).

Not sure if it was number of feeds that she had that day, or the exhaustion of the 'outing' to the city, but for the first time ever, she slept for 4 straight hours that night (10-2am) ... not that there was a tonne of straight sleep after that 4 hours, but still, 4 hours feels like 8 right now. And she had a great Saturday - very happy and content, although still feeding like a lion. We visited Uncle Greg and Auntie Liz for a few hours on Saturday night - our first social outing as a family, sad but true! Lots of fun though, Auntie Liz kept Maddie amused while Greg showed us their latest Wii game - almost felt like a normal Saturday night, except we left at 9:30pm and were exhausted.

We got another 4 hour sleep out of her last night as well - maybe we're actually getting into some kind of routine here? Not sure - don't want to speculate as I might jinx it. She was up and raring to go this morning at 6am though - and our big milestone for the day was daddy giving Maddie her first bottle. I thought she might fight him on the bottle at first, but she took to it like a champ - made me feel a little sad actually - who woulda thought I could be so easily replaced? Kidding...

So there you go - that's the updates in our lives right now - I'm convinced she's grown another inch just this weekend if this growth spurt is anything to go by. I will try to measure her this week and let you all know. In the meantime - here's a few more pics from the past week - you can see she starting to lose her hair - I hope not for long - her poor little head will be cold without any hair on it this winter!

Cheers,
S&S