Today was the first day that Olivia told me “I love you”. Unprompted. She has said I love you before but in response to us telling her to say it.
But today, we were both sitting around on a bunch of pillows half watching Martha Speaks and half playing around and she stopped and looked at me and said “Ah luh u”. She can’t pronounce her Ls so she says N instead. But she can say the L in love. Funny.
Ah luh u, too, mija.
Image via Wikipedia
In a marriage it is so easy to get frustrated with your spouse and just go crazy nit-picking at every little thing that he does wrong. I do it all the time. Really I do. Just ask him. I’m such a hard-ass sometimes. But my husband is wonderful. And this is why.
Because he still faithfully checks this blog most days hoping that I have started writing on it again even though he knows I probably haven’t. It has been almost a year exactly since I last wrote. So he has been checking for a year now. He pushes me so much to write because he knows I love it. Even when I don’t feel like writing he is always so encouraging. He loves that I love something that he can help me with. I don’t know anything about techie stuff. All I do is write and he figures out the rest, the website, the graphics, etc.
Another reason I love him, he lets me do the most ridiculous things and doesn’t bat an eye at it. I just purchased 20lbs of tomatoes from the farm that we get veggies from. 20! That is ridiculous. Most husbands would have said, “Uh, honey, are you sure? When are you going to find the time use up all those tomatoes? We are helping lead a camp next week, we’re still working on our talks and stuff for the camp, not to mention we have 2 little ones. What the hell are you thinking?” He didn’t say any of that. Just said, “Yeah, sounds good. Maybe you could make homemade ketchup like Jamie Oliver.”
He’s wonderful and I love him dearly…most days 🙂
Anywho, I’m back. I hope to make writing on here much more common. It’s nice to have this space.
Now I am going to continue researching tomato recipes. 20lbs isn’t going to cook itself.
Image via Wikipedia
Last night was not great, to say the least. The Squeaker screamed off and on for 1 hour 43 minutes. She just would not sit down or lie down until she was so extremely exhausted that she slumped down. Here legs were out in front of her in a wide V and she was slumped forward as if she was stretching to touch her toes. And this is how we found her dead asleep. We didn’t want to move her because we know she needs to learn how to do this on her own. So we made some noise so that she would wake up and hopefully just reposition her body and go right back to sleep. Nope. She woke up screaming and stood up in her crib again until she slumped down again. Not laying down, sitting down hunched into a ball.
What a stubborn ass. I am certain she knows how to sit in her crib. She goes from standing to sitting all the time. She is just so freakin’ stubborn. I know where she gets it from but, man, this makes life so hard right now. She’s not learning how to soothe herself. She is crying to the point of exhaustion and passing out. This does not teach her to sleep. In fact this is why all the other methods didn’t work because they caused the same problem.
O, just go to sleep. Just lay down and go to sleep. Is it really that hard?
On the up side, she was so happy today. Made me feel like we’re not scarring her for life.
Image via Wikipedia
Ok, so this is going into the “not a good mom move” folder and a copy is going in the “sometimes we freakin’ rock folder.”
After a minor setback called top tooth coming in we are finally back on track with the sleep training. It’s frustrating that she is crying now just about as much as at the beginning because we soothed her more than we should have because she was just in so much pain teething.
So today after I put the Squeaker down she immediately sprang up and was standing up in her crib crying/screaming at me. Then she paused, made her strained poop face, then continued crying. Darnit. She pooped. I didn’t want her to figure out that if she pooped we would pick her up and then use that against us later. Ridiculous, I know. I should have changed her immediately but I just couldn’t. 4 minutes later she was fast asleep in her crib. I stood over her thinking about what I should do. I should just wake her up and change her. No, I should wait until she wakes up. What if she doesn’t wake up until 1am? Shoot. I left her and figured she would wake up in a couple hours. I know, I know, when a kid poos you gotta change them right then. I just couldn’t do it. Getting her to sleep is hard enough, I couldn’t deal with this. So I closed the door softly behind me and went to cook dinner.
Kraft got home a while later and I confessed what I had done. What should I do, Kraft? He shrugged. So I decided we were going to try to change her diaper without waking her up. And can you believe it? We did it. We totally did it. She stirred a little but never woke up. We took off the diaper, wiped, put on new diaper and she stayed asleep. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. Sure the diaper she has on right now is not the best put on diaper in the world but man, am I impressed with us.
I’m sure the self-congratulatory pat on the back will stop when she wakes up in the middle of the night soaked in pee because the diaper isn’t on very well but right now I’m just going to revel in the glory.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://i0.wp.com/img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?w=880)
Image via Wikipedia
I’ve been leading up to this for awhile. We started sleep training the Squeaker on Monday night. We decided to do everything in one fell swoop – training her at night to sleep in her crib and also her naps in the crib and night weaning her. I know, big shock to poor O but I’d rather be completely miserable for a few weeks than kinda miserable for months if we separated each thing.
We are following the “Sleep Lady Shuffle” which means for the first three nights we sit on a chair by the side of her crib and stay there until she falls asleep. We can talk to her, pat her, but no picking her up unless she is hysterical. No nursing to sleep, just putting her down “drowsy but awake.” We have yet to reach hysterical but we have definitely gotten super pissed and completely dejected from O.
Brandon bravely did night 1 duty. Thank God. It was much easier for me to deal with her cries when I was in the next room with the door closed watching TV and eating dinner. On the first night it took O 42mins of crying to fall asleep. We had yet to see O stand up in her crib from a laying down position. Come to find out she can do this, and very well I might add. This has made sleep training almost unbearable. She pulls up and just cries and screams in our face. After a while when we don’t pick her up, she just lets her head and arms go limp and slumps over the side of the crib while still sobbing. It’s heartbreaking. Truly heartbreaking. Well, this happened to Brandon on the first night and he laid her down a couple times because she can get up but does not know how to get back down. But eventually he just let her stay standing to tire her out. She fell asleep standing up slumped over the crib rail. Ugh. Poor thing. Brandon said he laid her down and she didn’t even flinch.
Day 2 I had to do naps and sleep time training which was rough. That’s too much heartache for one day. It’s too hard to hear your kid cry that much in one day. The only thing that kept me from caving in after a day of crying was that all this misery would be in vain and we would probably just have to start over at a later date.
Naps are the worst and so hard to get her to do. She takes 2 naps a day. For her morning nap she cried 20mins and slept almost an hour and a half. Pretty good. For her afternoon nap she cried 48mins and slept 36mins. Damn. But then she only cried for 8mins when I put her to bed at night and she slept for a little over 6 hours. Tough day so thank God the progress is pretty quick.
Night weaning has been the hardest part for her I think. She has woken up both nights in the 1-2am hour and the 5-6am hour because these are usually the times she not just snacked but had an all out feast. She basically cries for these hours but hopefully it’ll get better. Her doctor has been telling me that she doesn’t need to eat at night since she was 4 months old so I know she can get through the night without eating.
Even though I can see her improving very quickly, ugh, this is just torture. I’ve been walking around with the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach for the last 3 days. This is what I felt like in the days leading up to my first day of teaching. Nervous. Sick. Nauseous. I know that we have to teach her how to sleep and I know we have to do this for the sake of the whole family but man, it’s hard. Having to see her sobbing and confused and angry and tired and pressing her little face against the crib slats literally make me sick to my stomach.
But we’re holding strong. And praying a lot. Dear God, just get us through another night.
Image by peasap via Flickr
That’s it. It’s been almost 9 months of the Squeaker’s horrible sleeping and I can’t do it anymore. I’ve been fighting sleep training this whole time thinking that her sleep will get better. It’s not and I am so sick of it. I’m so frustrated with it and starting to get really resentful. I’ve been fighting the “cry-it-out” thing because I can’t get those silly books out of my head that say if you do this to your baby they give up and feel isolated. What changed my mind, other than teetering on the brink of insanity, is when I read in one of those stupid books that “a resentful mom is not a good mom. So if you’re getting resentful you have to change something.” I agree. They also said that crying is a natural thing when you’re trying to change your baby’s sleep habits because they are so used to one thing. The difference is the baby crying alone or crying in your presence. At least they know you are there.
I’ll take it. I’ve found a way in between the super-slow gradual way I’ve been doing and the let the kid cry alone way. It’s called the “Sleep Lady Shuffle”. For some reason I really don’t like this lady that invented it which I’m sure I’ll expand upon in another post but I like her ideas.
So I bought her book today and plan on implementing it on Sunday with no turning back.
I would start today if my parents weren’t coming into town tomorrow night.
Just to give you an idea, I started trying to put O to sleep at 6:30 and it is 9:15. She has slept the following spurts 27mins, 7mins, and 34mins. She should have been sleeping for the last 2hrs and 45mins and she has slept only 1hr and 8mins and the rest has been me working hard to get her to sleep. Can’t do it. I don’t like being angry at my baby for something that isn’t her fault. It’s my fault. I haven’t taught her to sleep and I’ve failed as a parent in that regard. But not anymore. Sunday is the day. Sunday…
