Too Easy

Tonight, Sasha went to sleep way too easy. Oh it's not a complaint.

No fuss. No trouble. She fell asleep perfectly. Her dad asked her "Nini, sleep?" picked her up, carried her into the room, put her in her little bed. She laid down on his hand, snuggled his arm with both of her arms, and fell asleep forehead-to-forehead with her dada.
Not a single cry or whine - just one nini kiss for dada, and she was out.

Those two have a special bond. I'll have to talk about that specifically one of these days. My husband has a way of just knowing when Sasha needs him. He can "feel" when she's about to wake up. For example, tonight he felt her waking up for her midnight drink. He was already walking down the hall with milk in hand when she woke up and calmly asked "dada?". She didn't even have to open her eyes. She already knew he was there for her.

Dad's got the schedule now

My first night back to work after implementing our new day shift schedule and routine. I wanted to take another personal day to stay home from work, but I'm all out of them so I had no choice. I was hoping to cement the new schedule a little more so that it would be easier on my husband. I know it is so hard on him to hear her cry.
She was asleep within two minutes tonight. I can't believe how well she goes to sleep at night.
I am at work right now. I know she was doing some night waking. I'm sure I'll hear more about that when I get home.
Meanwhile, I've been night weaning Sasha at the same time. The verdict is still out as to whether or not it is helping with her appetite. I am going to pump at work to keep my milk supply up just in case it doesn't. Today she ate a bunch of cheerios and some scrambled eggs. She also drank some milk and some tea. It's the first time she's ever drank cow's milk without refusing! Maybe this will work. I'm so optimistic!

(UPDATE: After I got home from work, Sasha and Jon were still asleep. Both got plenty of sleep! It's working!)

Day

This week, Sasha has been on a day shift schedule. And I'm kind of happy about that this time. Because she's been mostly letting my husband sleep at night too.

I feel guilty working night shift some times. I feel like I'm making Sasha and my family miss out on a lot. Everything is open during the day, and that's when you can go out and do stuff or just see the world. But when you're awake at night, the only thing to do is stay in the apartment and try to stay very quiet so as not to annoy the neighbors too badly. Staying in an apartment and being quiet isn't necessarily the best for the intellectual growth of a baby. And so I feel bad.
But it had been nearly impossible for us to keep Sasha on a day shift with me on a night shift. She wanted to follow my schedule. It was easier on us if she did too. She could sleep with me and nurse on demand. And because she sleeps soundly with me, my husband can sleep too.
When we try to do a day shift with Sasha, that means that Sasha and my husband have to sleep while I'm at work. Sasha doesn't sleep so well without me. She tosses and turns. She wakes up and fusses. That keeps my husband awake and then he's exhausted by the time I get home from work. When I get home from work, I need to sleep so I can work again the next night, which means my husband has to continue to watch the baby during the day...he's supposed to be rested after all. But he's not and it leads to him getting himself so exhausted.
I hope that we can someday find a schedule that is healthy and works for everyone. A schedule that doesn't involve keeping the baby cooped up in our apartment watching infomercials all night. A schedule where she and my husband can go out to coffee shops or bookstores together, or maybe even *gasp* a park! Wouldn't that be something!
Maybe this is a "sleeping through the night" issue. I think most babies are already sleeping through the night by the time they are one. Maybe it's time we try to work on that with her.

Dancing Baby

Lately, Sasha has been a happy little dancer. She dances to EVERYTHING. Commercial on tv? Dance dance! The credits music at the beginning or end of a show or movie? Dance dance! Background music at bookstores and anywhere else we go? Dance dance! Her musical fridge magnet or her Baby Einstein musical Kaleidoscope? Dance dance!
So iTunes has been one of her favorite things to do. Dad fires up the iTunes and the visualizer and she is in dancing baby heaven. She even says 'dance dance' when she wants to dance or when she's dancing.
Today, she started bouncing her hips to the sides, grabbed Jon's hand, said "Da!?" and looked at him like "May i have this dance?". Can you imagine? It was so heartwarming. I think it made his heart skip a beat.

Now let's talk about sleep. Today she and I got 14, yes fourteen, hours of sleep. Crazy! My husband redid the covering on the bedroom window to block out the daylight sun so we can sleep during the day (we're night shifters), and it is now nearly pitch dark in our bedroom, day or night. It's wonderful. But... the complete darkness during sleep seems to be having an extra effect on our sleep. The last few days Sasha and I have gotten extra sleep and had a hard time waking up. (too bad poor dad has not. Construction noises in the building keep him awake.) If it's the window coverings, I'll have to find a way to wake us up after we've gotten enough sleep to prevent us from over-sleeping so much. As nice as it sounds to sleep all day, we do have other things in our lives we should do besides sleep. It's probably best if we actually wake up and do stuff. Maybe get out of the house once in a while like normal people.

Hear my Wookie Baby Roar

My husband has been calling Sasha a "wookie" because she whines and cries like one. I thought it was mildly amusing. But today he downloaded some Wookie sound files onto his computer and kept playing them in a loop while she was doing her Wookie-cries.
Yup, she does sound like a baby wookie when she's crabby. Weird!
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Well, I suppose I spend enough time complaining when we don't get enough sleep. It is only fair that I should rave about how well Sasha and I have been sleeping this week. As I write this, I am recovering from 10 1/2 hours of sleep. Sasha slept 12 hours straight the other day too! My complaint now? Too much sleep! Hah! There's so much stuff I should be doing and instead I'm sleeping my days away.
But like I said, Sasha has been sleeping a lot too. I wonder if it's because she's learning how to walk? (She's still walking back and forth between my husband and I when we have the chance to sit on the floor with her. I enjoy every minute of it.)Anyways you'd think that she'd be in a great mood with all the extra sleep she's been getting but no, she's apparently pretty crabby while I'm at work according to reports from my husband. The moment I walk in the door, she's all smiles for me, hah!

Today, I hope that I DON'T get too much sleep. I want to take the girls to an apple orchard, which I can only do during the daytime (sucks to be night shift when I want to go out and do stuff). It's been tradition. Hopefully we'll make great memories, good pictures, and yummy apple sauces, jams, and pies. If I'm in luck, maybe I'll even get a pumpkin too :)

I should also mention that tooth number 8 is FINALLY making it's way in. It has officially broken through her gums. Explains some of Sasha's recent crabby behavior. Tooth 9 and 10 are lined up and ready to come through soon. I can feel them below the skin of her gums but they might take a few weeks.

Brief update

For several days, Sasha has been by far the least crabby as she's ever been. It was wonderful. She was such a joy. She is crawling great now, so she would crawl around the house and explore.
Then yesterday the crabbiness started again. She's got her 6th tooth coming in and she completely altered her sleep schedule drastically. This is not a good week for us to have her switch to a day shift schedule as there is a lot of loud construction noises in our building this week. I have been feeling so very exhausted. Jon's back has still been painful for him. He had to have an MRI on Sunday morning and we are awaiting the results from that.
Cassie has been wonderful, and very pleasant to have around. She's been playing her Warcraft game, drawing pictures, and teaching herself how to photoshop from online tutorials. She is very talented.

Another tooth

Oops, I shouldn't let so much time go between posts. Now I have way too much catching up to do.

New Tooth-
July 1st I think her 4th tooth, the top right broke through. There seems to be quite a bit of space between her two front teeth, and I hope that gap closes. Sasha has what appears to be another bump on her gums so I think she's got another tooth coming in on top next to her left front tooth.
While those teeth were coming in, Sasha was SO VERY crabby. For at least two weeks straight my fun baby girl was replaced by a very crabby girl. Fortunately this week, she seems to be back to almost her old self.

Last week was one of the best sleep schedules we've ever had for such a long time. It was perfect. Years from now, when I look back on the sleep situation, last week is what I will have in mind. Basically, the moment I got of work and walked in the door, Sasha was ready to go to sleep immediately. She and I would crawl into bed, nurse her to sleep, and we would fall asleep together. Jon would lay on the other side of her and she would alternate cuddling with each of us. We got a good 8-10 hours of sleep a day, and woke up in the mid-afternoon with plenty of day left to actually go and do something if we wanted to.

Sleep changes

Sometimes change happens so gradually that it's hard to notice until you really make a conscious effort, or sometimes you notice it after you've noticed the change has come far along.
Baby Sasha's sleep habits had been slowly changing, a little more each night. I've started to notice the past few nights but when I thought about it I realized the change was more drastic than I originally thought, and started a lot earlier.
For at least 8 months, Sasha would wake up to nurse/eat several times a night. She stayed on my breast ALL night, as if I was a pacifier. This forced me to sleep on my side, which was a necessary inconvenience.
I first started to notice that she wasn't waking up so often. And then about a week or two ago, she started rolling away from me so that she would put her back to me, then she would fuss until I put my arm around her. She would hug my arm tight against her as she slept. I call it the teddy bear snuggle, because it felt like I was snuggling with a teddy bear. But basically it was like spooning.

At first that meant to me "wow, I can start to sleep on my back". But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that gradually, Sasha had drastically cut back on her night nursings. To the point where I think she was only using me as a pacifier for the last month or so. Not nursing. Now that she is turning away from me, she doesn't even need the pacification anymore. I don't think I noticed, of course, because I was mostly sleeping. And because it happened so gradually.

The more I think about it, the more things are starting to make sense. She's hasn't been eating so much at night. But she's also cut back her food/milk intake during the day as well so I guess she's not eating so much. I have to keep an eye on that. It also means that she is becoming less dependant on me at night. She is starting to drift off, move away from me, move around.
It seems like she is making the changes required to sleep on her own soon...and for the night. She isn't being awakened in the night by hunger anymore. She is self weaning herself from pacification.

Picnic, sleep, and more crawling

"Classics to Read Aloud to Your Children"....works better when they read them to you.

On Monday, we had a work function. It was a family picnic. The husband, Sasha, and I went to the picnic in the park and I thought it was very fun. Sasha got to see the great outdoors, a few trees (mommy misses those), and got a little sun and some fresh air.
Unfortunately, the picnic started at noon. This totally messed up the sleep schedule for everyone, and here it is now Friday and we're all still not quite recovered yet. Jon and I suffered much sleep deprivation, but fortunately last night we were able to make up for a lot of lost sleep. I hope we are able to return to normal soon.

Sasha is doing more 'army crawling'. She's sort of mobile if she really really wants to get something, but she's not efficient at it by any stretch. If I put her down somewhere, she mostly stays there, and I think that is an important distinction to make. She's ALMOST mobile, not giving her mommy and daddy a headache yet.

Grow Baby Brains Grow!

Sasha is back on a night shift schedule with me. She's been back to cosleeping with me again for a week now and I'm actually getting 8-hour sleep days again! I missed her so much. I think the best thing about co-sleeping with her is the feeling that I get an extra 8 hours a day with her. It makes up for the hours I lost by working full time. (In comparison with my older daughter. It felt like she was raised by babysitters, which was so depressing.)

Again I feel as though the baby I have today has grown leaps and bounds from the baby she was last week. She seems to be undergoing a rapid burst of brain development.

Today, Sasha played peek-a-boo with us and it was much fun. We've done peek-a-boo plenty of times with her before but it just didn't seem to sink in. She would usually just stare at the spot she last saw us at and wait for us to reappear. Today, I could see the gears turning in her head and the "A-Ha!" moment as she grabbed the blanket off my head if I didn't take it off fast enough. She officially understands object permanence!
She's been sticking her tongue out at me. She's been practicing her B's and P-sounds. She keeps trying to make the mouth-popping sound like Cassie makes. She copies some of the noises we make at her.
Jon says that tonight she crawled herself into her green bouncy chair several times. When he helped to position her after she crawled in, she pulled the center flap up, then grabbed the connector tabs and tried to put them in. She was very excitable and wouldn't eat much. "she got me real good a bit ago," Jon said. "Forearm across my throat, flat on my back, with her drooling and yelling directly in my ear.. while I was trapped between the couch/Ikea chair/green chair/TV stand. She was going for the 'kill' .. two killer rabbit teeth to my ear."
The biggest tell that she is really going through some rapid brain development is the sudden need for extra sleep. It's like she learns something new, gets sleepy, and has to go to sleep to process all this new information. She is almost newborn-like with her need for naps yesterday and today.

In the gross motor skill department, I am undecided whether she is going to walk first or crawl. She is close to being able to crawl..but she is also just beginning to start "cruising"...the term for when babies walk around by holding on to tables, chairs, etc. We still take her for many walks around the house each day by letting her hang on to our hands. She loves doing that. Anyways, there was one incident this weekend where Sasha was standing and holding onto the living room chair. Jon walked past her and she stared after him. Well she decided she wanted to follow him so she carefully balanced herself, let go of the chair with one hand, and tried to take a step away. She really was going to try to walk after him but I stepped in and grabbed her little hand. I wonder how she would have done if I didn't interfere. Most likely she would have fallen on her little butt, which really pisses her off. And we don't want that, but sometimes I have to remember to sit back and let her learn.

Watch her grow

It seems like my baby has grown so much the past week or two that she doesn't even seem like the same baby she was last week. Her core personality is there, but more of it is revealed each day as she learns new abilities. I can't wait to see who this little person is going to be!

Mama's Girl
She's a mama's girl this week. She and I really have a good connection. We play together and have a lot of fun. I can read her every glance and expression and she is so communicative. She started saying "MAMA". At first it seemed so random but she's saying it more and with more intent. She's almost starting to seem like she understands that I am Mama.

Dada
Unfortunately, it seems like either Jon or I have a good connection to Sasha at any given time. So often, Sasha was a Daddy's girl. They could read each other, had their own special routines and games they played. And I was the odd parent out. But now the past two weeks or so, it seems to have shifted. As my connection to Sasha grows, their connection seems to be waning. I think I'd almost prefer that if Sasha can't be in tune with both of us at the same time, then I'd rather she be closer to Jon than to me. He's the one that has to stay with her all night while I'm at work.
But I don't want to just stop playing with her! I've been having so much fun with her! So he'll just have to step it up if he's going to get her favor back :)
I think we are both going to have to get used to the fact that she will probably bounce back and forth between us...that some times she'll love us both equally. But sometimes, she just might favor one of us over the other. And when that happens, we have to learn not to take it personal. She'll always come back to both of us eventually.

Assisted Walking
She loves her new-found favorite past-time of assisted walking. I hold her little hands and let her explore the house as she walks around. I let her turn her head to steer in the direction she wants to go, and I watch her gaze to see what captures her rapt attention. She walks around and explores everything. Bags of diapers, doors, Cassie's room, mirrors, carpet lint, and everything she happens to walk past. It is almost like a preview of the toddler she will become, when she will walk around the house and get into everything.
I still can't get over how well she is sitting. It seemed like it happened over night. One day, I would sit her up and if I wasn't holding her or propping her up she would topple over. Then the next day, she was sitting on her own for hours with no assistance at all! What gets me is she looks like such a big girl sitting there on her own, playing with her toys.

Separation Anxiety
This is the beginning of separation anxiety. If she sees me leave the house, she gets mad! Today, she watched me leave for work and threw a two hour temper tantrum. I eventually had to leave work to go home and calm her down. (Fortunately I live a block away from work, and they are fine with me running home to nurse her when I need to.) This gave my poor husband a headache and I think it hurt his feelings a little. He had to listen to her cry for the whole two hours, and none of his usual Daddy-tricks worked to calm her down.

Working on that Sleep Schedule
We decided to try to work on Sasha's sleep schedule. Specifically, we want her back on a night shift schedule with me. It was so much easier on the whole household when she was cosleeping with me during the day. We all got sleep. And well rested parents are good for kids :)
So far, we've almost got her migrated. I'd say we're half-way there. Instead of sleeping most of the time I'm at work, she's sleeping half of it. I can imagine how hard it must be for my husband to have to try to keep her awake all night so that she will be ready to sleep during the day. I know it can't be easy.

Dada!

Dada
About a week ago, Sasha's regular babbling started to contain a lot more "dada's". The dada's increased, and so has her tone of voice when she says it. It's hard to describe, but her vocal tone is much different and a little bit sing-songy when she says it. Now, she uses Dada as a word. She mostly uses it when she wants something that she sees but Dad doesn't mind. He's flattered that she uses Dada when she wants something....Dada is certainly going to give her whatever she wants, especially when what she wants is her daddy. We give her lots of love and attention when she says it so her use of her first new word is increasing.

No messy diapers?
Poor baby has not had a poopy diaper in a while. It's been at least 4-5 days now. This from a baby who used to go at least 4-5 times a day. Every day I wake up and think "Oh boy, she's going to blow up a diaper today" but it isn't happening! I don't know what to do. We've withheld solids until she goes, in case that's what's stopped her up. She wouldn't eat more than a bite when we offered them to her anyways and several whole meals went to waste. If she doesn't go by the time the doctor's office opens this morning, I just might call and ask them for some advice.

Out to eat
I've been feeling lazy lately...too lazy to cook at least. So we've been going out to eat for a lot of our meals. Each time we go out to eat, we bring Sasha's Bumbo seat and set it upon the table for her to sit in. It really works well. Sasha gets a lot of attention from the restaurant patrons and from us, and feels like she's a part of the family meal. She is so well behaved, probably due to the fact that she is so included at the meals. I hand her one of her baby spoons and she wields it like a task-master, beating her bumbo seat with it for emphasis and occasionally attempting to put it in her mouth. I've been trying to work with her on the use of a straw to drink water. She's managed to get a few surprise mouthfuls but I don't think she's totally clear on the concept yet.

Object permanence
Yesterday, I was snuggling with the baby in bed, teaching her how to play peek-a-boo with the blankets. I wanted to test out her sense of object permanence so I let her see me put my hand under the blanket. Then I moved my hand so one finger would come into and out of view from under the blanket. Well, she would only watch the spot where the finger would come into and out of view. She didn't grab the blanket to uncover my hand. It really didn't seem like she had a sense of object permanence as far as the hand-under-the-blanket trick goes.

Rolling, rolling, rolling
Sasha has started a really annoying sleep habit: rolling around. A lot. It's like she's tossing and turning at high rpm. We could probably use her as power generator at the rate she's going. Fortunately she's not rolling in circles. If she's between her dad and me, she normally starts on her side facing me as she nurses herself to sleep. Then she'll roll over to face her Dad. She'll grab him, stay like that for about 10 seconds, then she'll roll back over to face me again. It almost seems like she's time-sharing her sleepy hugs between us. She does the same thing even if one of us is not there napping with her. It's not very conducive to getting a good night's sleep for her father and I. Eventually she ends up waking herself up by doing that too. And don't even get me started on the sleep situation. She is still on a day shift sleep schedule, which is hard on us.
Tonight, she's doing the rolling and beat up dad thing, and he has not been able to get any sleep at all. This is not good. As long as she insists on "sleeping" during the night and staying awake all day, we depend on him to get his sleep at night so he can watch her during the day. Then I can get some sleep during the day so I am not too tired at work at night.

Battered Mommy Syndrome
I'm starting to feel really beaten up. How embarassing to admit my 7 month old baby girl beats me. But boy does she beat me good. She's gotten a few good punch-kicks in on her father as well. Typically, I'm sitting on the couch with her standing in my lap facing me. She pulls my hair, hits my face, sticks her fingers up my nose and pulls, throws her fingers unexpectedly into my mouth and digs around, scratches my gums, tries to grab and pull my tongue out of my mouth, pokes my eyes. I am starting to get a bit frazzled by the hair pulling. So I put my hair up in a pony tail when I'm playing with her but does that help any? Nope. She still pulls on my bangs, pulls my hair anyways and ends up either ripping the hairs out of my scalp or pulls the hair out of the pony tail. I feel like I'm always wrestling her for my hair back. I'm starting to feel a little violated. Oh but she does it all with a smile and a cute giggle and she has such fun with it. I think it's just a phase but I think pretty soon I'm going to have to lay down the law on the little cutie. Not that I know how yet. I just know that I should probably start nipping this problem in the bud before it escalates.