Strike 2

Gotta type fast before you know who (the evil sleepless baby tyrant) wakes up (for the 50th time), so forgive any typos. A pediatric nurse practitioner suggested that we give LM a low dose of melatonin (available at whole foods) before bed. For those of you not inclined to nerdy scientific knowledge melatonin is a naturally occurring chemical in the brain that regulates sleep cycles among other things. So the theory is that for children with sleep disorders the melatonin will help them regulate their sleeping better. I hoped and prayed and hoped and prayed, but alas, it seems that there is no change.

LM - 2
Sleep tactics - 0

Tomorrow we are going to the evil baby empire super store that must not be named to get a vibrator to put under her mattress. It's all very sex in the city when Samantha puts her "back massager" in the baby bouncy seat. Trust me if I still had a vibrator I would use that, but no, I couldn't muster up the energy to masturbate if I tried. So, tomorrow we go to unnecessary baby product land to buy something that I hope will help. You have to keep hope or I might never recover.

In other news....
*I only have 9 more days of work before we move and I am soooooo excited. Now if I can manage to stay awake through them I'll be golden.

*I had a donut for breakfast this morning. It was awesome!

*I lost a few pounds (.....and then I had that donut)

*The grandparents are coming soon so we can sleep a little. YAY!

If husband had a parasite this big he'd be in the hospital!

Today LM is 7 months old. It's amazing how they grow so fast and you don't even notice (except the crippling back arthritis that has set in) until you look back at old pictures.

Anyway, We have been working on LM's sleeping lately (As in she doesn't and I would like her to) and it is wearing me out man! We were co-sleeping and it was fine except I wasn't sleeping much (which was the point of the co-sleeping). LM was still waking up 3-4 times per night to eat, etc. So I decided something had to be done. The wee one has too much control of this situation and I have to take back the night as it were.

We aren't doing the cry-it-out thing for 2 reasons: 1. I don't know that agree with allowing children to cry like that (but if it works for you go for it-not going to start a sleep-training war here) and 2. We live in a 550ft. studio so we can't just shut the door and walk away pretending we don't hear her....she's like 8 feet from us. plus she knows we are there and she is not fooled into thinking that she is alone.

So we have begun Operation "sleep dammit!"

Phase one - Ritual behavior: Every night we do the same things to get ready for sleepy time. We eat, then we take a bath, then we read a story, sometimes she breastfeeds to relax, and then we sit quietly until LM gives up and goes to sleep on my shoulder. So far so good on this front!

Phase two - remove multiple night feedings. Now when she wakes up (and she still does every 2-4 hours because she thinks it's fun to kill me slowly from sleep deprivation) I rock her back to sleep. I have left in 1 night time feeding around 2am that will eventually be removed....baby steps people, baby steps.

So Phase one is a success. Phase two still has yet to really work, but I am hoping that soon she will only wake up once and then not at all. But knowing LM (she's awful persistent) it could be a while.

When you have kids it is all of a sudden perfectly ok for other people to criticize everything you do because they know everything because they also had a kid......yay for you!

SO the consensus around guru's office was again that LM wasn't eating enough and if I would just give her cereal (which is heavier, which we don't give her - I just don't, deal!) she would sleep through the night. I told them that they underestimate LM's resolve, but they insisted on pretending that I was not only the first mother in the world to not give their baby cereal(because "it's really healthy for them"), but also the stupidest person ever. Trust me, you can only take so much beating with the pushy advice stick before you cave.

"Fine!" I said. I will mix some cereal into her food and we will see.

Suffice to say...uh, she still woke up 3 times that night. Proving my point that not only am I not starving my baby, but she wakes up for comfort and not necessarily food....but what do I know, I am only her mother right!

My baby the goat!

LM will eat pretty much anything. For a baby she is ridiculously varied in her tastes. The "experts" (like my subtle anger and disregard for people who claim to know what all babies do/need/etc.) say that you should slowly introduce foods to babies and see what foods they dislike....well LM dislikes, hmmmmm....nothing so far. She also is 7 months (almost) going on 10 and wants whatever mommy and daddy have. God forbid she miss out on the experience of coleslaw (we didn't let her have any of that...mayo and all).

Sunday we ate lunch at a diner where the food was close to inedible, but LM was happy as a clam. Pickles (whole) came with the meals and man was she interested in the strange green things that she could put in her mouth. So we let her have the pickle waiting for the hilarity that ensues when you give kids something sour/bitter/etc......and we waited, and LM scraped away at the inside of the pickle with her little fangs and....she loved it! She dropped one on the floor and immediately launched herself towards the plate for another.

Hmmm, we thought, well the girl like pickles I guess (FYI, I don't actually care for pickles so she wasn't exposed to them in the womb). Next up, a lemon wedge. I readied the camera to get the face that would follow the taste of this pucker fruit and....YES! awesome! Wait! She's eating more.
Yes ladies and gentlemen, my baby made the "what the fuck did I put in my mouth" face (yes she uses profanity in her baby thoughts) and then pushed on. I guess she wasn't going to let a lemon break her. Way to go baby (FYI- I do like to suck on lemons and she was exposed to those in the womb so go figure).

Next I am going to try coffee, beer, and tin cans.

Baby food Ninja!!

Feeding a baby solid foods requires ninja like precision and speed. In -up - out -catch - refill...and begin again. I have almost perfected the process, but of course this all depends on how SUPER EXCITED LM is about any particular food. For example, sweet potatoes are somewhat more challenging since LM insists on shoving them up her nose as she fights me for the spoon.

Husband is getting pretty good at it, but for the most part we just go with the flow and resign ourselves to the bath afterwards. LM, however, loves everything about eating and would probably bathe in the food if she could.

Glory be to the sleep gods!!

Miracle of miracles, the little monster slept all the way through the night last night...I would like to say that it was a great night of sleep for me, but instead I was waking up every couple hours confused and startled because she wasn't in the bed. But it was nice to wake up and be able to roll over and go back to sleep in any position I wanted without rolling on the baby.

Lets hope this continues.

According to the guru (if you don't know to what I am referring check out this post. and this one.) LM is too old not to be sleeping through the night....uh, she's 6 months old guru! "Yeah, I was very strict with my kids. I would put them in their beds and walk away!"

That would be nice, but I don't have anywhere to walk away to...I live in a 550 sq. foot studio. (In my head) And I don't parent that way. and I'm not taking parenting advice from someone who fed infants jello!

"Well you just aren't feeding her enough."

She eats all the time. We feed her whenever she is hungry.

"Well she needs more food. Not just milk"

SHE'S 6 MONTHS OLD!!!! Babies can live on breast milk alone for a year. If only the cave women had had jello...everything would have been much better.

Breeding and Baby's first, uh....jello?

Discussions turn - as they always do - to if/when we are going to have another kid. Personally I would like to wait until the one I haev is done breastfeeding before I pop out another crotch fruit, but that is just me. So the other day I was having this conversation with "nutrition guru" from this post and it went something like this:

Me: I just can't imagine taking care of an infant while trying to deal with a two year old! Babies need so much of your attention.

Guru: Well, you just don't hold the second one as much....or play with it or anything....

Me: (In my head) Great, so I can have a second kid so I can ignore it! (Out loud) Right!

That Guru, she is just a wealth of knowledge. Most recently she suggested that LM's first food should be jello because it is easy for the to eat and melts in their mouth. Awesome! I was just thinking that my so far completely natural babies first food should be pure sugar and gelatin....

Conversation I had today:

me: "Little Monster had her first real food yesterday. we gave her sweet potatoes and she really liked it."

woman at work: "why didn't you give her cereal? It has vitamins in it and babies like it (not a question...an accusation)."

me: "real food has vitamins too and LM really liked her sweet potatoes."

w.a.w: "Why didn't you give her cereal? Everybody starts with cereal."

Me (in my head): of course I should always do what the general public does....that's never backfired. Next week we're giving her avocados, so there. (out loud): "Anyway...wanna see a picture?"

Gotta love unsolicited advice/opinions.

The Little Monster Loves Here Some Sweet Potato!

LM had her first big girl meal today and she loved every minute of it. Of course she looked like she had been playing paintball with swett potato mash afterwards, but she didn't seem to mind.
Recently she has been exhibiting all of the classic signs of wanting solid foods:
Watching intently when we eat, manipulating all manners of things into her mouth. trying to eat/suck milk out of all manner of inanimate objects. A few weeks ago we let her suck on some watermelon and she was quite pleased so we decided it might be time to let her start experimenting.

Lately she has been somewhat cranky. I thought it might be her teething kicking into high gear (and it still may be) but today grandma was watching her and she was a crank-monster. She sucked down her bottle and was nowhere near full so grandma decided to try out the baby food in the cupboard...and voila. Happy baby. Apparently she did the quiver-lip face everytime the spoon was taken away. That continued until she figured out that Grandma was going to give her more each time she took the spoon away. Now she seems to be the happiest baby on earth....

Moral of the story....I was apparently starving my baby. Just kidding, but it is nice to know that she really just wants more food. Must be going through a growth spurt.