Upside Down

Julia thought she would give musical comedy a try. Thanks to Aunt JoAnne for sending the octopus and brightening our day. In other news, we stopped feeding her at night. This may explain the uncontrolled head bobbing. It also may explain why her waking has moved back to 4:30am instead of 2:00am. More as events warrant....

Julia's Movie Debut

So here is the little one, helping with the laundry. Thanks to Mike and Amy for letting us in on how to post the video. =)

The Old Lady Who Whispers "Hush"

My life recently has been marked by lots of crying and sleepless nights. It seems as though Julia has decided to hit a whole bunch of developmental milestones at once. Things like crawling (video to come soon!), pulling up, cruising, sitting back down, feeding herself (with fingers, hands, and spoon). All of which are absolutely amazing to watch in progress and most of the time very funny too. But when added to the numerous colds she has suffered through since Christmas, it has made for a lot of sleepless nights. It has gotten so bad that I've gone back to reading sleep books!

At first it was kind of funny that she would be standing up in the crib, crying out for us at 11:30pm. But then it kept happening. And it would happen not only at 11:30pm, but then again at 1:30am, 4:00am, 6:00am, et cetera. The worst nights are those when the first wake up happens just as I am getting into a deep sleep. Then I know the whole night is shot.

Now some of you may ask, "Why are you getting to bed so late yourself?" Well, there is the after dinner cleanup to do, the bottles and pump parts to wash, the milk to store, the lunch prep for the next day, Julia's food prep for the next day, toys to put away, et cetera. And that darn cat always needs water (We've attributed this to the fact that Sierra's water dish acts like a tractor beam that pulls Julia into the kitchen whenever she is placed on the floor. She is helpless to stop crawling towards it. She must put her hands in the water, no other dish of water seems to have the same power over her). So there is a lot of work to be done before we can go to bed to wait for the morning.

So, since I have been reading the sleep books again, I've been running through all of the sleep solutions again. Don't want to start co-sleeping because then none of us get any sleep. Don't want to rock her to sleep because it is almost impossible to put her down once she falls asleep (I think she pretends to be asleep in this situation). Oh and she likes to pull my hair instead of drifting off peacefully while we rock. Tried crying, but she just gets more and more upset, to the point where she is crying even though I haven't even left the room. Did I mention her separation anxiety issues? Prolonged crying at night sets off the anxiety for the entire next day. Plus the crying forces me to try and think of Julia doing cute things to convince myself to keep going back in and trying to soothe her. So I did something that I used to try when she was a wee little one and I wanted her to nap in the crib. I pulled a chair into her room and I sit there. Whispering "hush". Sometimes I need to pat her back (she prefers to sleep on her stomach now...must get this from her father). Other times I need to gently ask her to lay back down. Still other times I need to help her lay back down. But the plus is that in the three nights we have been doing it, there is less crying at bedtime. And while she is still waking up at night, it does not take two hours to coax her back to sleep. I just get back in the chair and start whispering "hush" again. If only there was enough light to knit by I would be all set.

The next place we live will have a nice comfy chair in the kid's bedroom just for this purpose. With a blanket for me in the middle of the night. And enough light to knit by. Because in the book, the old lady gets to knit while she whispers.

There will be pictures later in the week when I remember to add "recharge camera batteries" to the list of evening chores.