8:05am Cheers With The Sippy Cup

Yesterday morning I got a taste of what it would be like to be a working single mother with an 8 month old baby, let me just take a moment to say, wow- my hat goes off to those ladies who do this every day!

7:20am… B walks into the bedroom to tell me that Everly is still sleeping and that he is leaving for work. I pop out of bed like a piece of toast, amazed that it is 7:15 and she is still sleeping… what happened to her waking me up between 6:45 and 7:00? Knowing that we need to be out of the house by 7:50 I walk down the hall and open the door to her bedroom, hoping that the morning ambiance will wake her.

7:25am… I am in the bathroom having a hooker shower with a face cloth and wetting my hair, just as I start brushing my teeth I hear B walk into her room and pick her up (wasn’t he leaving)? He plunks her down on the floor in the bathroom and says see ya later- thanks babe, (secretly I was hoping that she would stay sleeping until I was dressed).

7:27am… she is hungry and not being shy about telling me (of course), I realize that I am going to have to feed her as I do what I need to do to get ready. In the high chair she goes as I mix up her breakfast, am thinking this might be better because now she is contained. I drag the high chair to my room where I take turns giving her spoonfuls of cereal mixed with fruit and getting myself dressed. One spoonful, 2 socks, one spoonful, underwear, one spoonful, bra… until I am done and she nearly is too- aha! We have a system.

7:37am… I sit to feed her the last bits of her breakfast and suddenly I am aware of the towel still on my head. I drag her high chair to the bathroom door and take turns putting product into my hair while feeding her the last spoonfuls of her cereal- thank goodness she choose to cooperate and eat this morning is all I can think of… thank you patron saint of feeding babies. I pause and wonder what would the patron saint of feeding babies be called? Emeril, Rachel, Top Chef? Maybe that guy who swears all the time… okay focus, focus.

7:45am… time to nurse Everly. I thought we might be able to wait to do this until I got her to my cousin’s (who was looking after her), but no, she would have none of it. I am tapping my foot on the floor as she guzzles; said guzzling is partially because I am squashing my boob with my free hand to make the milk come out as fast as possible… I have seen how this kid can throw back a bottle, I know she can handle it.

7:50… we were supposed to be leaving the house at this point but nope, it’s only time to get Everly dressed. Getting Everly dressed is kind of like trying to get a lobster into one leg on a pair of pantyhose without the pantyhose being snagged; it isn’t easy. So we wrestle and sing songs and eventually she is ready to go. I put on her coat and strap her into her car seat.

7:56… I am a pack mule waking out to the car with Everly’s diaper bag, my work bag, Everly’s daycare supplies bag and my donations for work bag… oh and Everly in her car seat- which now officially combined weighs over 25 pounds. I hobble and hop and get half way to the car and realize that I am still wearing my slippers. I trek on despite the slippers, I have come too far with my load to turn back, I am closer to the car than my door. I play put stuff into the car tetris and then quickly run back into the house for some shoes- awesome, we are ready to go and only 10 minutes behind schedule.

8:03am… I am in the car at an intersection and hear my tummy growl, I feel my throat- heechk (a bit dry and pasty), is it possible that through all of this I have not eaten or drank anything, YES. Food I knew I didn’t have, but water hmmm, I took a quick look around the inside of my car and miracle of miracles, there in the cup holder was one of Everly’s sippy cups. I grabbed the cup and tried to get the lid off so that I could down the water inside, yeah, no, they don’t make these lids easy to get off do they. So I started sipping. I learned yesterday morning that it takes a lot of effort to get water out of a sippy cup, so I was sipping hard. I started to feel like I was being watched and sure enough I was. The lady in the car on my left was staring blank faced right at me. I found myself embarrased for a nanosecond and then I took the cup out of my mouth, raised it in a cheers like fashion and drove away as the light turned green… at least I gave her something to tell her friends at work.

8:13am… we arrive at my cousin’s house, 13 minutes late but everyone present and sound. I drop her off without any trouble and head to work. I take a deep breath and blow it out slowly… ahhhh work the vacation day in my week.

Dog Park = Toddler Play Group

New post on the Kids in Victoria Blog, this one explores the similarities between dog parks and toddler play groups… can you add to the list?

Do The Babies Have Large Talons?

One thing I forgot to ask in the prenatal class was if the babies come out with large talons… I am not sure if they would have told me the truth and said yes, they would have probably lied and said no. It’s fitting that this crucial bit of information was left out like so many other “gems” that may affect one’s decision to procreate. So I am here to tell you that yes, the baby comes with large talons, maybe not right away, but they grow in and they are sharp. Once the nails start growing you realize that you are going to have to cut them. I am not sure there was anything about infant care that I was so terrified about. You are holding this tiny baby hand with it’s 5 paper thin, nearly microscopic nails and you are meant to clip them with razor sharp cutters (okay maybe the cutters are not razor sharp but they might as well be for how scary it is). I made Brandon do it the first few times. The first time he cut her nails she bled, and since fingertips bleed like gutted pigs, the blood kept pouring… reminding us that we had failed on this one. Fortunately she was so tiny and tired that she barely noticed (thank God!). The next few rounds of cutting were uneventful, I think it was once he got confident that he accidentally cut her again, this time she was awake, alert and livid. She cried and bled for what seemed like hours but was probably only 5 minutes. I volunteered to take over after that. So now nail cutting is my job and I do it while she is eating at night (her most naturally sedate time). It’s a good thing that by this point in time I have gone pro nail cutter, because my daughter’s nails grow so fast, I could cut them twice a week if I really wanted to be picky about it, come to think of it the time may have come to get picky. 

Baby and Daddy!

 

Lately each breastfeeding session results in my boobs clawed up, (like I said, those little f***ers are SHARP! Everly has a need for a lot of tactile stimulation right now, and by tactile stimulation I mean clawing, scratching, pinching, twisting and pulling; all of the above are currently offenses committed by her on my sensitive boob skin and nipples. Right now both my right and left breasts look like google maps- little scratches like little streets and scabs that might represent a school or shopping mall. Yes we have started the discipline thing and I take her off the boob and hold her hand and say NO! I have even taken it one step further and I hold her hand and run my finger along the top of it and say ‘gentle’ so that she knows what a gentle touch feels like. But all it takes is one second and she is really good at getting that one second in! I was very near to weaning her from the breast I was so fed up with it, instead she now wears mittens or gets swaddled, which you can guess she really appreciates. How funny does that look, my little baby tucking in for a meal with pink woolen mittens on her hands. The good that has come out of this is that the swaddle really helps her to relax before sleep, thank you breasts for your sacrifice… should have known that the brain in it’s quest for sleep would be willing to sacrifice other body parts.  

Yes, the topic of sleep, always an interesting one in our household. How I wish I could go back to the days where she slept with us in our bed without a peep for solid 8 and 9 hour stretches, only we would all have enough room. In this fantasy my ass wouldn’t be hanging off the side of the bed while B’s leg hangs off the other side, while Everly ‘queen of the bed’ spreads out like a snow angel in the middle, life would be good. But no, life didn’t continue on like it does in dreams and we had to put her in her crib. If you have been reading this blog you know the ordeal that has been for our ‘spirited’ baby. Well it seems that the Baby Whisperer (who told us our child is spirited) has helped this family. I say seems because so far things are going pretty good. She is only waking to feed once in a 12 hour stretch (I am totally willing to live with this) and she is sleeping in her own bed. When she goes down for sleep times it can sometimes be a bit of an ordeal and may take up to 30 minutes, but I feel okay with that because the Baby Whisperer said her worst case had her standing next to the crib for nearly 2 hours. I feel better knowing someone had it worse than us, isn’t that mean, yes it’s mean, but it doesn’t change the fact that I still feel better about it, lol! 

Pickle likes her crib!

Page 56 Is Changing My Life… I Hope?

Click  HERE  and scroll to page 56…  I have experienced all 10 of these myself, (the breastfeeding issue has come only recently) and I would bet my weight in diamonds that almost every mother out there has as well. Who hasn’t felt guilt in motherhood? Can I go so far as to say if you haven’t felt guilt you are doing something wrong, lol… If you haven’t, please raise your hand so that we can spot you and appraise you accordingly!  Maybe some of us are better at looking at parenthood objectively, and responding appropriately to our own needs, but my experience has been that all objectivity goes out the window the minute your heart gets so invested.

I visited our Healthcare Professional with Everly on Wednesday as a follow up to our hospital visit for a case of croup (poor baby). Everly is getting better quickly and should be back to herself in a week or so (hmmm, was she ever not herself? I don’t remember her slowing down at all!). It was me who received two prescriptions though. I guess my state of sleep deprivation was a little bit more noticeable than I though. I admitted that sometimes my arm goes numb and tingly and I am experiencing apraxia and dizzy spells, yeah I am tired, but really who isn’t? Every mother that I know is tired! I said that the sleep training was on the back burner until Everly is well again… I was told this is no excuse to not be taking care of myself. Hmmm, I guess it isn’t.

Prescription number 1- I must take 2 hours for myself AT LEAST 5 days of the week and I am not allowed to do household chores during that time (no cleaning, grocery shopping, laundry- all the fun stuff). Well this all sounds good on paper and it’s not like my husband hasn’t been urging me to do this for some time, but at the end of the day I am so freaking tired I just want to zone out and lay down and relax which is kind of hard to do when my home is still full of activity. The last thing that I usually feel like doing is getting ‘outside’ clothes on, getting in the car and going somewhere. But maybe I should. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to see if I actually feel better once I get out… kind of like when you don’t want to go to the gym but you make yourself go and once you start exercising you are glad you went?? Will have to test this theory, maybe tomorrow, lol, no really am acknowledging that I have to test this theory.

Prescription number 2- Brandon and I are to rotate the night shift once sleep training commences. This one also sounds wonderful on paper, except for the fact that I wake up before him and can’t go back to sleep until the baby is also back to sleep, so I still have to hear her cry. I think it might even be worse to lay there and listen to her cry because I feel like I am not doing anything to help. But that’s where the article on guilt comes in. I need to step back and let Everly and Brandon find their way together too. B suggested that I wear earplugs and I hesitated in doing that because he doesn’t wake up as easily as me, but if there is one thing I should know about Everly by now it is that she is REALLY loud when she needs some attention, lol! So I think it’s time to buy some earplugs.

Yesterday the prescriptions were written and I have already broken #1 twice, but it’s not really my fault, seriously it isn’t. Will try to follow the rules more closely and not let outside influences lure me away!

Just 4 Hours…

Separation anxiety has hit hard in our house, so much so that it is affecting night time wakings. Everly used to wake only once in a 12 hour stretch and now she is waking every 1 to 2 hours- argh! All I am asking for right now is one stretch of 4 hours that I can sleep uninterrupted, one full sleep cycle, ah it would be lovely. Sometimes when I hear people talking about how much they have slept in a certain period of time I start fantasizing what that would feel like, I like to call this sleep porn. Some of my well meaning friends will look at my face and say oh, maybe I should stop talking about this with you (they don’t want me to be jealous obviously), but I say no, no continue on… tell me what you did when your head hit the pillow, ah yes, that’s right, that’s what I want to hear… dirty, dirty sleep porn.

According to developmental theory that I learned in school (turns out the degree came in handy) she is waking and realizing that we are two different people and that I am not there and so she gets scared. Separation anxiety commonly occurs when babies become mobile on their own- which she now is, the crawling little monkey! We are so proud of her!!! (see the vide0). And if sleepless nights aren’t enough separation anxiety has also brought the only mom will do phase. Gone are the days when she can be soothed by her dad or someone else. At the worst of it I couldn’t even leave the room without her wailing, fortunately these frenzied outbursts seem to be on the decline. I am doing what I am supposed to and saying bye-bye I’ll be right back and then coming back to teach her that I continue to exist even though she can’t see me, silly baby. Some days she thinks this is funny and laughs when I reappear, other days she screams until she can see me again, I guess it’s a learning process!

One of my biggest fears about becoming a mom was how I was going to deal with this only mom will do phase. I am a person who enjoys some time to herself sometimes and I like a small amount of personal space. I wouldn’t say that I have a bubble, but sometimes I like to have no one touching me, that’s not too much to ask is it? If you ask my daughter this question she will say yes, that is too much to ask. I totally understand the motivation behind her behaviour and it’s very touching that she loves me so much and wants to be around me ALL THE TIME, but sometimes I need a break. I know that some mommys thrive on this stage and love the feeling of being needed, I would have to admit that I am not one of those mommys! I want my daughter to be easily settled by both her father and I because quite frankly I get a bit overwhelmed by it all. It is very exhausting to have someone need you so much. I wasn’t expecting this, no where in the “what to expect” book did I find this highlighted as something to expect!

Also, Elizabeth Pantley and I are on the outs. I am not sure if it’s poor timing with the separation anxiety or not, but since we have started the no cry sleep solution Everly’s sleep has gone from so-so to not so great at all. Through reading so much on sleep I have really started to see what a strong association Everly has developed between sucking and sleep. And I am having this feeling that reoccurs in my gut; it tells me the Pantley method will work for us. Giving her what she wants, every time she wants it whilst slowly weaning her from what she wants is turning out to be an exhausting endeavor. We are one week in, she recommeds doing the method for at least 10 days and then doing a follow up log to compare to your original log from day one. 3 more days, we will see where that takes us.

Around the same time I started reading the Pantley book I also started The Baby Whisperer. The Baby Whisperer was recommended to me to help get us on a routine, I don’t do too well with a lack of structure and have often wondered if Everly might do better herself if we nailed down a regular routine. I don’t mean to stick to a strict schedule, I don’t think that helps anyone as you just stress about sticking to the schedule, but I like the sound of a loose routine. Now that Everly is no longer feeding on demand, I don’t see why we can’t move towards more structure than the orders of her little belly 🙂 The one thing I am not sure about the Baby Whisperer routine is that E for Eat occurs at the beginning of the EASY routine and S for Sleep is not right after. I have always fed Everly right before she sleeps, so switching will throw her for a bit of a loop, but will it help to break the suck to sleep association… hmmmmm?

Oh and to end on a positive note here (seemed to be a lot of complaining in this post- he he), I want to repeat myself and say that Everly is doing a 4 point cross crawl now!!! I am so proud of her I had to say it again. To see her little booty scooting behind me is so adorable. Often when she has completed a longer length she will turn her face up to look at me and she looks so proud. I applaud her and tell her how wonderful she is and she smiles and then we continue on to repeat the process, right now this is the highlight of my day. I didn’t read this in the ‘what to expect’ book either, this one was a good surprise that I didn’t even know was coming 🙂

Elizabeth Pantley Will You Marry Me?

Okay, I know she is married already, but maybe she would leave her husband and come live with Everly and I? As you may have guessed I just started reading The No Cry Sleep Solution  by Elizabeth Pantley and  I love it. I think what makes me love it, is that she is realistic. There is one section called realistic goals and do you know what it says? Well I will tell you what it says… it says that sleeping for a 5 hours stretch is considered sleeping through the night for a baby, hmmm, if you go by that, Everly has been sleeping through the night since she was a few weeks old. There was not any nonsense talk like… my program will make your baby sleep 12 hours uninterruped and if your baby doesn’t you are doing something wrong and probably a huge failure. The language in this book is so supportive and loving towards the baby. While I was reading it I was thinking, yes, this is where I need to be. So today we did steps 1, 2 and 3. The first two are basic info and safety stuff and the third is a sleep log. Tomorrow we will set out our plan, yes that’s right our plan. And you know what? No you don’t know what, but again I am going to tell you… Everly doesn’t have to cry. How do you like them apples. Instead of letting her cry, we will be helping her to learn to fall back asleep on her own, doesn’t that seem more fair?!

I also have to take the time to admit that the beginning of the book made me feel like a terrible mother. It wasn’t anything that the author said per say, it was my reaction to it. She gave researched based reasons why babies should not be left to cry it out and although I have read many of these reasons before there were some new ones. There was one especially that made me cry, it was written from the baby’s perspective, how they may feel when they wake up in the middle of the night. Now I understand that a lot of that is subjective and that no one really knows what the baby is thinking, but I know that left in the same situation I would not be feeling that great either. Once more I was left feeling that I should have done more than a quick overview of the different schools of thought out there on sleep training. But like I said before, I just went with what seemed to work for everyone around me. We all do that so I am trying not to beat myself up about it. I  know that I wasn’t being a bad mother and that I was just trying to help my baby to learn something the best way that I knew how. I don’t want to be misunderstood here and sound like I think that parents who let their babies cry it out are bad parents, that’s not it at all! The crying it out method just did not work for us, it has worked great for a lot of people though; I believe that you have to go with what suits your family best.

Everly has had a bit of a cold since Christmas Eve, this is her first cold and it was not a welcome first! She is pretty stuffy and has a little cough. We have been giving her saline squirts up the nose and even gave her some Advil Cold for infants because she was running a little bit of a temperature. We took her to the doctor yesterday who said that she looks fine and it’s just a cold that is hanging on, he said that if it is not gone in 3 days to bring her back in. Lucky for us, the cold hasn’t made her more grumpy during the day, unlucky for us, it has made her more grumpy during the night- argh! Combine this with teeth that are trying to cut through and you have a lovely little gem of a baby in the middle of the night, lol! She has been waking a little more than usual and last night I just gave up and brought her to bed with us, she didn’t sleep much better there unfortunately. Ahh baby, I hope the cold goes away and the teeth pop out, I hate seeing her like this.

What has struck me as interesting lately is how much Everly is like me. I know in theory how personality is thought to develop and am aware of the whole nature/nurture argument and have to say that I am leaning a lot towards nature, ha ha. In all honesty I think it’s somewhere in the middle. For example I see character traits of my own that I like about myself and I nurture those in her and the same goes for her dad. The traits that I don’t like too much about my personality she is picking up too though, and I am not reinforcing them, lol- how does that work?!? It’s just so weird to look at her behaving in a certain way or moving her face into an expression in reaction to something and knowing that I behave and react the same way. I was once told that our children take what we have and bring it up another level- if that’s true we had better hope that Everly only amps up the positive qualities or we are on for some TROUBLE! lol!

The Holidays Are Over.

We had an absolute blast with Everly for her first Christmas. I honestly can not remember a Christmas that has been more fun or meaningful for me. Every single thing was new and magical again. Seeing the reflection of the lights in her eyes and watching her tear open gifts and laugh as she played with the B*ll*s*it button (oops, lol), was awesome, I am grinning from ear to ear now just thinking about it. Everly was very lucky and received so many generous gifts. I think that we probably have double the amount of toys in our house right now, which is okay because half of them are ready to be packed away anyway because she is too old for them- so these Christmas toys could not have come at a better time 🙂 Our family is very blessed and for that we are so thankful. 

Our tree!

 

The holidays were also eventful. Everly started to say mama with meaning, clap her hands, wave bye-bye, sign for more and she began to get on the move by crawling and pulling to stand. When she was born, my dad said that Everly would be crawling by Christmas and he was right. She doesn’t have the most graceful crawl and sometimes she still face plants but boy does she move! The pulling to stand skill is more recent. Once she realized that she could go from her hands and knees to sitting and from sitting to hands and knees, she spent an entire day perfecting the art. In this perfecting, she found that while on her bum, she could get on one knee somehow and if there was something close to grab, she could pull herself up- now she tries to pull herself up on everything that she can reach. My dad also said the she would be walking by my birthday (March) and as much as I don’t want to stunt Everly’s development I kind of hope he is wrong because I want her to be a little baby for just a little bit longer! 

Baby on the move!

 

During the holidays we all took a break from life as usual. We let our routine go and just rolled with the punches… and now we are getting punched for it! Now that isn’t to say that I wouldn’t have done what we did, I totally would have and would do it again, it was worth it; I wasn’t about to let schedules and routines get in the way of the holidays and having fun! Everly had a great time too! She got to stay up past her bedtime for many nights in a row and she was nursed to sleep because by the time she was going to sleep she was so overtired and cranky it was the only thing that would work! Oh the holidays were fun. 

Now that the holidays are over, we tried to resume life as normal and as you could have probably guessed it didn’t really work. Last night was our first attempt at bedtime as we used to know it, well she would have no part in it, she wrestled with us the whole time. I ended up rocking her to sleep in the rocking chair, which only took a swift 45 minutes. B voted that we put her in the crib and let her cry it out again, that lasted 5 minutes and I decided that I couldn’t take it anymore. If we can avoid all that crying again I really would like to. I can’t honestly say that it worked all that great because once there was a change in routine we had to start all over again, so it feels like she really didn’t learn anything at all and just got used to it. This realization made me feel kind of crappy, kind of like wow, she just gave up on us coming to get her so she went to sleep. I don’t know that I want her to feel that way, but I also want her to know how to self soothe and put herself back to sleep. Is there a way to do both? I have no clue but I have decided to try to learn. 

When I started the sleep training research I read quick outlines of the different theories out there. Most of them said that they involve some crying, but the way in which you let the baby cry differs. So, after much deliberation we went with the Sleepsense Program and well if you have been reading this blog you know how that worked out! After nearly 60 days in the Sleepsense Program we realized that it wasn’t working, if it had worked we would have used it again now! Honestly I just can’t see putting Everly and I through that again. As a result, we have decided to revisit some of the other theories and possibly give them a chance too. Or maybe, combine many different sources and come up with something original that works perfectly for us. I know that you are supposed to choose one method and stick with it, so we don’t intend to flip flop, we stuck with Sleepsense for 60 days afterall! So after the reading, it will be time to make choices. The choices I refer to will be based in reality, none of this nonsense about her sleeping 12 hours uninterrupted every night without fail. If she does end up doing that, well that’d be great, but really, I don’t mind getting up once a night to feed her. I realize that in the grand scheme of things she isn’t really that challenging though the night, more than anything I just want to be able to lay her down in her bed, say goodnight and have her asleep contentedly. I want to watch her peacefully drift off to sleep, feeling secure and happy.  In the end, I don’t want this to be about anything other than Everly and her parents getting a good night’s sleep and going to bed happy! So here begins that journey.

Motherhood In All It’s Shapes And Forms…

New post on the Kids in Victoria Blog… Click Here!

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

This has been a busy and eventful week for us- hence the limited blog postings!

I had my first day back at work on Wednesday. Yes Everly is just 7 months old, and yes I am still on maternity leave technically, but I have decided to go back one day each week until I have to be back for good. I say have to be back like it is a bad thing but it is not. Today I realized how much I really love my job and how much I missed wearing this hat in my life. When I was driving to the office this morning I was giddy, yes actually giddy, isn’t that weird. I guess for some people that is probably the weirdest thing that they could imagine- being giddy about going to work. But when you are off for a bit of time and really haven’t been engaging your brain in the same way for 8 months it is really exciting. Oh and I guess you have to actually like your job too.

Having Everly I think has enabled me to be so much better at my job too. I am not saying that you have to have kids to be good at what I do, but it sure puts everything into perspective. When I visited a foster home today with 4 children under the age of 4 I had an increased understanding of what their days look like and how tired that foster mom must get sometimes. I pictured bedtime routines and the possibility of night wakings from all 4 children at all different times. I thought of what it must be like to be handed a newborn baby, care for it and then 7 months later have the child be adopted. I don’t know if I could do that. Obviously with Everly being my daughter I know she is mine to keep, but does knowing a baby is not yours to keep, stop you from loving them any less.

This week Everly also started waving bye-bye again, clapping her hands and she even signed for more a few times. She was waving bye- bye a little while ago and then she stopped it was the weirdest thing. She started back up again about 10 days ago and is still pretty inconsistent and she waves backwards (towards herself), but it is the cutest thing ever. When she signed for more I thought I would be hesitant to believe she really signed, but the way in which she did it left me no doubt- she looked up at the bowl of Cheerios with her mouth wide open and brought her fingers together. She has only done it a handful of times again, but it’s there in her brain, I saw it! She started clapping on Tuesday when we went swimming. I was clapping my hands together to make splashes and she started doing the same and there you have it- she would not stop, lol! The first time my dad saw it he was just beside himself as he has been trying to get her to patty-cake for a few weeks now. She looked at all of us smiling and clapping at her and cheering and she had the proudest expression on her little angel face (makes me get a bit misty eyed thinking about it, lol!)

Baby had her first Christmas party this weekend! Usually B and I throw an evening event for adults, but this year, with the new addition we had to tweak it a bit. We decided to go with a daytime kid/baby friendly event and it went really well. We had tons of kids (and their parents) here, we had great food and yummy hot chocolates with peppermint schnapps! I knew it was a hit with the kids because none of them wanted to leave- bless their little hearts but we are not yet ready to become the Duggar family, lol! I do not have one ounce of Michelle Duggar’s patience!!!

After our kids party we headed to an evening birthday/holiday party at a friend’s house with Everly in tow. I wasn’t sure how she would do as she was going to be out waaaay past her bedtime, but you know there is only one way to find out and we could have come home if things went South! I was so amazed by her. She had a little nap on the way over there and then was happy as a darned clam the entire time. What am I saying, I was amazed, who am I kidding- there were people there fawning over her, of course she was happy the entire time, lol! If I have learned anything about my kid it is that she is a giant ham! People say to her, oh you are so cute and she looks back at them with either her award winning toothless grin or the eye flutter where her eyelashes sweep the floor. I always said I wanted a kid who knew how to work a crowd, lol!

At the party Everly may have done something pretty eventful… she has been saying the sounds mama and dada for a while now but up until recently really did not have an understanding of what the sounds meant. In the past week we have been able to say to here, where’s dada or where’s mama and she will look for the appropriate person and then smile when she sees them, with this burst in receptive language I knew that the connection to her expressive language would be soon. At the party I happened upon her sitting with her daddy whilst charming one of the guests. I walked into the room out of her sight and when she looked up and saw me she said it, crystal clear, plain as day MAMA and smiled at me. B and I both had a blank expression on our faces as this was the first time she had uttered the sounds in the correct context. The guest said, wow, she says mama already? B and I said that may have been the very first time, that’s why we are both stunned like deer in headlights, lol. I was like the Grinch in that moment, my heart grew. It’s not like I even had an heart deficiency problem and that it needed to grow, but it did anyway and it broke the heart measuring thing too, I know it did because I heard that, bwong-ker-snap sound. End of paragraph point- I was proud. We will see if it continues and then I guess we will know for sure if she really meant it and I guess real or not, it sure meant the world to me.

Today is Sunday and we are off to see my mom. My mom has not seen Everly since July so this should be fun. Did I mention that she has no idea we are coming to see her either…

Quote of the day, “I feel like a prize asshole, no one even mentions my casserole,” heard on Flight of the Conchords (The Tough Brets), Hurt Feelings rap.

JINX!

Yes, I did in fact jinx myself. When will I learn, lol? Okay, I realize that what I write might not have an effect on the real world in such a way, can I really be that superstitious? In a word- yes. Do you ever notice that when things are going really great or really tough we find reasons why things are great or why things are tough and then we become superstitious about it. Kind of like before when I talked about sports teams not shaving or changing their socks, maybe I should start doing that. But in all seriousness now, I just have completely lost the ability to determine what events lead up to us having a good night as opposed to a more challenging night. I have written everything down for 42 nights; every nap time/duration and every bedtime and sleep amount for the night. I wrote down what time we started our routine at and tried to correlate it with length of sleep or night wakings and there is no pattern. Seems to me she just makes up her mind to have a rough night and then does it like a champ- nothing is half-assed in our house, if you are going to do something, do it up right!

I was “collecting” all of this “data” over these last 42 days just for the pure and simple fact that I may be able to see a pattern emerge and then start to follow it. This doesn’t mean that I think this whole sleep thing is an experiment, but rather that I am trying to get it over and done with as fast as possible and if I can see a pattern and replicate it to ease the challenges for everyone why wouldn’t I? Sounds great in theory, but you know what it hasn’t really played out that way. While we are on the topic of theories, I had the notion that it would take 42 DAYS  for sleep training to fully commence. I choose this number because it takes an adult brain, which is (arguably) fully mature, at least 21 days to make a behaviour change. So I figured that a developing baby brain would take double that for sure. Well here we are at 42 days and baby maintains that she will not be sleep trained. Maybe it’s at least 42 days… who am I kidding, this is going to be an ongoing thing isn’t it!

We had a couple of really good weeks, so when she woke up tonight at 2:30am, I knew immediately what we were going to face and I was dreading it. I got up and looked at the couch- hello old friend, barely dry from 2 weeks ago’s frustrated tears, it’s me, I have come to sit on you again while my baby does her thing. And baby did her thing, well honestly, she is still doing her thing but it has been downgraded from a code red to green with the occasional yellow.

The colour codes come from our baby monitor. Since our place is pretty tiny there is really no need for a baby monitor with noise, we just keep her door open a crack and our door wide open and I can pretty much hear her roll over from my bed. I keep the monitor on but the sound off so all we see is lights. The lights lit our room up like Vegas tonight- flashy yellows, oranges and reds! You can probably guess that red does not mean that baby is happy. Wouldn’t that be funny to see on a monitor- a smiley face or a sad face. Now an even better thought, wouldn’t it be great if baby came with a manual that had a trouble shooting section that told you how to maintain that smiley face. Maybe that’s what I was trying to do by writing everything down, maybe I was trying to create an Everly manual?

So I am at a bit of a crossroads, like Britney- not a girl and not yet a woman, only different. Do I continue to write all of this down and keep track or just throw caution to the wind and let what happens happen… what ever happens is going to happen whether I write it down or not, but maybe writing it down gave me that little bit of control that I was craving in this whole situation. With our first family vacation days away (yeay!), I knew that things were going to fall apart a little bit and that our routine would be a little messed up but I am okay with that because we are going to be somewhere new and different. I guess I just think that because we are home things should have some continuity if they are going to be same old, same old.

I just want to point out that I don’t blame Everly for these sleep challenged nights and I don’t think that she is a “bad” baby or a “bad sleeper.” I think that she is a wonderful baby and a great sleeper, she just doesn’t do well with conformity, lol, no just kidding. I think she is like every other baby out there in that they will do what they are going to do according to their internal clock. When Everly wants to sleep through the night without waking she will and on nights that she won’t she just won’t, there is nothing that I can do about it and it doesn’t mean that she is bad or to blame. As adults we all have a crappy nights sleep every now and again and we are not trying to process the entire world as a brand new thing while developing a mountain of skills. Baby work is hard work. What we are trying to do with the sleep training is to help her learn how to get the best night’s sleep that she can. And as anyone who has tried to learn something knows- it isn’t always easy to pick up a new skill, especially when you are learning 100 others at the same time!

Oh blessed silence… I think it’s time for me to go to bed. 4:29 am, exactly 2 hours from when she woke up. The good thing about tonight though was that the protesting did not start until she was up for an hour and 15 minutes, the time before this she protested for nearly the entire 2 hours- make way for progress! Ah, how I love this baby of mine 🙂