I Never Tire Of Seeing This

Bubba has taken to falling asleep with his light on at night... I don't mind as long as he sleeps. It gives me plenty of opportunity to fawn over him and capture little moments like this. He'll only be this little once and I can't help but think back to when he was a tiny helpless baby. Where did the time go?

Naptime Sucks Sometimes

In general we don't have too many problems getting boo boo to bed. She'll lay there and sing along with Tad, tell herself stories, or repeat various lines from cartoons she's watched. After a while she'll fall asleep. But sometimes we just have "one of those days." One where Mommy & Daddy put her to bed immediately after lunch and she will.not.go.to.sleep. It can be so frackin frustrating.

At one point Evan had already taken a two hour nap and was ready to go. Of course she howled because I wouldn't let her out of her room. She was crabby and I knew she needed some sleep, especially since she had gone to bed late the previous night. So I let the t.v. baby sit Evan so I could try and coax her to sleep. I made a make shift bed on the floor and laid down with her, not something I'd generally do. After ten or fifteen minutes, she wouldn't quit jacking around so I huffed and told her she had to get back in bed and sleep.

Of course the second she sees me going for the door she bolts out of bed. I close the door just in time for her to start banging a wailing about being awake and needing out of her room. I'm such a mean Mommy aren't I? Around ten minutes go by and finally...silence. I, of course, am curious as to what she's up to. I slowly open the door and found this...

She had pulled her comforter and pillow back to the floor; as well collecting several animals and blankets that you can't see in the pictures. I don't know what made her do it, but this is how she finally took her nap. Whatever it takes I suppose.

By the way...I'm still having issues trying to take pictures in her dark room.

First Words

I'm not really sure that I've documented Evan's official first word. I mean, he's been saying Mamamamamama and Dadadadadadada for a long time. He can sign "milk" when asked to and he's signed "drink" once.

But really, he's just started with official verbal words the last couple of days. So I'm going to say his official first, and favorite, word is Dada. Yes, Dada is the first and not Mama. Just yesterday he started saying Mama, and we're talking about specifically asking for one or the other of us.

It's cute and sad all at once. This is just the beggining of his verbal learning. He's starting to jabber a lot more and coming up will all sorts of new sounds.

I'm slightly saddened that my baby is no longer a baby. He's growing up so stinking fast and it makes me sad.  It seems as though he was just born yesterday. Now he's walking, talking and interacting more and more. He's just a happy and playful little man. 

In other firsts I *think* I can officially say he's now sleeping through the night. It only took us 14 months to get there. We've had a couple of nights where he woke up around 3am, but otherwise he's going down at 8pm and sleeps until 7:30 or 8:00am. It would be glorious if only I could get myself back into the habit of going to bed when the kids do.

It's just so difficult because I can actually get things done while they are asleep. Someday soon I'll know what it means to sleep through the night again. 

For now I need to sit back and enjoy some Mommy quiet time.

Where does she get this stuff?

Gah! I've been putting Arabella down for a nap since noon, NOON!!!! Here it is nearly 2pm and I've made I don't know how many trips back into that room. She keeps getting stuff out of her dresser drawer. So I finally had to take the thermometer and other stuff she really shouldn't be able to reach out of there. I left the spare wipes, overnights, and Boogie Wipes. Apparently the Boogie Wipes aren't even safe. I caught her in bed with them. So I snagged them back and hid them in the back of the drawer. On a later trip I walked in and found her on the floor playing with her doll cradle that Grandpa Friedrich made her. She has two baby dolls that sleep in it and apparently they had boogies because she had two Boogie Wipes and was wiping their faces with them. It was hard to be mad at her while she was imitating her Mommy but still...go.to.sleep.already!

3:00 AM Fun

These are the faces I received around 3 in the morning when Evan decided it would be fun to chat with me, smile, and make faces...it was a long night to say the least.

What A Weekend

Well, it wasn't much of a weekend I suppose. Friday night I had to work the Alice Cooper concert....AWESOME. He is an amazing entertainer. It definitely wasn't a boring night a work and the guests kept us on our toes. We had one underage drinker get caught, the usual people barking about people standing in front of them (duh, you're at a rock concert), and a crazy lady trying to give people a $500 check made out to no one. She wanted us to give it to Alice for his Autism foundation, but unfortunately we couldn't do that. Not to mention she was pretty wasted and kissed a security guard three times on the cheek trying to sweet talk him. We're just not in the business of giving peoples money away while they're intoxicated. Had she been sober we still wouldn't have done it. She can go on-line and donate.

Saturday was a lazy day. Friday night, Bella refused to go to bed for Daddy while I was at work and so stayed up till after 11 pm. Adam and I followed that up with a bedtime of 1 am. We watched some t.v., and generally did a whole lot of nothing. Saturday morning, Adam got up with Bella since I didn't hear here. She played on the bed for a while, ate, and I passed back out. He apparently took her to the living room and let me snooze until noon. It was nice. I then sprung into action, cleaned and rearranged the kitchen. Then, did a whole lot of nothing. Later on, Adam ran out and brought me some Mexican home to eat. Yummy. Boogers went down at 8 pm. She just wasn't about to make it to 8:30, as she had boycotted her afternoon nap.

Sometime around 3 am Adam and I wound up going to sleep after watching Burned on Comedy Central. It was the top 10 most outrageous moments in Comedy Central Roast history. It was too funny to not finish watching. Then, once again, Adam got up with Bella and let me sleep in until noon. Then we decided it was probably best to head out and get some formula and diapers. Considering the can was nearly empty and we only had 5 diapers left. Dang, kids are expensive. It has been a good afternoon thus far. Guess I'll have to wait and see what tonight brings!

Sorry I don't have any new pics. I just haven't snapped many lately. I'll have some soon.

Whose child is this?

Click to enlarge the picture and you can see "Bud", her first tooth, next to Daddy's thumb

We have a miracle ladies and gentlemen! That's right, the amazing non-sleeping baby has finally lost the battle and slept through and entire night without waking. How does she do it? Heck if I know, but I'd certainly love to learn the trick and add this amazing feat to our nightly show.

9:30 pm - Nursed herself to sleep

10:00 pm - Placed in her crib asleep

10:40 pm - Daddy had to pat her back as she was fussing in her sleep

11:00 pm - She squawked in her sleep, just once; not really sure what that was about

6:30 am - Started to rouse, I retrieved her as I found myself in a pool of milk and then she nursed herself back to sleep

7:00 am - Placed in her crib asleep

10:00 am - I hear her playing in her crib and we are up for the day. Happy & playful

12:45 pm - She nurses herself back to sleep after being crabby for a little while

1:00 pm - Placed in her crib asleep

1:50 pm - Woke up semi-fussy, but happy to see Mommy

I don't know if her tooth cutting through has finally allowed her to rest or what, but we haven't had sleep like this since we brought her home at four days old. I would love to see the pattern continue so wish us luck!

After her nap

Another shot of Bud

Update on the garden:

We are getting a late start on our garden so who knows how this is going to go. So far we have several sprouts coming up and we have several more days before we'll see anything out of the rest of them. We have to buy the cedar yet to build the raised beds to plant our seedlings in. Because of our HOA we aren't suppose to plow gardens, but there is not clause against raised beds! So we're hoping to have some goodies by the time Bella starts eating solids. I'm very excited to see what we can harvest. We have a lot of sweet and hot peppers planted as well as green beans, sugar snap peas, tomatoes, carrots, and onions. It's going to be a fun, busy summer.

We planted a lot of goodies last weekend and here we are today...

Updating...

With a crabby patty on my hands, I haven't been able to blog lately. So where shall I start? After getting a good start on Bella's sleep pattern she decided to regress a little. She's doing okay, not great, but okay with naps. Bed time is a whole other story. Friday night was pretty bad, although during the day she took two wonderful two hour naps. But bed time...I was so frustrated. The child just would not sleep. At 1:00 am I took her to the living room, after slamming my bed room door, and rocked her to sleep. She doesn't normally go down without nursing. I just held her tight and eventually she gave in and crashed. It took a while to do, but it worked. I then was able to put her in bed at 2:10 am. After my early morning temper tantrum, the day started way too soon. We were having company over and Adam was smoking a turkey Saturday morning. That was his excuse for not helping me over night. To which I gave him the cold shoulder for quite some time. After a while we made up. Surprisingly I was able to get her to go down for a nap at 2 pm after not sleeping since waking that morning. She also stayed asleep the entire time our guests were there. It was awesome to be able to talk to adults without having to tend to her. She woke up nice and happy around 6 pm.

After they left she decided to surf the web with Daddy, all while munching on her fingers.

She even practiced sitting up. She fell on Daddy a couple of times, but was good at holding it for at least 10 seconds.

Saturday evening we stuck to the routine and she still didn't want to sleep. Finally around 12:30 am she went to bed for the night and slept until almost 9 am. AWESOME!

Unfortunately she only took one nap Sunday. At ten pm she began to nurse until she passed out. We laid her in her crib at 10:30 pm but she was back up at 11:00 pm. She got her diaper changed and then proceeded to nurse herself back to sleep. We placed her back in her crib at 11:30 pm and she stayed down. This is the earliest bed time we've seen from her yet.

Before putting her in the crib, Daddy managed to catch a pic of us passed out together.

The down side to her going to bed at 11:30 pm...she wanted to wake up at 5:30 am to eat. Sigh, I made Daddy crawl out of bed and retrieve her. I nursed her until she decided she didn't want any more. She then decided it would be fun to lay between Mommy and Daddy and eat her feet, along with scratching us to make sure we were still alive. Around 7:00 am I had Adam put her back in her crib and she slept until 9:45am. Daddy found her wide awake playing with her dolly. Brooklyn showed up around 11:00 am to stay with us for the day. So of course Bella couldn't take a nap again, there was way too much going on. Daddy tried to put her in her crib and use our new method of napping. Yeah, she wasn't giving up. So I took her out of the crib at 12:50 and proceeded to nurse her to sleep. At 1:20 pm she was down for the count and just woke up at 4:00 pm!!!! I think we're getting better by the day with naps. It's just going to take some time. I guess it is true...when something doesn't happen over night, it isn't resolved over night.

Next topic...TEETH!!!!!!

Yep, she's starting to actually cut her first tooth. She's been teething for a couple of months. Yesterday I was able to see the top of her tooth bud (lower left incisor). Today it is very apparent that it won't be much longer and that bad boy will be sticking out. Unfortunately it hurts even worse when she gnaws on my knuckles now that it's coming up. The other huge downside is that she is nursing, but then decides that my boob would make a great teether. She chomps down and then yanks her head backwards. It is such a swift movement it is hard to stop her. Boy I can't wait until she has a whole mouth full of these little razors (feel my sarcasm?).

Let's just pray that the next few nights are successful for sleep, productive for teeth, and all over easier than the past five months.

OMG!!!!

YAY!!! Our morning nap went amazing. Granted I nursed her back to sleep, but still...a two hour nap. You heard right, my non-sleeping child gave me two hours of peace, from 9:30am to 11:30am. I was ecstatic that she went down with out a fight, but to have her sleep on her own for that long was just down right awesome. It got even better when she woke up. I didn't turn her monitor on like I normally do, so I didn't hear her wake up. I'm not sure how long she'd been in her crib playing. But when I heard her squawk I went to check. I was so surprised by what I found...

She was wide awake and smiling. But even better she was flipped around in the crib. I always lay her head at the other end. Not only was she turned, but she had been playing with her toys. The teether hand was nearly falling out of the crib and her dolly was soaked with saliva. She was just so happy to see Mommy. It was a great feeling. Let's just pray the rest of the day follows suit.

We're on the right track

Totally fighting bed time and screaming rather loudly

Mommy blinded her in the darkness, oops! I need a pic of the screaming baby so I can show her how much she tortured me as an infant.

FINALLY! After some amazing advice from a very caring friend, (and she knows who she is) I think we are on the right path to getting a sleep pattern and naps down. I don't want to jinx myself, but today was fantabulous! After reading my friends email this morning, I couldn't wait to give her nap time a try. Basically she spelled out what and how I needed to handle her naps. Once her naps are under control we'll work more on bed time. So I gave it go and with each nap she's getting progressively better. I can actually have time to focus on school work, or at least I should soon be able to. It's not perfect, but it's a start.

Here's a recap of how our day went:

Thursday, May 21, 2009
7:24 AM Woke up, hungry. Changed diaper and nursed in bed.
11:30 AM Woke up after nursing in bed all morning.
12:45 PM Placed in her crib, wide awake with her blanky, dolly and monkey show. Played for a half hour.
1:15 PM Screamed for 15 minutes.
1:30 PM Fell asleep on her own.
2:02 PM Woke up, played, snacked off & on; did not really nurse well.
4:00 PM Daddy changed her & put her down for a nap. Fussed for 5 minutes
4:05 PM Screamed for 35 minutes
4:40 PM Gave in & went to sleep on her own.
5:32 PM Woke up fussing. Happy to see Daddy.
6:30 PM Nursed, but not well, took 2oz formula, goofed around some more & I gave up on nursing.
6:45 PM Put in the bouncer and played happily.
8:00 PM Nursed until she dozed off and woke back up with my movement.
8:30 PM Ate 3 tablespoons of Oatmeal.
9:00 PM Bath time
9:30 PM Put to bed, Given Tylenol & Teething Tablets. Fussed & Screamed
9:50 PM Fell asleep on her own.
10:25 PM Fussing, turned on soother & patted her back down
10:40 PM Fussing, did not go in, she went back down on her own
10:56 PM Fussing, Daddy patted her back down

Friday, May 22, 2009
12:00 AM Fussing, tried to pat her back down, didn't work. Changed diaper and nursed her back to sleep.
12:20 AM Placed her back in her crib asleep, turned on the monkey show.

On another note, Adam and I were able to start our seedlings today for our garden. I'm excited. We still have a few more seeds to purchase and then our gardening days will have started. Next step is building the raised beds in the yard. I can't wait to have home grown produce again! This means I know Bella will be getting semi-organic foods that weren't juiced up with hormones. Nor will she be getting processed baby foods with preservatives and sugars. I do have some on hand, however, should we need it. But I plan on sticking with home grown veggies. The fruits are another story, because who the heck can grow a banana tree in MO? I will updating the "growing of the garden" pics as things start to come together.

Well Wishers and Advice

Thank you to everyone who has suggested what we can try to get the munchkin to sleep. I do not mean this in a sarcastic way, yet sincere. I really appreciate the help. So to further my quest of acquiring more sleep I am going to lay out what we have tried. This is in hopes to get more advice, or something else that we haven't already tried...so here we go.

1. Cereal - Yes we give her cereal at night, although not in a bottle. I refuse to put it in a bottle, because when watered down she refuses it.

2. Teething Tablets - We give these to her on a scheduled basis. Some days they seem to help, other days they do not.

3. Tylenol - She gets this regularly. We know she's teething now as she's running a low grade fever.

4. Schedule - I would love to say she's on a schedule, but she's not a schedule kinda kid. And we have not been able to force any kind of schedule/sleep pattern on her because she is very stubborn.

5. Routine - Although she doesn't have a schedule, we do try to stick to a night time routine. In the evening she receives her bowl of cereal, followed up by a bath and/or shower, followed up by nursing. Some nights she passes out, other nights she doesn't. Even if she falls asleep earlier than normal she is always awake within a half hour.

6. Solids - No, we are not doing solids yet. Cereal is the extent of food she is receiving and I honestly do not believe adding in food will help her sleep any better. She has already proven that eating cereal does not increase the likely hood of sleep. The solids will wait until she's closer to six months.

7. Naps - Extreme and rare with her. Even if she is cranky. Which normally she really isn't cranky. Sometimes she just decides to scream for whatever reason and not give up. The longest nap we've gotten out of her is three hours. Generally they last from ten minutes to a half hour. No, laying her down will not invoke a nap either. The only thing it creates is complete havoc and the ultimate bloody murder screams until she's blue in the face and can't breathe.

8. Cry It Out - Yes we've tried it and she does.not.give.up.

9. Car Rides - Yes, she'll fall asleep in the car, but the minute the car stops moving she's wide awake. In the off chance she stays asleep, she'll wake up once in the house.

10. Baby Wearing - Yes I wear her, yes it helps. However it has not been a magic cure for us. At first it was a God send and I was at least able to get her to nap in it. But lately, even wearing her during the day doesn't seem to make much of a difference.

11. Walks - I've tried to take her for walks, either in the sling or in the stroller. It just doesn't help. She lays in the stroller and talks to her feet. In the sling...see above.

12. Have some one else take her - Although I entertain this thought, I'm not going to use it. With my condition as it is, I need her to nurse as often as possible. No, a pump is not efficient for someone else keeping her. She does the best job and if I am going to be successful at nursing her until she's a year old I have to have her around to do the job the pump cannot do. This is especially important to me considering the recent issues we've had with milk expiration.

Teething: We have done the tablets, Tylenol, frozen wash rag, vibrating teether, frozen teething ring...Some of these work, some times it is hit or miss.

I'm sure there are other suggestions we've tried but right now with her hollering in my ear it's hard to remember.

Modified:

Swing - Yes, we tried the swing. (See I told you there were others I forgot.) At first she hated it, then she would only sleep in it, now she will only "talk" in the swing. No sleep, just chats up a storm...