It's Father's Day!

Wow, the time just flies on by, doesn't it? Today was my husband's first Father's Day (unless you count the one while Morgan was in my belly...) His parents and my parents came over for dinner and we had yummy grilled fajitas. It was so nice to have all the "daddies" together.

This little girl has a lot of people to love her and it makes me so happy!

She's getting a little better at sleeping at night. She doesn't sleep through the night by any means, but she can sleep 3 hours at a time, some nights. She went to bed "early" tonight (7:30 p.m.) so who knows what the night will bring. I cannot believe she's 7 months and 5 days old. I weighed her today and she is so close to 21 pounds. I'm not really looking forward to upgrading her car seat, because I won't be able to take the car seat out of the base. I'll have to take her out of the seat and that won't be fun when she falls asleep in the car, which is almost always. How do people do it? She's not really great at being in the restuarant high chairs, yet. She bucks and wiggles, but I'm wondering if that kind of thing gets any better. Oh well, maybe it'll take her a while to gain that last pound before hitting the weight limit and in the meantime, I can work on her highchair skills. I guess I better head to bed soon, because she had already been asleep for 1:20 and might be up in a little while.

Oh, but first, a little about her food. I've stretched her bottles out to every 3 hours, but lately she drinks 2 oz. really fast and takes FOR-E-VER to finish the other 4 ounces. I've given her some "Stage 2" vegetables and she seems to really like them. She has also been eating those "Baby Mum-Mum" rice husk snacks, to practice her chewing skills. I get so nervous when she's eating anything like that, but I need to give her practice. She doesn't really like those puffs, yet, but I guess those are for "crawlers" and she's not quite there, yet. She scoots herself backwards and can pivot in a circle, but she isn't crawling. She can hold herself up pretty well on one of her toys, if I put her up to it. She can't pull up or anything, but she can sit really well.

OK, I really need to get to bed - I'm sleeeeeepy...sorry, if I've been rambling!

Is it June already?

Hmm, it has been a while since my last post. Let's see...well, lately I've been trying to do some "sleep training" because Morgan was waking up 3-4 times a night and I was hoping to get to 1-2 times a night. We've been reading The No Cry Sleep Solution since I'd really like to avoid having Morgan cry-it-out. It hasn't really been working, though. The main thing I've been working on is getting her to put herself to sleep, instead of letting her fall asleep at the bottle. She HATES that and gets very mad. I've been resorting to giving her the bottle and then she falls asleep 2 minutes later. However, she does not stay asleep long. Last night she woke up and cried at the end of every sleep cycle, which is about 45 minutes to an hour. She woke up 4 times before midnight and I finally just took her into the bed with me so I could get 2 hours of sleep. I still had to feed her a few times and I moved her back to the crib at 5, but she wasn't having any of it, so back to my bed, we went...It seems like it's getting worse, rather than better. Before, she would sometimes sleep 9p-12a, then 12a-3a and then up again around 5a. Now, she goes to bed around 8:30p and gets up at 9:30p, 10:30p, 11:30p, etc. I've tried moving her bedtime earlier, but if we put her to bed at 7:30p, she just gets up at 9, 10, etc. I tried a pacifier and she didn't like it - it just made her more upset. I know every baby is different, but I wish there was a magic fix that would make her sleep just 3 hours at a time. Is that too much to ask? I could handle getting up 2-3 times a night, really. It's the 4/5/6+ times a night that's killing me.

We decided to take a trip to the beach, but that was a bit of a fiasco. The hotel said they had a crib and brought us this deep, metal death-trap. There was no way I was putting my baby in that thing. When bedtime came, I just cleared space in the bed and let her sleep with me and my husband slept in the second bed. It took quite a while for her to settle and she slept about 2 1/2 hours, but after that she was up every hour or so. She even had a stretch around 2-3:30 a.m. where she would not go back to sleep. The next day, we went to eat at our favorite restaurant where they dump the shrimp boil on the table. Well, that does not work when you have a 6-month old in tow. We had her in the high chair, away from the table, but she kept bucking and wanted out. My husband ended up holding her while I ate, and then I held her while he ate. The next morning, we took her to the beach. We wanted to go early to avoid the heat. She fell asleep literally the moment we parked the car at the beach. So, my husband went out and swam a little in the ocean while I sat with her in the truck. After her nap, my husband took her to the shoreline and dipped her feet in the wet sand. She didn't fuss or cry, but she didn't smile, either. I don't think she knew what to make of it. My husband's parents were going to come for a visit later that day and stay with us in the hotel, but my husband didn't think that would go very well, with Morgan not sleeping and all, so he called them and told them that we'd be heading home early. Unfortuntately, we had a non-refundable reservation, so we couldn't get any money back for the lost night. We headed home, anyway, and she still woke up every hour, but at least we were home.

Last night, Sunday, was a pretty good night for Morgan sleep-wise. I decided that I was going to just give her the bottle and let her fall asleep drinking her milk, since it always seemed to make her so happy and I'd try to figure something else out. Greg took her for a walk in the park and she fell asleep. She napped from around 7:30 p.m. - 8:15 p.m., so I thought we were going to be in trouble. When she woke up, I got her in her jammies and made her a bedtime bottle. She drank and fell asleep and I got to see those sweet sleep smiles again. When she has had a good drink, she makes these little smiles in her sleep. I moved her to the crib around 8:55 p.m. and she went right to sleep. BUT, she woke up 10 minutes later and I have no idea why. We got her back to sleep at 9:05 p.m. I fell asleep around 9:40 p.m. and I think she woke up about 10 minutes later. My husband went to get her and put her back to sleep. I know, this isn't sounding like a good night, so far. However, after finally getting to sleep around 10, she stayed asleep until about 1 a.m., so that was 3 hours! I fed her a couple of ounces and she went back to sleep. She made a peep at 3 a.m., but I realized she wasn't really awake, so I left her alone. She slept until 4 a.m., which was another 3 hours. I fed her at about 4 a.m. and she slept until about 7:20 a.m. She did make a few peeps at 6:40 and 7 a.m., and I actually went to get her out of bed at 7:20 a.m. I wanted to try to keep her close to her normal wake-up time. Overall, with three 3-hour sleep stretches, I'd say it was a great night!

We don't know how to repeat the process, though. I am thinking we don't want to be in the habit of letting her nap at 7:30 p.m. We can't really put her to bed at that time, either, because she doesn't stay asleep long. Well, we just have to keep working on it, but I am grateful for every night that she sleeps more than 2 hours at a time.