scrawls.

scrawls

still cheaper than therapy*

22.4.08

twenty-nine weeks

And we're home again, finally. And what they say is true, that going to the States is easy, jet-lag-wise, but coming from the States is hard. It is hard. You have not been going to sleep at normal times, and here it is with your third nap, going on maybe an hour, but it's seven-thirty and i'm wondering if i should wake you. Probably. Pretty sure, really, now that i think about it: you've been napping so much better recently. More than an hour at a time.

Been reading Pantley's no-cry sleep solution. She says you needed more sleep, so now you are getting more sleep, and i put you down early today and you got delicious wonderful naptime in, but then i had german class and you come with me to that and so that should have been naptime, but wasn't, because you woke up as soon as we got there and i couldn't walk you back to sleep. It's a gradual thing, i guess, but i'll work one day tomorrow and then there will be four days to do nothing but help you sleep when you need to sleep. We weren't doing anything about your sleeping and napping patterns before we left for the Great Grandparent Tour '08, but now it is time. If Pantley doesn't work we also acquired Ferber. I like having both ends of the spectrum to reference - i feel like it makes me more level-headed. Ferber is, of course, the cry-it-out, rules-for-all-situations guru, and Pantley is the attatchment parenting, mushy, spare-the-rod type.

You are now quite the old pro at the whole sitting up thing: you almost never bonk yourself on the floor. Except if you're tired. And everyone says that babies either work on talking or on moving but it sure as hell seems like you're working on both: you roll over more every week, you've been up on your hands and knees and rocking, though not moving, and Daddy got you to pull up on a chair; but you chatter and chatter and chatter, and i think i have heard the following consonants: b, d, g, h, k, l, m, n, p (p is really cute), and r. In German class today you were horribly disruptive, but then, i was the only person there for a good bit of it, so i'm going to keep taking you. So clearly if you are working on talking and walking you are already a genius. (That fish oil is great!)

Everything is going in your mouth. You like to grab the dog with both hands and bury your face in her fur. You missed the dog while we were gone, and you missed being home: when we got back on Friday, all you did was smile and look and smile and look and smile. (Although that three hour nap we all took in that gorgeous happy wonderful Nasa-foam bed, the bed that M and i missed so terribly, that probably didn't help with your jet lag status.)

As you now have two teeth (bottom front), we have started a bedtime routine (as recommended by Pantley). Your bedtime routine is: (1)Diaper, (2)Pajamas, (3)Sleepsack, (4)Brush teeth with your very own toothbrush, while the Parents also brush their teeth, which you enjoy so very very much because it's something that's supposed to go in your mouth, and it has a texture unlike anything else, i think, (5)Read a book with Daddy, (6)Nurse and cuddle off to sleep. With the (7)Transfer from Momma's arms to crib, a step you decidedly don't approve of yet, still in the works.

After three weeks of plastic diapering, cloth is a little bit hard to return to. Not really hard, but a little bit of a pain. Nights particularly, because the sheer volume of cloth diaper is kind of a hassle to work with. Enough to make someone consider getting more of those extra-fancy ones with the velcro, rather than the chinese prefolds we use the rest of the time ... We currently have several dozen chinese prefolds, two velcro one-size-fits-all fitteds, three diaper covers with snaps, one wool pull-up cover, and one fleece pull-up cover. I think if i wanted to keep you in fitteds every night i'd only need two more. I think. The one-size-fits-all-ness makes it tempting; it seems like some of the prefolds are getting too small. Of course, the prefolds are also on their third baby now, i think, so they're also some of them getting a little raggedy looking and we try to throw them away when they start leaving lint on your bum.

Your favorite thing for the last little while has been eating, or pretending to eat, or trying to grab Momma and Daddy's food, or borrowing our spoons, or having tea parties with empty red Austrian Airlines coffee cups. The red Austrian Airlines coffee cups are particularly nice to play with, seeing as how they're red, and unbreakably plastic, and make satisfying noises when you hit something with them, and you can pick them up and put them in your mouth from all sorts of angles. We "borrowed" two. So there is always one for you to play with and one for us to model coffee-drinking with, and then we switch, because you want the one Momma or Daddy has, and so you reach for it and drop the one you have, and we give ours to you and pick up the other one and you're happy for thirty seconds and then you want to switch again. Your Nagymama gave you a little plastic baby spoon with a loopdy handle so you could theoretically feed yourself, but i don't think you can feed yourself without needing a bath immediately afterwards, and also without needing a floor mop and/or whatever-else-is-nearby wipedown immediately afterwards, so we give you a bite of applesauce on the spoon and after you eat it you get to play with the spoon for a while, and then we take the spoon and give you another bite, and eating is good for an hour of entertainment. The funniest part is when you get so! excited! about having the other coffee cup or the spoon or whichever that you flap your arms and bounce up and down and you're not quite coordinated enough to grab and flap and bounce at the same time.

The other funniest part is that, in finding that you are allergic to something, you sneezed a lot. So we took pictures of you sneezing. And, little, i love you, but even thinking about those pictures will make me laugh for five minutes solid. That fancy new camera-toy we got? Worth a million bucks of antidepressants.

Labels: baby, milestones

scrawled @ 18:24