Thursday, January 17, 2008

Time?

We've been working on the baby sleep scheduling thing. Trying to teach her when she should want to eat, when to sleep, etc. Last night we tried to let her cry for a bit before she fell asleep and I lasted about a minute with that. How is she ever going to learn if I'm such a wuss?!

We have been trying to put her down in different places so that she doesn't get too used to one specific spot and should better be able to sleep wherever. It's rather overwhelming all the things you need to teach them already!

The last three days she has completely skipped her midday nap. Noon to three she is wiiide awake. Silly baby. The nap after that is usually only about a half hour, but she doesn't fuss through it. Today she has fussed all over the place. One would think that she would be ready for nighttime by evening, but no such luck.

It's so crazy how every day is so completely different!!


In other news, she has a real belly button now! I noticed last night after a change that she had a smudge of blood on her belly and freaked out until I saw that sitting in the middle of her chest was her shriveled little walnut!




Despite all the feeding and changing and attempts to soothe to sleep, I am getting a lot of reading in. Making her food for 20 minutes at a go provides ample book time and I am taking advantage of it as best I can.

Yesterday I finished Cause Celeb, a novel by Helen Fielding who wrote Bridget Jones' Diary. She has a very interesting sense of humor and is easy to read while not being flaky at all.




Right now I am in the midst of East of Eden by John Steinbeck. An old classic that immediately drew me in. It's a long one, but has been fantastic so far.




Time to sign off. Food needs to be made for baby and she seems to need to go for a walk. This lack of napping seems to also make her a bit grumpy.

12 comments:

Real Life: Joy and Sorrow said...

Anne,

Randi is so precious! I can't wait to see her in person. :)

Katie

Kris said...

Don't get too worried about the schedule yet...I tried, but it seemed like she just wasn't ready for a schedule the first month or so. I decided that the ORDER was more important (eat, wake, sleep)than the timing. I heard that you don't want to feed them to sleep all the time because then they will need food to sleep. Of course, do what you want with that...I hear a lot of things, I'm sure you do too, but you just have to do what you can, and figure out what works best for you :)

Kris said...

(hope i'm not commenting too much, sorry, just excited for you) I forgot, my most favoritist piece of advice-there is no such thing as cuddling her too much!! enjoy every second :D

anne said...

Kris, you're not at all!! I really appreciate your comments as you are just enough steps ahead of me to have great advice! :) Thank you.

Becky D. said...

Hey Anne...I'll offer a little more of what I know. We're just now starting to figure out a schedule and because she's had so many people to hold her for the last two and a half months, she thinks she needs to be held to fall asleep. I've always felt that for at least the first month I can't expect her to soothe herself. She needs to first learn that I will come when she needs me (especially since she really only cries right now when she legitimately needs something). I don't always pick her up when she fusses, but I do at least go in and work at soothing her. I also learned that one way to help her start learning to soothe herself to sleep is to put her down in bed when she was drowsy, but not necessarily asleep. It doesn't always work, but I think she's learning. I do see some improvement. But I agree with "Kris," if you always feed them until they go to sleep then they'll begin to NEED it in order to sleep. Don't you wish these precious little bundles came with a manual of instructions..."Raising Godly children for Dummies?!"

Jean said...

I love her hat.
I love her screaming mad face!!
You are getting great advice and suggestions from those above. Oh to have had a way to the outside world and those going through the same things as me when I had my kids! :)

heather said...

I LOVE East of Eden. It's one of my favorite books, actually. As always, Steinbeck offers up his dose of dark depression, but it's a good read. Enjoy!

Hillary said...

Oh the pinkness! It is so great! Her hat is adorable! I love the photo of you and Randi and well!

Hehe, I was gonna comment that she's so long/tall from that one of her crying in her diaper, but then I remembered I'm borrowing a wide screen monitor right now and haven't installed the software, so everything is stretched really really wide! :P (Looking at photos of myself like this is good motivation to go and get some excersise! :) )


Happy Friday! :)

Anonymous said...

Congratulations, Annie, on your new little one...so sweet!

Stacey said...

Oh goodness ... she's so gorgeous. And I'm completely impressed that you're finding time to finish books! I have zero excuse for not picking up a book in the last 2 months now! For shame! :)

Anonymous said...

Hey Anne: She is so cute. I was away snd missed reading about the blessed event. Congrats...

Cheeky said...

When I was pumping in the storage room at work (for Liam), I used to read books. It helped me relax so I could "let down" while shivering in the freezing cold room wondering if someone was going to walk in on me whilst milking myself. Oh... the memories...