From the time Alli was born, she played with her belly button. Skin on skin - don't you hide it under clothing! It was her comfort to put her back to sleep. We had to buy snap-up pajamas and leave a snap open so she could get her finger in there and find her belly button. This is what I remember, and this is what I never want to forget.
As she grew older, the playing with her belly button grew more as a signal that she was tired. Yes, she would walk around in her cute little dresses and then joist them above her waste so she could play with her belly button. I remember thinking that she had better grow out of that!! :) And she did. Soon it was only at night, before bed and while she was lying in bed. And tonight, as I laid with her in her bed and rubbed her back, I realized that the belly button wasn't needed. In fact, I realized that she hadn't needed her belly button in a while, but I can't really remember when it stopped. I know she started kindergarten playing with it, so I suppose it's been a recent development.
Our little girl is maturing, but I never want to forget her special baby characteristics.
And speaking of maturing, Natalie decided to be a bit more daring in her walking. She now will surf from sofa to ottoman to sofa, taking a few steps in between objects to get to where she wants to go. Getting brave, but not yet ready to tackle the whole endeavor on her own. She did make progress today when we were outside and I wound up walking her around only holding 1 hand. (She had a duck watering can in the other, so clearly she couldn't use it to hold on to me!) And she did great. Her balance is really there. It's only a matter of days or weeks. And I'm excited for her, and nervous about another stage passing as our family matures.
I never want to forget these moments, but I know I will. This blog is great though for looking back!
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Monday, November 4, 2013
That's ENOUGH!
Last week, our precious little daughter sent us over the edge. Two nights in a row of keeping us up hours at a time because she wanted to be held while sleeping. And when I say keeping us up, she was snoring one of the times that I put her back in the crib and she immediately woke up and started crying again. SNORING!! Argh!! So, I started reading and formulated a gameplan.
The gameplan:
1) Get Alli out of the room so the baby could cry all she wanted to and I wouldn't worry about waking Alli up. We had thought about moving the baby to a different room, but then I thought that we might have another adjustment period after getting her back into her crib, so we decided to give Alli a special treat and let her sleep on a blow-up mattress in our room. She loved it!
2) Change our whole night time routine around. I realized that every time Natalie woke up in the night, she basically expected the whole night time routine again to put her back to sleep - bottle of water, fall asleep in mommy's lap, then put into the crib. So, to change her "middle of the night" expectations, I figured I would start by creating new "going to bed" expectations. I wound up changing the night routine to, give her 3 oz of water, hug and kiss her, and then put her in the crib and tell her to go to sleep.
3) Let her cry. With no fear of Alli waking up because of a wailing baby, we let Natalie cry much longer. So, the general rule was, let her cry for 5 minutes. If the crying level remained constant after 5 minutes, go in and try to calm her down. No picking her up. She was always standing at the side of the crib, so I would lean over and hug her, stroke her head, talk to her. She usually did not calm down, but I did that for a minute and then walked out again. Repeat for as long as the 5 minute interval had constant crying. I did find that after a while, she would cry, then stop, then cry. Once she got herself to that point, me going in just made things worse.
And so what happened? The first night, it took 45 minutes to get her to sleep. She woke up at 1am and cried, but wound down before the 5 minutes was up, so I never went in. At 4am, it was a different story, and we played the 5 minute game on and off til about 6am. (There were a couple of times in there that she feel asleep for 20 or 30 minutes before getting up and crying again. It was weird.) But then she fell asleep at 6am and slept til 7:30. Woohoo!!!
The second night when I put her to bed, she cried for just under 5 minutes, so I never even went back in. She woke up once at 3am crying, but I probably was to blame for that. I had gone in to check on her and put a blanket over her and she woke up. Talk about a guilty feeling sitting outside her door listening to her crying and knowing that I caused it. Agh! But she settled down before 5 minutes and went back to sleep. She slept til 6:30.
The third night when I put her to bed, she cried for maybe a minute. We heard one cry out of her at 11pm, which might have just been a very vocal rolling over. And she slept til 7:20am!!! YES!!! I WON!!!!
We are ready to move Alli back into the bedroom, much to her disappointment. By the way, because Alli is sleeping in our room, *she* is sleeping in later. Sigh. Maybe we'll have to do that on weekends just so we can feel like we get to sleep in! ;) haha
The gameplan:
1) Get Alli out of the room so the baby could cry all she wanted to and I wouldn't worry about waking Alli up. We had thought about moving the baby to a different room, but then I thought that we might have another adjustment period after getting her back into her crib, so we decided to give Alli a special treat and let her sleep on a blow-up mattress in our room. She loved it!
2) Change our whole night time routine around. I realized that every time Natalie woke up in the night, she basically expected the whole night time routine again to put her back to sleep - bottle of water, fall asleep in mommy's lap, then put into the crib. So, to change her "middle of the night" expectations, I figured I would start by creating new "going to bed" expectations. I wound up changing the night routine to, give her 3 oz of water, hug and kiss her, and then put her in the crib and tell her to go to sleep.
3) Let her cry. With no fear of Alli waking up because of a wailing baby, we let Natalie cry much longer. So, the general rule was, let her cry for 5 minutes. If the crying level remained constant after 5 minutes, go in and try to calm her down. No picking her up. She was always standing at the side of the crib, so I would lean over and hug her, stroke her head, talk to her. She usually did not calm down, but I did that for a minute and then walked out again. Repeat for as long as the 5 minute interval had constant crying. I did find that after a while, she would cry, then stop, then cry. Once she got herself to that point, me going in just made things worse.
And so what happened? The first night, it took 45 minutes to get her to sleep. She woke up at 1am and cried, but wound down before the 5 minutes was up, so I never went in. At 4am, it was a different story, and we played the 5 minute game on and off til about 6am. (There were a couple of times in there that she feel asleep for 20 or 30 minutes before getting up and crying again. It was weird.) But then she fell asleep at 6am and slept til 7:30. Woohoo!!!
The second night when I put her to bed, she cried for just under 5 minutes, so I never even went back in. She woke up once at 3am crying, but I probably was to blame for that. I had gone in to check on her and put a blanket over her and she woke up. Talk about a guilty feeling sitting outside her door listening to her crying and knowing that I caused it. Agh! But she settled down before 5 minutes and went back to sleep. She slept til 6:30.
The third night when I put her to bed, she cried for maybe a minute. We heard one cry out of her at 11pm, which might have just been a very vocal rolling over. And she slept til 7:20am!!! YES!!! I WON!!!!
We are ready to move Alli back into the bedroom, much to her disappointment. By the way, because Alli is sleeping in our room, *she* is sleeping in later. Sigh. Maybe we'll have to do that on weekends just so we can feel like we get to sleep in! ;) haha
Friday, November 1, 2013
No More Milk...
I'm finally over the whole breast milk weaning fiasco, but I figured documenting the process was necessary.
Weaning Alli was very gradual. We were both ready and I don't really recall anything special happening. It was uneventful. Weaning Natalie was forced, due to our trip to Italy. I let her nurse at night as long as I possibly could, and then I had to cut her off to give my body a chance to get used to the change. Because I'm worried about rotting teeth, we transitioned her to water at night instead of any milk. I had hopes that this would also change her mind about waking up through the night if she were only getting water. Well, *that* was not true. She *loves* the water. Go figure!
So, I cut her off 2 nights before we left. Water was fine, so I guess that was good. Meanwhile, she was happy and my body was having a hard time. I pumped right before we left for Italy, and started wearing green cabbage in my bra to keep the engorgement down to a minimum. And then I crossed my fingers and flew across the world...
Our first day in Italy was painful. I told some of the women we were traveling with that I might actually have to find a breast pump, or a head of green cabbage. As we wandered the streets of Rome, we came across a vegetable stand and I bought myself a head of green cabbage. The lady assured me it would make great salads, but I had different ideas... I spent the first day in Rome walking the city with grocery bag containing a head of green cabbage. When we finally stopped at a restaurant, I went in and stuffed my bra. Ahhhh, relief.
That cabbage stayed in all our hotel rooms. Every night after touring I would stuff my bra. Every morning I would put a fresh batch in, and then remove them for our day of touring. By the 4th day of the trip, I had a lump that was so painful it hurt to carry my purse. But what could I do! I just kept wearing my cabbage.... By our very last night of the trip, I finally had relief and felt I didn't need my cabbage anymore.
We flew home, and 24 hours after we started traveling, we got to see the girls. Natalie woke up, saw me, and immediately started pounding on my chest to get some milk. I figured I didn't care if she nursed - I missed her and I missed the cuddling that goes with the nursing. So I let her nurse. But to her surprise, I was done. Within that 24 hours of traveling, I had completely dried up (and I think I shrank at least 1 bra size!) She tried a few more times throughout the night, but finally relented to just water. We are weaned...
Now I have to get her off of so much water. She loves the feeling of the liquid so much that she'll drink sometimes 25 ounces of water through the night and need to be changed 3-4 times with diapers that are so full they roll up to the size of a large grapefruit. Now I have to figure out how to wean her from that!
Weaning Alli was very gradual. We were both ready and I don't really recall anything special happening. It was uneventful. Weaning Natalie was forced, due to our trip to Italy. I let her nurse at night as long as I possibly could, and then I had to cut her off to give my body a chance to get used to the change. Because I'm worried about rotting teeth, we transitioned her to water at night instead of any milk. I had hopes that this would also change her mind about waking up through the night if she were only getting water. Well, *that* was not true. She *loves* the water. Go figure!
So, I cut her off 2 nights before we left. Water was fine, so I guess that was good. Meanwhile, she was happy and my body was having a hard time. I pumped right before we left for Italy, and started wearing green cabbage in my bra to keep the engorgement down to a minimum. And then I crossed my fingers and flew across the world...
Our first day in Italy was painful. I told some of the women we were traveling with that I might actually have to find a breast pump, or a head of green cabbage. As we wandered the streets of Rome, we came across a vegetable stand and I bought myself a head of green cabbage. The lady assured me it would make great salads, but I had different ideas... I spent the first day in Rome walking the city with grocery bag containing a head of green cabbage. When we finally stopped at a restaurant, I went in and stuffed my bra. Ahhhh, relief.
That cabbage stayed in all our hotel rooms. Every night after touring I would stuff my bra. Every morning I would put a fresh batch in, and then remove them for our day of touring. By the 4th day of the trip, I had a lump that was so painful it hurt to carry my purse. But what could I do! I just kept wearing my cabbage.... By our very last night of the trip, I finally had relief and felt I didn't need my cabbage anymore.
We flew home, and 24 hours after we started traveling, we got to see the girls. Natalie woke up, saw me, and immediately started pounding on my chest to get some milk. I figured I didn't care if she nursed - I missed her and I missed the cuddling that goes with the nursing. So I let her nurse. But to her surprise, I was done. Within that 24 hours of traveling, I had completely dried up (and I think I shrank at least 1 bra size!) She tried a few more times throughout the night, but finally relented to just water. We are weaned...
Now I have to get her off of so much water. She loves the feeling of the liquid so much that she'll drink sometimes 25 ounces of water through the night and need to be changed 3-4 times with diapers that are so full they roll up to the size of a large grapefruit. Now I have to figure out how to wean her from that!
Happy Halloween!
This year, Alli wanted the whole family to go as a "scary" family. Specifically, she wanted to be a vampire bat. We had a black cat costume for Natalie, and so we got some witch stuff for mommy. Daddy had a Jason mask and a machete from years past, so that was our scary family.
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Pictures didn't work very well because we didn't get Natalie dressed til after dinner and it was already dark outside, but here's our girls. Natalie really does have a tail, and Alli has a beautiful dress on under that cape!
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