8 months!

Being a baby is full of newness. Everyday there is something new to explore, chew on, observe or interact with. This past month is no exception.
Annie is so close to being a full-on mobile little girl. She can scoot around and she gets to everything she wants, but she's not doing the real crawling yet.
So my dear Annie, this month you got to go on your first airplane ride all the way to England! And you rode on the tube, saw Big Ben, and rode on the train several times. You surprised us and did an exceptional job with minimal crying/fussing. This is definitely your preferred method of traveling as Mommy and Daddy can hold you while we're in motion. Here's a picture of us on the train on our way from London to Boston.

You also got to meet your great grandparents and needless to say, they were smitten! Great Nana called you "a bonnie little girl." I think that's a good thing.


Growing up requires eating real food. Well, Little Miss Independent demands to eat real, finger food. So, puffs, cheerios soaked in (mama's) milk, bit of avacado, carrot, peas (in mass numbers), pear, blueberries (in the mesh feeder), and cheese have been your diet lately. And you wouldn't have it any other way. You're also learning to drink from a bottle and a sippy cup! This skill has taken lots and lots of practice, but I think you finally got it! Now you can receive mommy's milk through various sources. This is so exciting for mama because now I can run errands and leave you with Daddy for a couple of hours and not have to worry about you starving!


You've also mastered waving (and loved waving at your grandparents while we were in England) and you also said your first word: hi. We were looking out the window and you started waving and said, "Hi!" It was such a proud moment. Smarty pants. Here's a photo of you waving.

And you also got to go on your first sled ride. You're still unsure about being outside and sometimes have this look of toleration on your face but you had fun being pulled up and down the driveway in the sled.

A Follow-Up to Sleepless

A follow-up to our "No-Cry Sleep Solution":
Here's what I've implemented to help Annie sleep better at night:

• I've given her a Lovey - there is nothing cuter than seeing Annie all cuddled up with this little bear head attached to a small, soft blankey. She has a blanket that she really likes but this little bear lovey is something she can hold on to and suck on. We snuggle with the lovey when she nurses and she loves to hold on tight to it when she goes to sleep.
• To help her disassociate nursing with sleeping, Pantley suggests that the baby learn to fall asleep with more than one method. So I nurse her until she's very sleepy and then I rock or bounce her until she's almost asleep. Then I put her in her crib with the hopes that she can do the rest herself. Sometimes this works. Sometimes it doesn't. If she starts crying, I try to pat her butt (she's a tummy sleeper) and put my hand on her. If she gets upset, then I pick her up and keep swaying and patting until she gets sleepy. Then put her down. And repeat until she goes to sleep in her crib. Yes, this gets tiring if it takes five times.
• We have a very solid night time routine that I follow every night. Same order of events. Same books (well, the last two are the same. Sometimes she joins Chloe for storytime before heading to her room for the night). And I try to put her to bed around the same time every night too.

Following Pantley's advice, I'm doing a sleep log every 10 days. So, here is our Day 10 log:
Jan. 11
Naps: 9:45 - 10:30; 1-2; 6-6:40
Asleep for the night 8:15pm
12:20am - cried. Nursed for 10 minutes then back to sleep.
3:45am - cried. Nursed for less than 10 minutes then back to sleep.
7am - awake for the day!
SUCCESS! Best night in a very, very long time!!!!!

Jan. 12
Naps: 10-10:45; 1:30 - 2:15
Asleep for the night 7:15pm
11pm - cried. Nursed for 20 minutes then back to sleep.
3am - cried. Nursed. Both sides. Had a difficult time settling back to sleep. Awake until 4:15am.
7am - awake for the day.

This seems to be the new pattern; being awake for 1-2 hours in the middle of the night. I'm not sure if it's because she's overtired and not settling to sleep well or if I'm putting her to bed too early. I follow her lead and put her down when she's tired. Hmmm... we still have a ways to go but as you can see, we're getting there!

A Few of My Favorite Things

Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes....

Silver white winters (that will eventually melt into spring...)

I simply remember my favorite things...

And then I don't feel so bad.

Strawberry Blueberry Tart

This past weekend, we felt a spurt of spring cleaning. Although spring is a very far thought, we (okay, really just my husband) got the itch to organize and clean. Along with recycling three of our broken electronic devices (a DVD player, VCR player and a cd player radio) at Best Buy we went through the refrigerator (as a side note, the fridge or freezer has funny smell and we can't figure out where it's coming from). In the bottom of the freezer we had some strawberries that Chloe and I picked in the summer of 2009. Hmmm.... still good? I think so! So today, I whipped up a very easy torte.
Step 1: Bake the shell.
Step 2: Line the shell with fruit. Ideally, it should fill the shell, but I didn't have that many strawberries.


Step 3: Mash the remaining fruit (about a cup of strawberries and a 1/2 cup of blueberries) in a sauce pan along with a 1/2 cup of sugar. In a small bowl, wisk 2.5 Tbls of corn starch with 1/2 cup of water. Pour water mixture in the pan and bring to a boil.


The sauce will thicken as you stir constantly. When it reaches the consistency of jam (about 3-5 minutes of boiling and stirring), turn off heat and let the mixture slightly cool.


Pour into the shell and let it cool in the fridge for at least an hour until it sets. Voila! A delicious dessert!! My plan is to serve it with some warm custard on top!

The Effects of Sleep Deprivation

If I had done the sleep log inventory on last night, it would have looked like this:
AWAKE ALL FREAKIN' NIGHT.

There are consequences of not getting any sleep. Chloe has been a hot teary-eyed mess since she got out of bed. Lying on the floor, crying, unable to sooth, she's a wreck. While trying to administer some baby ibuprofen to Annie last night, I got some in my eye. Still not sure how. At one point last night I collapsed. Literally. My muscles and my body are so tired, I fell to the floor and hit the wall in the hallway. Too many days of too little sleep (and I should add that I go to bed at 7:30pm). I can't take it any more.
But, in the name of gentle parenting, I'll give it 10 more days. I'm not sure where I'll find the strength, but I'll try Pantley's suggestions (one of the suggestions worked once last night!) and if I don't see improvement in 10 days, it's tough love and she'll have to cry. Pantley says to help baby sleep longer in the night it's either time or tears. Unfortunately, we are all running out of time (and patience).

Sleepless

So everyone is aware that when you have a baby, there are many sleepless nights ahead. But one would expect that by 7 1/2 months, that baby would wake up less frequently and Mommy, Daddy and Big Sister would all be sleeping pretty much through the night (with one perhaps two interruptions). The thing is, when Annie was first born, she was an awesome sleeper. I would have to wake her up to feed her after 4-5 hour stretch. Now I would LOVE for her to sleep that long!
As a remedy to our sleepless nights, I ordered the book, The No-Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley. One of the first steps in our attempt to get Annie to sleep longer is to take a sleep/nap inventory. Many children have a difficult time sleeping for longer stretches because they go to bed over-tired and can't get settled. So yesterday I did the sleeping inventory. Here's what our day looked like (keeping in mind we haven't fully adjusted to central time after arriving home from England on Wednesday and Annie has a bit of a cough/cold):
5am - Awake for the day
6:30 - 8:30 - Nap #1
11:30 - 1 - Nap #2
3:45 - attempt at another nap as she was clearly tired but she didn't go down.
4:30 start winding down for the day with supper, bath with big sister, jammies, cuddle with Mommy in the rocking chair, 3 books, final nursing session.
5:10 - Asleep for the night.
Decent, right? Yes, it's a bit early of a wake-up time and bedtime, but like I said, we haven't fully adjusted from England time. But two good naps. A big improvement already from her 45 min. power naps. According to Pantley, any nap under an hour doesn't count. It may sustain a baby, but it doesn't really refresh her.
So here was our night (heaven help me):
7:40pm - cry. But she went back to sleep on her own.
8:40pm - cry. I went in to comfort her. She nursed for a few minutes.
10pm - cry. But went back to sleep on her own.
12:15am - yell. She had crawled her way to the corner of the crib and her head was hitting the bumper pad. I nursed her for a few minutes to get her back to sleep.
4:15am - cry. Nursed her for 10 min and thought she would go back to sleep. About 4:30am Daddy tried rocking her back to sleep. Apparently she was up for the day despite clearly being tired. Then she began a terrible coughing fit which solidified the fact that she wasn't going back to sleep.

So all in all, she slept for 11 hours with her longest stretch of sleep being almost 4 hours. Her nighttime and naptime sleep equals 14.5 hours which is technically "enough" sleep.
Unfortunately, during Annie's 4 hour stretch of sleep, I was up with Chloe from 1:15-2:15am because she's not feeling well. So Mommy's longest stretch of sleep was 2 hours. No wonder I'm so tired all the time. And the fact yesterday I had a 102 degree fever along with chills, a cough, and muscle fatigue, I feel close to death.

As I read through the book and start to implement some of her ideas (the big one needs to be to break the association between nursing and sleeping) the hope is that she'll (and the rest of us too will) start sleeping in longer stretches. If not, Daddy says she has to cry-it-out :(
Wish us luck!

Winter

Winter is definitely among us up in the Frozen Tundra. Although the wind can be biting, there is something so magical about this time of year. When the snowflakes fall and you feel like you're standing in the middle of a snowglobe or when your baby is infatuated with the beautifully-lit twinkle lights around the fireplace, one realizes the wonder of it all.
Along with putting up our little Christmas tree and hanging our stockings on the fireplace, we have been digging into our Christmas and Winter storybooks. Some favorites include Olive, the Other Reindeer, a very cute story about a dog named Olive who goes to the North Pole to help Santa on Christmas Eve, The Polar Express, a truly magical story of child-like belief about a boy who gets to ride on a train to the North Pole and receives the first gift of Christmas, and Mickey's Christmas Carol, the Disney version of the Charles Dicken's classic.
We've also been doing a lot of winter-themed arts and crafts. We've made a snowman, a santa, and a cute reindeer using the tracings of Chloe's footprint (for the face) and hand prints (for the antlers). Yesterday we made blue play-doh and that occupied us for most of the afternoon.
Because of the freezing temps, we've not had many chances to play outdoors but we try to go during Annie's naps. Yesterday we pulled the sled around the yard, first me giving Chloe rides and then her giving her doll a ride. After the sled was put away, we decided to do some digging in the snow. Chloe informed me that she was filling up her bucket "as a present for Santa and the reindeer." Then she asked me, "Mommy, do you think Santa will be surprised by the present?"