New Tricks

We just know Emily is going to be crawling in no time--she is scooting all over, and definitely makes use of every inch of her crib! She can push up on her knees, but not quite on her hands and knees at the same time. She even tried scooting around at the beach this week.

She's also able to partially pull herself up to a sitting position--she seems to be just dying to see the world from a different perspective, because she's rarely content to lie still anymore.
She's wearing herself out with all this activity, because she's been sleeping 12 hours at night now! Every night during our vacation, she went right to sleep in the pack 'n play by 7:30 and slept until 7:00 or 7:30 in the mornings!

Bedtime Routine

I've waited to post this in hopes that our great luck wouldn't change, and we could actually call our nighttime ritual a routine, and now I feel safe doing it. Emily is such a big girl now! We start our routine around 6:30 each night (providing Mick and I have both made it home by then)--Emily sits in her high chair and eats her cereal and fruit or veggies. Usually by around 7:00, we're making our way upstairs to the bathtub, which is Emily's favorite part. I carry her up the stairs and Mick walks behind us, making faces and playing with her over my shoulder, and she laughs the whole time. It's so sweet!

Emily is content to stay in the bath as long as we'll let her, so we leave her in to splash and play some, even after she's clean. When her bath is done, it's off to the bedroom for lotion and pjs, and then she has her bedtime bottle. By the time I sit down to feed her, she acts like she's completely famished and so tired she can hardly hold her eyes open. She's very sleepy by the time the milk is gone, and I put her in the crib around 7:30 to fall asleep.

Within the last week, she's started flipping over the second she gets in the crib, so she's decided to be a tummy sleeper--this makes us a little nervous, but she's doing great with it. She's also been sleeping through the night for a couple of weeks now--it felt strange at first not to be getting up to check on her, but now it's just plain wonderful! We can hardly believe how fast our little princess is growing up. And we're hoping the next couple of weeks with vacation and starting school won't set us back too much!

Sleeping Like a Big Girl!

Emily has done so well since we decided to let her start going to sleep on her own at night. Luckily, there hasn't been much crying it out at all, which has been a lot easier on us! We've gotten into a regular routine at night--she eats some cereal, takes a bath and then has her bedtime milk (she's up to about 6 oz. at most feedings now!). By the time she finishes eating, she's usually getting pretty sleepy, especially if we're upstairs in her room where it's darker and quieter, so she'll go right down in the crib with no fuss most nights. It's great that she's sleeping without the Woombie too, because she gets to move her little arms and legs all she wants! She looks like such a big girl all stretched out in her crib.

She has still been waking up once a night to eat, but last night, she slept through the night! She went to bed at 8:30 PM and didn't wake up until 5:00 AM! We're not expecting this to continue happening every night, but it's a start. It was definitely a strange feeling though--we panicked a little at first, wondering if we slept through her crying, but then decided we couldn't have done that. She was obviously fine and happy when she woke up, so that's what was important.

Sleeping Like a Baby

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that the pediatrician told us it was time to start letting Emily cry it out at night. Since we were in the middle of our move, we decided to hold off and give her some time to settle in before we tried everything new at once. We also weren't totally convinced that Emily was getting enough to eat during the day to go all night without eating. Lately, she's been going to bed (with the Woombie on) between 8-8:30 at night and will sleep until about 2:30 AM before waking up to eat. We feed her, put her right back to bed, and she'll sleep until about 5:30 AM. Since that's the time we usually get up, we feed her again and put her back to bed. She normally will sleep until about 8:00 AM and then she's up for the day (minus naps).

This week will be the first week I'm not traveling since we moved, so we decided it was the right time to try sleeping differently. Still, we want to take this one step at a time, so last night after her bath, Emily put her pjs on, but not the Woombie. She ate her bedtime meal, went to sleep by about 8:30, and I put her in the crib. It's so sweet to see her sleeping with her little arms and legs all sprawled out.

She woke up around 10:30--usually, when she's sleeping with the Woombie, she'll wake up and put herself back to sleep pretty quickly. Without the Woombie, it's a little different...so I let her cry for 5 minutes before going in to her. I never knew 5 minutes could last for an hour! It's agonizing to watch that precious little girl on the monitor, and it makes you feel like the worst parent in the world! I went in, picked her up, and she was instantly fine. While it feels great to be able to soothe her so easily, it also makes you realize that she's really figuring out how to work us to get what she wants! She went to sleep on my shoulder and I put her back down, but a couple of minutes later, she woke up crying again. This time, I let her go for about 8 minutes before going in, and the same thing happened. The third time, she cried for 10 minutes and then fell asleep. She slept until 4:00 AM!

At 4:00, we knew she was hungry, so Mick got her up, changed her and fed her, and she went right back to sleep. We took advantage of the situation and went back to bed too. At about 7:00 AM, she woke up for the day. For our first step in changing the sleep routine, we feel like it was pretty successful!

One Thing at a Time

We've had such a hectic few weeks lately, and yesterday we decided we needed to slow down a little. I was on my way home from the airport after having caught an earlier flight, excited that I'd be able to spend some time with Emily and accomplish some things tonight before bed. I was about 4 miles away from our house when the car in the lane beside me swerved into my lane and hit the side of my car. I wasn't hurt, but the car sure was. The police responded pretty quickly and issued the other driver a citation--it certainly could have turned out much worse than it did, but it just added one more thing for us to have to take care of now, which is more of a nuisance than anything.

When I got home, Mick and I talked and decided to hold off on changing everything in Emily's life right now until we get settled in Charlotte. We are letting her cry a little when we put her to bed at night--the last two nights, she'll cry for 10-15 minutes and then fall into a deep sleep. When she wakes up during the night though, we're still feeding her and putting her back to bed. We know we still have plenty of time to sleep train, and feel like it will be less traumatic if we aren't in the middle of moving.

Sleep (Dare I Say) Routine?

It seems that as soon as I post something about Emily's latest and greatest, she decides to change it...so I'm curious to see what will happen after this. She is certainly not yet sleeping through the night, but we are seeing a definite pattern emerging. Each night, we give her a bath and her bedtime bottle by 8:00 PM. Sometimes she's ready to go right to bed, and other times it takes a while to get her quietly in the bassinet. Once she's down, she'll sleep soundly until 12:00 or 1:00 AM before waking up. We were giving her the pacifier and getting her back to sleep--the problem with that is it seemed to be never ending, and we might be up and down for an hour replacing the pacifier until she finally settled enough to fall asleep again. This week, we decided to get her up and feed her and see if that helped. It has--tremendously! She doesn't usually eat much, but just that little snack seems to satisfy her just enough to put her back to sleep soundly until about 3:00 AM when she wakes up again to eat.

We were initially discouraged that she still needs to eat a couple of times during the night when she seemed to be past that for a while, but are now really glad we switched things up. Now we know she's getting plenty to eat, and it's much easier to get up and feed her for a few minutes than to get up and down for an hour with the pacifier!

Sleeping Update

We made some adjustments to the Woombie so Emily could still sleep in that with her harness on. She is now eating her bedtime bottle at about 7:30 pm each night, right after her bath. She'll go to sleep pretty easily after that, but normally takes a little while for me to be able to put her down--she wants to continue to be held! After she's in the bassinet (by around 8:30 pm), she sleeps great until about 1:30 am. At that point, she begins to wake up but seems to only want her pacifier. She immediately falls back to sleep once we give it to her--the problem is that she won't keep it in her mouth! So after one of us gets out of bed 6-8 times to replace the pacifier, we pick her up and put her in bed with us. After that, she sleeps fairly well until about 5:00 am. We've done this for the last several nights--I don't think it's a long term solution, but it seems to be the way we all get the most sleep right now.

So the bassinet was worth it...

Some of you probably remember that we bought two bassinets before Emily was born. The first one was from a lady on craigslist--it was a bargain, but we both ended up hating it and we donated it at Babies 'R Us for a discount on a new one. We loved the new one, and had visions of our sweet baby coming home from the hospital and loving her bassinet. We had it set up by our bed, but shortly after we came home, we realized things weren't quite going to happen as we thought. Mick has a bad habit of destroying the box and packing material for things like this bassinet, so there was no hope of returning it, and we were certain it had been a waste of money.

This week, we decided to try the bassinet beside our bed, and it worked! I'm not posting a picture because we won't dare have a flash in her face and risk waking her up :). Every night seems to get a little easier, and she seems to sleep a little more soundly. Next step will be her crib!

All Night Long

Emily slept for SEVEN HOURS STRAIGHT last night! I gave her a bath and put her in her pajamas, then we settled down in in her room for a big dinner. After that, I zipped her up in the Woombie, rocked her to sleep and put her in the bassinet around 9:45 pm. She didn't wake up until 4:45 am! Mick and I didn't sleep very well though--we both kept waking up to make sure she was okay :). Now that we know she can do that though, hopefully we'll all be sleeping better!

What's a little strange is that she's been sleeping a lot yesterday and today too. Every time she eats, she falls asleep before she's finished nursing, so I'm a little worried that she isn't eating enough, but she seems perfectly content. I can't imagine that she'd sleep this well if she was hungry. Funny that one thing improves and we find something else to worry about!

Breakthrough!

I have hesitated to post this for the past few days, not wanting to ruin our streak of good luck by bragging, but now I just can't wait any longer. I think we've had a breakthrough in our sleeping saga...Emily has slept on her own in the bassinet for the past THREE NIGHTS! Mick had bought a smaller bassinet that actually fits in our bed, hoping that would make the transition a little easier--but she wouldn't have anything to do with it until this week. We've gradually gotten her used to it, but we think the trick was the Woombie! Tricia and Natalie recommended this, and it has been fantastic. It's the same idea as swaddling, but zips up the front and is made of stretchy fabric so Emily can still move her arms and legs around in it--she just can't startle herself awake with those flying arms. Our next step will be moving her to the bigger bassinet so she's not in our bed anymore. That might be a bigger challenge!

Something's Wrong Here...

I remember reading that the noise level in the womb is about like a vacuum cleaner, and that babies are sometimes soothed by this. I decided to test the theory, and it apparently is true. Every time I turn on the vacuum cleaner, Emily goes to sleep! This morning, she just wanted to be held and wouldn't stay content in her bassinet. Since the floor needed to be vacuumed anyway, I killed two birds with one stone.

The problem is that either Emily really is soothed by this, or she's trying to give me a hint that there's entirely too much dog hair on the floor. In case you're wondering--yes, the vacuum cleaner is sitting in the middle of the floor (turned on) while I post this :).

Sleeping Solo

Probably our biggest challenge so far has been getting Emily to sleep by herself. She seems to only want to sleep while being held by Mick or me! We're getting very good at sleeping with her on our chests or in our laps, but in the last day or so, she's been getting better about sleeping in the bassinet on her Pack 'n Play or in her bouncy seat.

Hopefully, by tonight or tomorrow, we'll be able to sleep in our bed again with her in the bassinet!