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Had a most wonderful day today, and evening last night. My parents came last night, we all went to dinner. There was a Gallery Walk downtown so the area was rather hoppin’. Went to a new restaurant for dinner, Adelino’s I think it was called. Sorry to say not my favorite…the atmosphere was nice, the food average. Kept Nyima up to late so she refused to go to bed, didn’t actually fall asleep until almost 11. That was fun. Not.
Today went to breakfast with some friends, then Nyima refused to take her morning nap and so we went to another friends’ house sans nap. Oddly enough, they have a little girl who is about 5 months or so older than Nyima, and their daughter refused to take her morning nap today too! So we got there and they played, and then they both got sleepy so we put them down for their naps and they fell asleep at the same time. Then they both woke up at the same time. Then they played together some more, and a couple hours later they pooped at exactly the same time! It was very funny, cute, and stinky.
Got my digital scrapbooking software today, have spent the last several hours messing around with it. Got my pictures fairly organized, and made my first page that is now wallpaper for my computer! So very exciting. This could get addicting. But my computer is so freakin slow it gets frustrating, I may need to upgrade computers if I ever find some extra ciznash.
So – Nyima is doing prettygood in her crib. She is starting to fight going to sleep, though. We give her her bottle, and where she would normally fall asleep right away after finishing she now finishes then starts messing around, playing with her pacifier, babbling. Not sure if it’s the crib or if we keep missing her nap windows. Either way it’s getting frustrating, and I’m finding myself letting her sit by herself in the crib and mess around or cry, where as before I was staying with her until she fell asleep. She actually seems to do better with out me there all the time. Go figure.
Time to go veg out for awhile before bed…
Well, we got through our first night. She actually did quite well. Put her to bed at her usual time, after she finished her bottle she was still awake but I just stayed with her and rubbed her belly and petted her head and she eventually fell asleep in the crib. My hands were asleep from leaning over the crib, but I got the job done.
She woke up a few times in the night, some of the time she just did a little whimper and then rolled over and went back to sleep. Other times she cried a bit harder, I got up and put her pacifier back in and she went right back to sleep. At 5am she woke up and was pretty upset and kept saying ‘mama’, so I picked her up and held her and rocked a bit. When I tried to put her back in the crib she got upset again, so I brought her into bed. Can’t expect the kid to be perfect on the first night. Also, I missed her. A lot. She is warm and cuddly and wonderful, and I was not at all sad that she needed me and wanted to cuddle. So there. If I’m an enabler, so let me enable.
Today she took like a 2-hour nap in the crib. Slept initially for 1/2 an hour then woke up crying, but I popped the paci back in, rubbed her belly again, and she fell back asleep and slept for another hour and 1/2 straight. Woohoo! We’ll see how tonight goes. So far I’m optomistic.
So in October Jason starts another job. Not another as in he quit his other job, but another as in he’s taking yet another job, which puts him up to 3. I am happy for financial reasons, because we really do need the money. We have routinely been taking money out of savings to make up for shortfalls in our regular expenses, and both of us don’t like that. But I am sad because that means he will be home less. Last night he said he was going to give up his Monday night meditation group that he leads in order to be home more. Again, part of me says Yay! because I do like it when he’s around. But I’m also worried he may resent us for this decision in the future. We’ll see what happens. Either way I’m a pretty lucky woman to have such a considerate husband.
I went to a ‘Creative Memories’ party this weekend. Talk about feeling inadequate…the whole thing was about taking the time to document our ‘stories’, how if we don’t get these things down how will our kids know where they came from, what their family was like? I haven’t even finished writing in her baby book detailing my pregancy and her birth. I have yet to put together one photo album of her. Women at the party were talking about their pregnancy photo albums. I have a total of about 5 pictures of me being pregnant. I hardly have time to work, take care of Nyima, keep my house from being so dirty CPS gets called, and try to glance at my husband once and awhile. Forget about doing anything for myself – working out? Shopping? Reading? Getting my hair done? What are those thing? How am I supposed to find time to put together a ‘story’? Sigh. What makes me most sad/frustrated is that I WANT to do this stuff. I would love to be able to find the time to print out all her pictures and put together an album to let her know how absolutely special and precious she is to us, to try and communicate how much she was wanted and how much we love her. Her first birthday is coming up, and for her party I don’t want to be sans albums. So I spent a ridiculous amount of money on some software that is supposed to help me do ‘digital’ scrapbooks. That seems less time consuming to me. We’ll see what happens. But for her first birthday she will have her baby book done, her Blessing album done, and an album of her first year. Dammit. I will also somehow find time to put together photo calendars and individual scrapbooks for family for Christmas gifts. I don’t expect too much out of myself, do I.
The last time I posted a blog Nyima was just turning 6 months old. Now she’s almost 10 months old. My, time goes by swiftly.
Today is the beginning of the end of the co-sleeping arrangement. Nyima weaned herself at about 8 1/2 months or so. She was digging on a sippy cup one day, and I thought hey, maybe I’ll try a bottle again, and surprise! She liked it. She liked it so much, in fact, that she stopped liking the hoots. So she went from nursing every 4 hours or so and a couple of times at night to not nursing at all in a matter of about 3 weeks. And I never denied her a thing! She just stopped wanting it.
Anyhoo. So now she’s 10 months, crawling, pulling up, walking when we hold her hands, the whole shebang. Unfortunately, what that means for co-sleeping is that as soon as she wakes at all we have to run into the bedroom so she doesn’t crawl herself off the edge of the bed. She’s figured us out, too. We have a video monitor, and I’ll watch her sit up, turn look at the bedroom door and wait for us. If we don’t show, she makes a little cry, then turns and waits for us. Then she gets on all fours and starts to crawl, and stops and waits for us. Lately she’s just gone straight to crawling since she knows that gets us there right away.
I was going to wait awhile before I stopped the co-sleeping. I like it. I like it very much. We got a king size bed so we’re all in the same bed now, it’s much better. She sleeps between us, sometimes horizontally, with her feet on me and her hands on her dad. Lately since she’s been teething she’s taken to sleeping ON me for half the night, the upper part of her draped over my stomach or chest and her legs curled up on my side. It’s quite wonderful and snuggly, and I’m going to miss it horribly.
But. I do think it’s time. She’s getting more and more so if she wakes up she can’t go back to sleep unless one of us is there so she can rub our arm. Which is also very cute and wonderful, but I feel like I might be holding her back from at least learning how to get herself to sleep. Since we’re so afraid she might crawl off the bed we can’t just let her get herself back to sleep in our bed. And so, it’s time for the crib.
I guess technically we’re still co-sleeping since the crib will still be in our room. I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Its’ one thing to have her a foot away, it’s another to have her in a different room. That seems a bit much still, I can’t imagine her being all by herself in a big room so early. So I figure this is the best of both worlds – she’s still close enough that she feels she’s with us, but she is a little more independent and will learn how to soothe herself too. Not that we wont’ be there to help. And not that she wont’ find herself in our bed from time to time…
So this is how we started. I took off one side of the crib and strapped it to our bed and did a side-car thing for a few days. It’s good, but we still run into the same problem of not being able to leave her alone, because she can still crawl onto our bed. So today I put the side of the crib back on, and put her down for her afternoon nap in her crib. She was wide awake, I gave her her bottle and kept my hand on her tummy to keep her from flipping over and crawling about. She did her usual little bit of crying because she’s mad that I won’t let her turn over, but she laid in the crib very calmly, closed her eyes, and went to sleep. She’s been asleep for about an hour now. I figure we’ll put her to bed in her crib tonight, if she gets up and moves about that’s fine, but we won’t go in unless she starts crying. I don’t want her to feel totally abandoned, and don’t like the ‘cry it out’ idea. So I won’t let her get too upset, but I also want to give her a chance to do this herself. So we’ll see how it goes, and we’ll see who cracks first and puts her in bed – me or Jason.
