Only Monday?

I keep thinking today is Tuesday...


1. Basement progress is slow. It's taken us forever to deal with the baseboards, but I think we're finally ready to paint them. Fingers crossed we get this done before Thursday. I also bought new ceiling tiles today, so we're pretty committed to redoing the ceiling too. I'm hoping it's not going to be a big deal like I think it's not, but who would have thought we'd spend three nights on baseboards? This has been a frustrating project because we've done SO much work on it so far, but there's still so much to still be done. 

2. After another good night from Julia Saturday night, we had a TERRIBLE one last night. Up every hour, terrible naps today. I was sure to put her down by 7:30 today so hopefully things turn around. Or go back to normal. Or whatever. Just hoping we have a good night. I could use a few hours in a row. I think R and I are going to start sleeping in the guest room in shifts again. 

3. Julia now sleeps with a stuffed bunny and her soft blanket. When we go in to get her in the mornings or after a nap, she hands us the bunny, then the blanket, then she lifts her arms up to get picked up herself. It's adorable.

4. I have friends coming in to visit this weekend and I'm really excited! I need to plan some stuff for us to do. I think I'm not even sure what grown-ups do anymore because the first things that come to mind are visiting the zoo or a pumpkin patch. 

Antics from Julia this past weekend:

Inside the dog bed.

Dog Bed Skateboarding.

What's the plan here, dear?

Out of the dog bed and onto the fireplace. That makes Mommy feel good.

Oh... INTO the fireplace. Even better. Why don't you just chew on one of those wires while you're in there?

Oh, no. We have another plan.

"Ah! Your flash! You're illuminating my secret evil plan!"

"Bye Mom."

Dog bed in the bedroom, Julia looking for Daddy in the bathroom. THIS was the plan. Duh.

Counterpoint

I love her, I do, and I meant everything I wrote in my last post. But she is driving.me.bonkers. right now, to put it politely.

So, she's teething, which I've been talking about for the past six weeks or so. Her four molars are coming in, and I'm counting each molar as four, since there are four different points that break through the gums. Of the sixteen points we need, seven are through. So we've made significant progress, but they're obviously still bothering her. She also has a cold - or her nose is running like crazy because of the teething - and a subsequent diaper rash that is yeast-based and just won't go away (because of the teething, the cold, the ibuprofen we've been giving her for the teeth, or just for another unknown reason altogether).

None of these things are terrible - she seems pretty used to the teething and the diaper rash is persistent but under control - but she's waking up at 5:00 every morning. And not going back to sleep. She's tired and cranky, and she'll calm down in my arms when I walk her, but she howls when I put her back down in her crib, when I sit down in the rocker, or when I take her back to my bed. She wants to nurse, which I refuse to do until at least 6:00 in the morning. Then, lately, she'll often fall back asleep for anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour and a half, in my arms in my bed. This little taste of co-sleeping is adorable and lovely, but I don't want it to continue. We both sleep better when she's in her crib. And I don't want to be getting up at 5, fighting with her until 6, then nursing her and dozing off and on again until 7:30. I know it doesn't sound too terrible, especially to someone with a newborn, but her napping is all off too and I'm exhausted. She is too.

She's also been unusually clingy and whiney and needy lately. One day she was toddling around Target like she owned the place, tearing down displays and dragging five Halloween buckets around the aisles, and the next she totally lost it when I put her down in our back yard. She's not eating as well as she used to either. It's like an emotional regression over here.

This popped up about a day before her sleep all went to hell. Thankfully, someone recommended this book to me - The Wonder Weeks. The theory is that all babies go through somewhat predictable mental growth spurts, just as they do physical spurts, when they start to comprehend another level of complexity regarding the world around them. And, these mental leaps forward are preceded by or coincide with behavioral disturbances, as the babies' worlds suddenly become bigger, newer, and more overwhelming. It's written on a fairly simple level but I have noticed Julia's behavioral issues do seem to pop up right about when the book says they should. Basically, I keep it on my shelf, and when she's a bear for a few days in a row, I open it up and sure enough, it's time for the next freaking "Wonder Week."

Anyways, this is my long way of saying, she's been a pain in the butt lately. Fortunately, I'm finally a seasoned enough momma that I know - and can internalize - that it's just a temporary phase. But, we all need some sleep and I'll be really really happy when she comes out of this. I'm trying to be understanding and just roll with this - I busted out my sling for the first time in months - but I'm ready for my big girl to get back here.

Tonight, I followed Weissbluth's suggestions and put her to bed 45 minutes before her usual bedtime. She went right down without a fuss, so we'll see if it helps tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed.

Sleeping and eating frustration

Julia's almost six months now, and we're done with traveling and other disruptions for awhile, so I've been trying to tweak her eating and sleeping schedule to something a little more manageable for me long-term. At four months, she was snacking about every two hours and I was struggling to keep her focused on nursing for long enough to get a full meal. She was sleeping from about 7-7 overnight, with a wake-up for eating around 4:30, and napping for half an hour exactly about every two hours.

Her naps have naturally matured into longer ones, which is the good news. Now in the morning, she always sleeps for an hour, and sometimes I even get 90 minutes. She can stay awake for about 2.5 or 3 hours at a time now versus 1.75 or 2, and I usually get a long nap in the afternoon too. All nice developments, although her night sleep changes are the bad news. She now goes to bed around 7:30, and gets up around 6:30. She's moved her nighttime wake-up to 3:00, and is starting to occasionally wake up other times too (11 pm, 5:30 am, midnight, who knows anymore). And what I initially thought was a nursing strike seems to actually be her shifting her preferred eating times to something much more inconvenient.

She has been getting harder to nurse in the mornings (and heck, the evenings too), and now it looks like she's getting more and more of her nutrition during her relatively peaceful, efficient night feeds. I'm obviously not a fan. One of my books says it's normal for babies to have one night waking up to nine months, while another says that a six month baby should be able to go twelve hours overnight without a feeding. I tend to agree with the latter, since she used to go ten or eleven hours overnight, and I'm afraid I've trained her to be hungry in the middle of the night. Especially when I realized that she's going four and five hours between feedings in the morning - I think we've shifted her eating timetable, so she's hungry in the middle of the night and not hungry in the mornings. Ugh.

But I don't know what to do. Obviously I could just not feed her when she wakes up and let her cry herself back to sleep, but I just don't think I could stand that (yet - if this keeps up I might not care in a few weeks). I've been trying to limit the amount she's eating during those middle of the night feedings, but that makes her pretty angry and she ends up crying herself back to sleep anyways. I had some success last night only offering her my "bad side" (Yes, most nursing women have a good side and a bad side - I get 2-3x more milk from one side than the other - how strange is that, huh?). She protested a little but eventually sucked herself back to sleep and ate relatively well this morning.

We're also introducing some solids (a little rice cereal, and we're going to try peas today!) so I'm wondering how that's going to play into this.

Julia and Scraps and I are on our own for a few days since R is away on business, so I guess now is my time to experiment. Although I have a feeling I might be so beat that I'll just end up doing whatever's easiest in the middle of the night. We'll see. I know this is super-boring for everyone reading but it's good for me to sort things out in writing.

Photos to come later today so R can keep up. :)

One step back, two steps forward.

Well, after another night of a 3 AM wake-up and more second-guessing myself regarding Julia's needs and sleep patterns, it's now 6:30 and she's still sleeping! I closed my eyes last night at 10:30 and I don't think I moved for a full seven and a half hours (I love me some wine but I sure sleep better without it)! Her night sleep was never that bad, but I don't think I've gotten this long of a completely uninterrupted sleep stretch in six months. I feel like a new person. *sighs happily*

I've also been meaning to update on this whole SAHM bit. I'm feeling much more content with my decision now. I think a large part of it has to do with the fact that I've actually been relatively successful in getting housework done and dinner at least started by the time Robert comes home. If the house is kind of clean, the baby is fed, clean, and happy, the dog is walked, and dinner is marinating at 5:00, it goes a LONG way towards making me feel like I'm holding things together and being a relatively important part of the household.

I'm also more used to things now. When I had been working more recently, I kept feeling like it was just a brief hiatus and I should be planning to go back ASAP. I feel now like this is going to be several years of a break for me - which was always the plan anyways - but I'm getting a better perspective on how much time that really is. I don't need to come up with a plan for the rest of my life RIGHTNOW. Seriously guys, I have years to figure this out. I guess the last several weeks of me telling myself that over and over have helped it sink in.

I think the bathroom remodel is also giving me a purpose. A lame purpose, yes, but it's a project at which I can focus my free time and kind of feel like I'm accomplishing something, albeit very very slowly. I've picked out tile and I'm negotiating pricing on that right now. I've made a decision on the vanity and I need to go ahead and buy it. We've been up in our attic (despite our fear of the zombie that lives up there) and explored the venting and lighting systems. Our contractor is coming on Thursday to take measurements and discuss things a little more. And I'm much closer to choosing a paint color for our bedroom and bathroom. I never thought I'd say the word "greige" as much as I have lately. I think we're going to try to start all that around the beginning of May, which feels like it's really far off, but with two week lead times and Julia and I being out of town for two weeks, is going to be here before we know it!

And I just can't wrap up a post without a photo of the babe. Look at those eyes! They're this totally perfect starburst of blue and green (thank you R!).

Pondering the ceiling fan.

Slacker Sunday

Well I've really been slacking on this blog lately. I keep this blog for several different audiences (family, friends, random googlers, myself), and I like that it has several different purposes (share photos of Julia, chat about life, be informative, and let me vent and work things out like a journal). Whenever I think about what I want to post, though, I seem to always think something like, "Oh, my family won't find that interesting at all - only friends," or "That's going to be really boring for everyone else." That - plus Season 5 of Nip/Tuck that we just discovered on Netflix - has led to me pretty much posting nothing lately. It's turning into an all or nothing thing ("If I can't come up with a post that's interesting for everyone, I'll just skip it tonight.") and that's the whole anti-point of this blog. I'm trying to make my life about doing something, even if it's not everything, and especially even if it's not perfect. Light one candle at a time, instead of feeling like I have to light them all and end up sitting there cursing the dark.

So, I'm sorry if something is boring, or if you're really sick of looking at 86,000 photos of my baby. But we'll just have to take the bad with the good, won't we? I mean, that's life, and it's ridiculous for me to try to make my blog anything but. I was kind of thinking of subtitling the blog, "Keeping it real, with a healthy dose of gratitude." I know I'm so blessed, but that doesn't mean everything's great all the time, and conversely, even when things suck, there's still a lot that I'm thankful for.

Anyways. Knock on wood, but Julia might be at the end of her sleep regression. Two nights ago she slept until 4:30, and last night she slept until 6:30. I'm not ready to declare victory yet, but I'm optimistic. Napping is still all over the place, and almost a little more frustrating than before; at least with her half-hour naps, she was predictable and I could plan around her. Now it's just a total crapshoot every day. She can still only stay awake for about two hours max, but I have no idea how long any of her naps are going to be, so it's really hard to schedule anything outside the house. Plus, I'm really second-guessing myself on what she needs, sleep- and schedule-wise, which makes things a little more stressful for both of us. But, if we're past the transition phase of these sleep issues, I can start working on getting her more on a schedule. We'll see how the next few days nights go.

I'm also itching to start her on some rice cereal. She's gotten pretty good at "drinking" breastmilk off of a spoon, and I think she's ready for a challenge. But, we're going to visit my parents in about a week, so she'll be away from home for about ten days (and from me for five - sob!), and it just doesn't make sense to try to start something new until we're back. And then at that point, we'll be about two weeks away from six months (holy crap - six months already?!), and I might just try to keep her exclusively on breastmilk until that mark. Probably not, because what difference will those two weeks really make? But I'm considering it. At that point, we're planning to transition to a little bit of formula and we'll start solids in earnest.

We like giving her a bottle at night right before bed. My milk supply is pretty low at that point, and I like knowing she gets a full feeding before bedtime, and I think R likes having the chance to feed her on a daily basis. The problem is, I'm really struggling to pump enough for that bottle each day. I was trying to pump at night, but usually getting 2-3 oz versus the 4+ that she takes in that last bottle. I tried pumping twice at night, but was still barely breaking even, plus that just sucks to be sitting there glued to the pump practically all evening when that's my only true free time of the day. So I'm back to pumping during the day; my supply is so much better in the mornings that it's no problem to get 4+ oz earlier in the day. I'm pumping a little here and there - whenever I can find a free 10 minutes - to make up her nightly bottle, and then once again at night to get an extra few ounces for cushion and to empty things out before bed. Again, though, this sucks. I don't have many 10 minute breaks during the day, and it sucks to spend them pumping. I can keep it up until we get back from our trip, then I think I'm done with the daily pumping. I'll dip into the freezer stash for those extra couple ounces until Julia's six months, then we'll just use formula to make up any deficiency. I still feel kind of failure-like for not being able to adequately feed my baby, but if we can hit that six-month mark, I'll also feel like objectively I did a pretty decent job. I'm still planning to nurse but we'll probably start gradually weaning her onto formula and solids.

In non-baby news, the weather has finally started to get better here, and my foot is also finally feeling better, so we're heading out to the park today! R and I used to go hiking all the time with Scrappy last year, and I really miss that. I'm hoping we can start taking Julia and Scraps out for walks in the park again, and when things finally dry up a bit (our backyard is seriously like a bog right now) maybe get back into easy hiking. Fingers crossed!

And, for anyone who's bothered to read this far:

Enjoying the new chair and Freddie the Firefly.

Checkin' out the view from way up there.

This photo totally cracks me up. I guess this is her "Okay now I'm freaked out get me out of here!" face.