Happy 8 Months Ellison!

Happy 8 months (only 2 weeks late again) to my sweet little girl, Ellison Jakeh!  This month has been HUGE stuff for this girl, all kinds of new stuff to write about.She is full-on crawling now and gets where she wants to go and fast!  Her belly isn’t off the ground, but using her right arm to pull and her left foot to push, she moves quick.  And boy is she teaching me what it’s like to have to truly baby-proof.  With Owen, I could leave out anything and not have to worry about it.  Not with El.  One minutes she’s wrapped up in my yarn, the next she’s trying to eat the cat food out of Sophie’s dish or make a nose dive down the stairs.  Can’t turn my back on her for a second.Along with crawling, she has an awesome little hello/goodbye wave, usually with her right hand.  She also gives kisses in two ways.  She’ll make the blowing kisses noise for you and also leans in and gives sloppy wet baby kisses.  Too adorable!  She loves to clap her hands and can find her paci in the middle of tons of toys and easily get it to her mouth. Food: Last month, I finally read this book:Many of my friends have read it.  But I held out because I don’t do many things as a mom that start with the words “baby-led” :)  But it just needs a different title.  I should have read it when Ellie was about 4 months and before we started purees.  But the nutshell is giving your baby whatever you’re eating from the get-go and skipping purees.  She loves to eat all sorts of things, but still likes the purees we started on because she gets more unto her tummy faster.  It’s actually fine because I’m getting TONS of baby food with WIC right now.  But for baby #3 someday, I’m definitely re-reading this book from the get-go.  Her favorite foods from the month have been frozen blueberries and peas, toast, avocado, cooked broccoli, pears, yogurt, bits of turkey, mashed potatoes, and of course her beloved Puffs.  She’s definitely eating a tons more variety of foods than I was giving Owen at this age.  And she’s almost mastered the sippy cup. Yay!  She can hold it up as long as I don’t make it too heavy for her.Sleep:  see months 1-7.  Still a good napper and still up all hours of the night wanting to nurse.  Can you tell I haven’t put my foot down yet?  Sucker mom.Ellison still adores her brother, even when he clocks her on the head, rolls on top of her, and takes away her toys.  Yep, still loves him.  Wants to be near him all the time and he can get her to laugh like no one else. She loves bath time!  Even if she’s screaming bloody murder at dinner time, a bath always makes her laugh and smile.  Again, even if her brother is dumping huge cups of water on her head before I can stop him.She’s been doing great in the nursery on Sundays which is a relief because she doesn’t sit nicely through service like Owen did.  This semester, I hope she’ll do just as well in childcare for Mom2Mom.Her favorite things to play with are Owen’s car ramp, and anything she can bang like drums or the xylophone.  She could really care less about her baby toys. :) Happy 8 months little one.  We love you so much and can’t imagine life without you!And for fun, check out the “interview” I did with Owen at 8 months!

Happy 7 Months!

So she’s really almost 7.5 months, but shhh she’ll never know I posted this late. :)  I hate that 7 months means we’re on the downhill slope to being 1.  Not yet, not yet.  It’s going too fast.

No weight stats as we just did a quickie vaccine appointment and Owen was so grumpy that I didn’t have them weigh her.  She’s definitely smaller than Owen who was already 20 lbs at this point!  We had already transitioned him to his bigger car seat.  But even though she’s heavy, the bucket seat is still working for a bit longer.  I like being able to throw blankets over her instead of bundling her up when we go outside.  New Things She's Learning/Doing: We're starting to hear tons more consonant sounds in her talk.   There are times I swear she is saying mama, mama.  Her sweet little girly voice just melts my heart.  Although she still has a very loud screech going on sometimes.  She sits, can get down back onto her belly, and is a rolling machine.  She can get exactly where she needs to go by rolling or scooting backwards and I don’t think it will be but a few more days before she’s crawling!  She’s banging toys together and is clapping her hands so adorably.  She is also starting to let Owen know that she is not happy with him when he takes away a toy from her. Sleep: Well, I think I jinxed myself by thinking she was going to be a better sleeper.  Well, during the day time she is.  She takes 3 naps that are pretty predictable and just jabbers for awhile and puts herself to sleep.  Night time has moved up quite a bit and usually she needs to be in bed by 6 or 6:30.  She does a good stretch until 10 or 11, but then she thinks she’s a newborn and gets up every 2 hours wanting to “eat.”  Uggh, gotta change this somehow!Food:  Well, we took a week or so off of food because the poor thing got sick.  Runny noses and coughs from babies are so awful. So she didn’t have much of an appetite and I wanted to pump her full of breast milk, so just in this last week, she’s started eating “solids” again.  Pretty much loves it all so far and is still the messiest eater I’ve ever seen.Randoms:  Still loves loves loves her brother.  Opens her mouth to give “kisses.”  And still keeps her headbands on.  That’s my girl! Love you so much Ellison Jakeh!!

sleep

I'll be taking you on a tour of new place as soon as there's a few more things in place, but just wanted to say thanks if you have sometime in the last 9 months prayed for Owen's sleep.  I'm always scared to blog about something good for fear it will change, but it's been a week and so far, so good.

Let me just remind you of Owen's normal night:

bath time - 5:30/6ish
quiet play time, books, nurse, bed - 6:30/7ish
9pm - wake up screaming, only calms with a hand on him or pick him up
10:30 - up again, wants to eat
12, 2, 4- up (would eat if I let him each time)
5 - up and won't stay asleep at this point unless in our bed or being held
6:30 - up for the day

Nightmare.  And nothing we did changed this.  Until we got home from the Habel's last week and he slept from 7-1 (6 hours is longer than he has ever gone.  Pathetic.  I don't really know how I'm still functioning at this point, but I digress).  Then he didn't get up until 5 and then up for the day at 7.  I chalked it up to being tired from traveling.  But every night this week, he's given me at least a 6 hour stretch at the beginning of the night and has made it with only 1 or 2 times nursing!  I know, I know he doesn't even need this at his age.  He's been doing a 12 or 1am wake, and then again at 4, and he's up by 6:30.  I feel like a new woman!  And naps. . .while 2 are still at 30 minutes, he's taken this week a few at an hour, and even a couple at an hour and half!! 

I don't know what exactly to attribute this change to.  Him turning 9 months, us being better at making him cry, or moving into this new place (maybe his smart little brain was tuned into something at our old place that we weren't?)  So this is just to say thanks for praying for him and me.  And pray this only gets better and he realizes how great sleep really is.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming

Sorry for the bad blogging week. VLI midterms just about did me in. But I think I pulled off an A on one and a B on the other. Not to shabby. Add in sleep training and this is how I've been getting along. Nothing some Pandora, knitting, and assorted chocolates can't handle. :)
Thanks for everyone who's checked in to see how sleep training is going. All I can say is why did I wait this long?! I already feel so much freedom. I had no idea how much time I was spending in his bedroom fighting him on going to sleep. I won't bore you with the details on my sleep logs, but I will say that Tuesday night, he went to bed at 6:30, got up at 12, 4, and then 6:30 for the day. 2 wakings! Down from 8. I feel like a new woman. Not every night has been that great, and I'm still trying to figure out when to feed him and when to make him go back to sleep. Because I KNOW he can make it for longer than 3-4 hours. But I'm just following Julie's advice and feeding him if my boobs hurt and making him cry if they don't. :) His first morning nap is always the roughest and has cried for up to 1 hour, 15 minutes, but most of the time, he cries for maybe 5-10 minutes and then rolls over for sleep. Seeing the instant success has kept me going when he gears up for a fight.

I'm so happy to be seeing this on my monitor more and more:

crying it out

I thought cry it out meant the baby was supposed to cry, not the momma. But alas, I must admit to crying some big ol' tears.

But let me back up.

I have always been pro-cry it out (CIO). I used it during my many years of babysitting and scoffed (yes, I've repented) at moms who said they just couldn't let their kids cry. Then I had Owen and ate every single one of those words. It's a different story when it's the baby you carried IN you for 9 (10) months that is screaming and when you know that you're the one thing that could calm them down quickly. And on my quest for sleep answers and reading the 20+ books I did, many of them talk about the major consequences of doing CIO, the main one being trust. Even in the book I really like, The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems, Hogg says that if you try CIO, you will have to go to extreme measures to earn the trust of your baby back. There is so much written out there (especially in the blog world) on both sides of this method. And most people are passionate about the side of the camp they fall in.

So what's a momma to do when her precious babe just isn't getting the sleep she knows he needs? She follows her mommy-gut. I was trying to explain this to a mommy-to-be at her shower this weekend. Mommy-gut is that stuff you somehow just KNOW when you have a baby. It comes from being the one person that knows your baby the best. And I'm hoping my mommy-gut also comes a lot from the Holy Spirit since he's way smarter about all this than I am. Every momma has a different mommy-gut. And not one single mom's is better than another. That's why we all raise our kids differently and find that some things that work for others don't work at all for us or our little ones.

So to get to my point, I felt that Owen was just ready to do this. He's exhausted and so am I. So I looked around me at some families who I know have done CIO. They have happy, well-adjusted children who adore them and from what I can tell, trust them completely. So this past week, I've asked a bunch of questions, gotten some great advice, and decided to jump in. Last night you could find me curled up outside his door, with my video monitor and my phone being used as a timer, crying right along with my little guy. And the 2nd round of sleep training begins. . .