An ugly equation

A baby who hasn't pooped in 3 days + lots of jumping = big mess

Sweet Potatoes

We officially started solid foods yesterday. She's had them on a few occasions before, but we are now starting to regularly feed her solids at dinnertime. I've decided to skip the cereal until later, since it seems to upset her tummy, so we started with sweet potatoes. She was a little hesitant at first, but by the time we got to the end of the feeding she was opening wide and trying to grab the spoon.

My new obsession.

Since I'm no longer spending 20-30 minutes rocking E to sleep, I've got a little free time on my hands. I decided to try making a tutu, since it seemed relatively quick to do and there's no sewing required (the one requirement in any project I take on). Plus, I was sooooo excited about all the potential color combinations. I started with red and black because she has a red and black onesie which doesn't go with any of her skirts, and when she wears it with khaki shorts she looks like a boy.

I loved making it, and I'm already working on the second one. If I keep going at this rate, I'm going to need a tutu room in my house.

I love my fluffy new tutu!

Okay, the fluff is starting to invade my space, Mom.

Hello? Anyone? A little help, please?

Ferber- Night Three

-7:23: Down in crib. Set timer for 10 minutes.

-7:32: Went in. Left and set timer for 12 minutes.

-7:46: Went in. Left and set timer for 15 minutes.

-7:48: Asleep.

-11:46: Woke up. I went in and gave her a bottle. She stayed awake the whole time she was eating.

-11:56: I laid her down. She cried when I put her down, but was asleep before I could set the timer.

She took longer to fall asleep on night three than she did on the night before, but after her bottle, she slept through the night! I'm going to stop the nightly updates now, but I'll recap in a few days and report on how she's doing.

Ferber- Day Two

Yesterdays naps:

Nap One

-9:49: Down in crib

-9:55: Went in.

-10:07: Went in.

-10:22: Got her up, since her allotted 30 minutes had passed.

Nap Two

-2:05: Down

-2:21: Went in

-2:32: Went in

-2:44: Still not asleep, so we got her up.

Nap Three

-3:30: She fell asleep during a bottle. I woke her up, and then laid her down. She rolled over and immediately fell asleep.

-4:30: Up

Ferber- Night Two

The first night of Ferber went really well, and napping during the day went great also (despite the failed attempt at a third nap), so we were feeling good about night two. Tonight was a bath night, so we gave her her bottle before the bath to prevent her from falling asleep while she was eating. I was worried that she would get mad about the change in routine, but she did great. After she was bathed and in her jammies, I snuggled her for a few minutes. The intervals for the second night are 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and then every 12 minutes until they fall asleep.

-7:37: I said goodnight and laid her down in her crib. She rolled over and grabbed her burpcloth and her stuffed pig.

-7:40: She started to fuss. I set the timer for 5 minutes.

-7:41: She fell asleep.

Seriously, kid?!?!?! I've been stressing out about this for over a month now, wondering if you were ready, and terrified to begin in case you weren't. We made no plans for this weekend, and prepared to spend most of our time listening to you cry and staring at the timer. And on the second night you take one freaking minute to fall asleep!?!?

I'm beginning to think that the reason she was having trouble falling asleep before was because she just wanted us to back off and leave her the eff alone. I'm sure she will wake up at some point tonight, so I will update again later.

Update: Elliot woke up around 3 am. Matt gave her a bottle and laid her back down while she was still awake. She squeaked twice and fell asleep until 7 am.

Ferber- Day One

Nap One

-8:15: Elliot fell asleep in her stroller on a walk.

-8:25: I moved her from her stroller to her crib, waking her up a little (on purpose) on the way.

-9:35: Up from nap.

Nap Two

-12:35: Laid her down in her crib. She started fussing right away. Set timer for 3 minutes.

-12:38: I went in and patted her back. She kept fussing, and I left and set the timer for 5 minutes.

-12:44: Went in to comfort again. Left and set timer for 10 minutes.

-12:48: Asleep

-2:15: Awake

Nap Three (or lack thereof)

-4:35: Laid her down in the crib. She moved around and talked to herself, but didn't fuss or cry.

-4:55: Started to fuss. Set timer for 3 minutes.

-4:58: Matt went in to comfort her, then left and set the timer for 5 minutes.

-5:05: The timer went off, but by that time she had been trying to nap for 30 minutes. According to Ferber, if the nap hasn't started within 30 minutes you're supposed to get them out of bed and skip the nap, so that's what we did.

Ferber- Night One

Night one of Ferber is currently underway. We had to modify her bedtime routine somewhat, which made me nervous, but it went okay. Every other night she gets a bath, and after that we do lotion, massage, jammies, bottle, and bed. If it's not bath night, we go straight to the lotion and continue from there. She always falls asleep for the night drinking her bottle, and since the whole point of Ferber is to eliminate sleep associations and teach her to fall asleep on her own, we couldn't let her do that tonight. She got a bath yesterday, so tonight we decided to do the bottle first, then lotion and jammies. She actually didn't fall asleep drinking her bottle tonight, although she was definitely sleepy. She got pretty energetic when I changed her diaper and put her pajamas on, so I wasn't too sure she'd be able to settle down on her own. After we got her ready for bed, we gave her some snuggles and put her down.

Here's the timeline for night one:

-7:30: We gave her hugs and kisses, said goodnight, laid her down and left the room.

-7:40: She started to fuss and we set the timer for 3 minutes.

-7:43: We went in the room. She started smiling as soon as she saw us. I rolled her to her tummy, patted her back for a minute, and left again.

-7:45: More fussing. Set timer for 5 minutes.

-7:50: Went in again. Again she started smiling. I patted her back and left again. More fussing.

-7:52: Set timer for 7 minutes. Fussing turned into crying.

-7:59: We went in again. She continued to cry this time, even after she saw us. I patted her back and rubbed her head, and then we left again. She was still crying when we left the room.

-8:01: Set timer for 10 minutes.

-8:04: Crying stopped. She fell asleep!



Our plan for tonight is that I will take the 10-2 shift, and Matt will take the 2-6 shift if she wakes up. This way we will each get at least some sleep tonight. Ferber has a lot of information on eliminating night feedings, but we're just not comfortable doing that. Elliot has always been below the 20th percentile for weight, and my feeling is that if she wants to eat, I will feed her. She does actually drink her bottles at night, so I'm going to keep it up. If she only took an ounce or so, I would think she was just using them to pacify herself, but I'm pretty sure she's actually hungry, so we will continue to feed her on demand.

I think the most difficult part of this process will be getting her to go back down after her night feedings. At bedtime she has always fallen asleep while drinking her bottle, and went down without a problem. At night however, she wakes up during her bottle and will lay awake in our arms for up to an hour. This is the main reason we are doing Ferber. If she would go back down easily after a feeding, we wouldn't have a problem. I have no problem getting up to feed her, but she's becoming increasingly difficult to get back down, and I want her to learn how to put herself to sleep now, since I'm told it only gets harder once babies can pull themselves up and throw things out of their cribs.

All in all, round one went far better than I expected. We were very sad to start Ferber, as it meant the end of rocking our sweet little girl to sleep. We both love holding our little sleeping baby, so we were very emotional about that ending. We actually weren't nervous about the crying at all. We knew she would cry, of course, but we were both certain that it was time for this. There have been a few occasions where she has woken up as we laid her down. If we just leave her, she will sometimes go back to sleep on her own, and when she does that she sleeps great. This really makes us feel that this is the right thing to do for her. As Ferber says, your child might cry if you won't let them play in the street. You wouldn't like hearing them cry, but you probably also wouldn't feel guilty about not giving in to them. We feel the same way about this. I don't enjoy hearing her cry, but I know that this is going to benefit her in the long run, so I'm okay with it. She is an exceptionally quiet crier though, so I'm sure it would be harder if she was really sobbing. I am going to pump and go to bed now, and I will update when she next wakes up.

Update:

-2:55: She woke up. Matt went in and gave her a bottle.

-3:06: She finished her bottle. He gave her a kiss, said goodnight, and laid her down. She started to cry. He set the timer for 3 minutes.

-3:07: Asleep.

-6:45: Woke up for the day.

The time has come

for Ferber. ::sob:: Matt and I are both pretty heartbroken about this, not because we'll have to hear her cry, but because it means that she's growing up. She just has no idea how to put herself to sleep, and has started just laying awake in our arms at night after she drinks her bottle. If she would go right back to sleep, I would have no problem continuing to rock her, but I know she needs to learn how to do this. All of our reasons for not wanting to Ferberize are purely selfish, but we know that this is what we need to do. Parenting is hard.

On the bright side, I have new footie pajama pictures!




And tutu pictures!


She has started tripoding for a few seconds at a time, but by the time I get a picture, she's falling over. She seems to think it's pretty fun though. Wheeee!

Yesterday Elliot got to meet a new friend, which is pretty much her favorite thing ever. She looooves meeting new people. Our friend Katy was in town for a wedding, so we went to lunch with her, Brent, Chae, and Eli. Elliot occupied herself through the meal by gnawing on the wrapping paper that her present from Katy came in. I see a Christmas full of empty boxes and lots of wrapping paper in our future.

Can you spot what's missing?

Matt and I did a lightning-speed kitchen decluttering during naptime on Sunday, and much to the delight of Mr. CoffeePot, the blender has been banished to a cabinet. The coffee pot's new neighbor is my new best friend, the Crock Pot. I used it both Monday and Tuesday, and even managed to remember to put in the liner so we didn't have to clean the stoneware. I am trying to cook only with the Crock Pot on weeknights, so we can maximize our family time before the Nans goes to bed. So far it's a great success. Monday night was salsa chicken, and last night was pulled pork. Both were delicious, and both recipes made enough for leftovers. The salsa chicken is going to be reinvented tonight as quesadillas, and the pulled pork went into the freezer to use later.

Speaking of freezers, we are now the owners of a deep freezer. My parents decided to buy us one after they heard me stressing out over where to store my ever increasing freezer stash of milk (a good problem to have, I know). We got it this weekend, and it is sooooo nice not to have bags of breastmilk tucked into every nook and cranny of the upstairs freezer. I counted the stash as I boxed it up for the deep freeze, and in the past month I've gone from the all time low of 10 oz to my current supply of 270 oz! Elliot is getting about 2/3 breastmilk and 1/3 formula right now. I'm hoping to build up a large enough stash that I can quit pumping before she's one and still be able to give her a few bottle of milk every day until her 1st birthday.

During the kitchen reorganization, I decided I HAD to do something about the random feeding paraphernalia cluttering up my countertop. My solution was to organize all feeding necessities on a tray in the corner. I don't know why, but it looks so much better all contained on the tray. I finally found a use for a crystal jar I've had sitting around for years. It now contains spare bottle rings and nipples. I have limited drawer space in my kitchen, so the baby spoons went into a mug. Even the sharpie gets a home on the tray, so I am no longer searching for it to label the milk storage bags. We also keep bottles of water out with a formula dispenser, so it only takes a second to mix up a bottle in the middle of the night, and it's room temperature and ready to go! Since I'm exclusively pumping, I leave my freshly pumped milk out in a bottle rather than storing it (it's good at room temp for 8 hours) and keep that on the tray as well. The only time I ever heat a bottle is first thing in the morning. Matt or I throw a bag of milk from the freezer into some warm water when we wake up, and it's warmed up and ready to go by the time Elliot gets up.
I think my next project will be organizing the bathroom and linen closet. Any suggestions on how to fit an incredibly large amount of beauty products into a very small amount of space? I don't have the heart to be as ruthless in my decluttering of makeup as I am with kitchen utensils.

I present to you...

...the footie pajama photo series!!!! Because nothing's cuter than a baby in footie pajamas. Except maybe a kitten. In footie pajamas. But seeing as a value my life, and enjoy the fact that my blood is contained within my veins, I won't attempt to dress up my cats. You'll have to make do with pictures of my super-cute baby.

I was initially sad about de-swaddling, but now that she's sleeping without it, I am seeing the joy in buying adorable pajamas for her. She had three pairs until Friday, when her father, who is usually against purchases that aren't absolutely necessary, saw the bunny pajamas at Target and had to have them. More pictures to come as we add to the collection.

5 months old!!!

It's a week late, but here's her 5 month picture. I can't believe she's 5 months old already. That is completely unacceptable. I have to put a stop to this growing up business somehow. She is rolling around all over the place, and trying desperately to crawl. She's managed an extremely slow inchworm-type motion so far, but no real crawling. We started rice cereal this week, but had to discontinue it because it stopped her up rather badly. And when she finally managed to "clean out the pipes", it was not pretty. We're giving her a little break from solids, and will try again with in about a week, with oatmeal instead of rice.

We've added a new addition to the household. Meet the new doorway jumper:
We borrowed Eli's jumper for a day to try it out, and she loved it. I loved it too, since it gave me somewhere to put her down when we're upstairs without having to worry about her being trampled by dogs, or getting so covered in dog hair that I mistake her for one. I tried to buy it at Babies'R"Us, but they were sold out. It's a good thing they were, because when I went online to look, I found a pink one!!! It's the exact same model that we borrowed, but in fun girly colors!

I have no idea what this face is for, but it cracks me up. I'd think twice before trying to steal toys from this kid in preschool.
We got caught in the rain at the park last week. Luckily, Maclarens all come with a handy-dandy rain cover. Unfortunately, when you keep the rain cover in the basket of the stroller, and you keep the stroller in the back of the car, the plastic tends to get stuck together and takes a while to unfold. Once attached, it is fabulous though. She stayed completely dry, although she did look like she was in some sort of isolation tent.

We did it!!!!

We took our first road trip with Elliot this weekend, to St. Louis, and I am convinced that we officially have the best kid ever. She made literally NO NOISE the entire way there and the entire way back. Eight hours of driving without a peep. At one point I became concerned at her quietness, and being unable to see her in her rear-facing carseat, I stuck the camera inside her seat and took a picture to see what she was up to.

We took her to dinner on the Hill with my parents, aunt & uncle, sister and a few cousins, and today she went to her very first family reunion. She loves attention, and being the youngest one there by more than a year, she got plenty of it.

Meeting her Aunt Matilda

Having a bottle with Grandma before heading home.

There was a LOT of packing involved for our 1-night trip. I'd say about 4% of the items packed were for Matt and I. I couldn't fit everything into our normal-sized suitcase, so I had to break out the giant one. For reference, Roy is about 65 pounds.

My girls watching me pack.

On Friday, I dropped Elliot off at my mom's so I could clean and pack without interruption. The first thing I did was furminate the dogs. If you have pets and do not have a furminator, you must buy one immediately. This is what I got out of the boys in about 5 minutes.

I did a thorough furmination of Roy a few months ago, and this was the result.

I hope everyone else had a fun weekend as well!

Special Helper FAIL

Elliot is going to be one of those kids who likes to help. I can tell. She carries her washcloth to the tub for bathtime, she holds her clean diaper during changes until I'm ready for it, and if my hair is in my face, she helpfully tries to rip it out of my head so as to provide me with unobstructed vision. So when we went grocery shopping yesterday, I decided to let her hold the list. Big mistake.

(Don't worry, I recovered all of the pieces. There are no random scraps of paper lurking in my child's intestinal tract.)

Worst.Blogger.Ever

It has been a shamefully long time since I've updated. My apologies. I have lots of pictures to share though, so don't be too mad, k? I decided on Wednesday that I had to give Miss Stinky Bear some solid foods, not because I thought she needed them, but because I wanted to. Badly. I'm not sure what happened to the audio, but it's really static-y so adjust your volume accordingly.











Friday was Matt's mom's birthday, so we made a surprise visit to see Grandma at work. She owns a restaurant supply company, so the Nans obviously enjoyed it, given her love for all things mechanical and kitchen related. She was particularly impressed by the giant coffee urns in the warehouse. I think perhaps she though that Mr. CoffeePot had been working out.



We took Elliot on her second trip to Lawrence this past weekend, but it was not the fun-filled event I had hoped it would be. We had to go because Matt is in a wedding next week and needed to be fitted for his tux. I checked the stores website, which said it was open from 1-4 on Sundays. We would have rather gone earlier than that, but it is what it is, so we left around noon to make the 45 minute drive only to find when we got there that they were CLOSED!!!! Matt and I were too filled with righteous fury to enjoy the rest of the trip, but not too much to prevent us from taking a picture with a giant jayhawk.



Yesterday I finally bought some mesh feeders. I've been letting her lick apples when I eat them, and she loves it, so I thought I'd let her go for it on her own. Notice how the feeder is carefully color-coordinated with her outfit. So stylish.

I have no real reason for posting this one, except that it is uber cute.