Taking a Stand

Grace has been such a great sleeper for the past 10 months. She’d soothe herself down and everything. But lately because we’ve either thought she was teething or sick (or wanted to avoid her crying when we were in a houseful of people on a trip to Texas), we’ve rocked her down to sleep, meaning she’s totally asleep or close to it when she’s placed in her crib. Basically we’d fallen into a routine of bad habits. As a result, she’s been hard to put to bed lately and for the last week she was waking up in the middle of the night. Well, actually it was often even before midnight.

On top of this, Gracie's developed a strong attachment to me and sometimes will cry when I leave the room. Not a very good thing when you’re trying to put her down to sleep.

After a challenging week, we concluded that she’s not teething, is getting enough to eat and is not sick. So that meant we could try something we’d been avoiding -- letting her cry it out. It’s called simply CIO for those parents in-the-know about sleep issues, and there are many opinions on this method, strong opinions both ways. We won‘t get into that here.

Jay and I decided I’d give this a try while he was gone for the weekend. We figured if both of us were around, one would convince the other to give in to her cries. I texted Jay throughout the days and nights to let him know how things were going. I also thought it'd be useful (to myself and others) to document my baby adventure. This is pretty much exactly what I jotted down throughout the sessions:

Friday

Today/tonight we begin the great baby experiment.

Morning nap

I started the morning nap process at 9:43 a.m. and she was down by 9:56. I didn’t put her down totally asleep and she was fine with that. A good start to the day. Will do the same process for afternoon nap and then the grand finale, tonight.

11 a.m. She’s still sleeping. I’m thinking the ease of this morning nap might be deceiving since she’s so tired.

11:22 a.m. Grace starts waking up slowly. A good nap.

Afternoon nap

1:38 p.m. We start the nap process.

1:51 p.m. I am out of room. She watched me leave, gave a shout out squirmed and flopped around. She was laying down, then standing up, and back down. Wimper. Cry. Sob. Stand.

Let the CIO begin.

Her cries are sounding like swears. Must remind myself that this is good for her. We want her to be able to go to sleep on her own. All my babies, independent.

Thank goodness for this video monitor. I am not sure I could do this with out being able to see she’s OK. Plus it’s somewhat entertaining.

Ok, now for the 5-minute check in.

Ooooh, that pissed her off just like they said it would.

Now the swears are worse.

Think I’m going to go see if the mail has come.

Wow you can hear her all the way in the garage. Oh, great, we got a parenting magazine in the mail. How handy.

Almost time for the 10-minute check. Heading in …

Now it sounds like she’s swearing in German. The tone of her cries makes it sound like she’s saying: “I’m so disappointed in you!” In German, of course.

She’s so determined to not fall asleep. Good thing pug is not phased by her crying and can be my furry sanity through this.

Hold up. She sat for a minute. Oh, now she’s up again.
Now she’s down.
Now she’s up.

This is an interesting way to pass the time.

Went in for the 15-minute check. She’s so exhausted but so determined to stay awake.

Next check in 20 minutes.

She’s sitting and sobbing. Looking around.
Makes a mommy’s heart hurt.

She’s quieting down …

I think she’s sleeping sitting up.

And we have sleep.

2:50 p.m. About an hour.

Not so bad to do during the day … now tonight might be a different story.

And the night has begun.

Started putting her down around 7:40 p.m. and it is now 7:51. She’s crying and standing.

Now it’s 5 minutes later and I will give her a visit.

She’s almost doing more bouncing than crying. Not sure what that’s about.

And I’m going in.

And I'm back and I hear the “disappointed” cry.

Back in around 8:10 p.m.

She’s so dang strong-willed and stubborn. Where did she get that from?

She’s sitting, and she's up.

Do I go in? Waiting a bit.

She’s sitting and whimpering. Wobbling like she’s about ready to …

Now sitting up silently, wavering. Not ready to give in yet.

And we have sleep! 8:19 p.m.

Awesome! About 30 minutes. Now my only dilemma is a night waking.

Saturday

She slept in ‘til 7 a.m. When I opened her door and she was sitting up just looking at me. We were both happy as you can see in this picture : )

Naps

The morning nap wasn’t totally uneventful, but she’s settled on her own after 20 seconds of crying. Then the afternoon nap happened in car.

And the night has begun.
Starting the nighttime routine at 7:21 left room and left at 7:36 p.m.

Starts out in the standing position crying. Looking like she’s going to toss her doll Bitsy Bear out of the crib. She’s dangling it over as if threatening me. “If you don’t come in here, I’ll drop her. Don’t test me, I’ll do it!” Makes me think she knows I’m watching.

I’m going in for 5-minute check unless she sits down.

Deciding not to go in. Seems it might escalate things instead of calm things down at this point.

She’s not screaming … so I’m making the judgment to not go in.

Change of plans. I had to go in to fix a crib malfunction.

Ooooooooooh she’s not happy. Not one bit.

She’s quieting, playing with her hair.

And we have lay down. 8:04 p.m.

Now lets see if we have a full night. I sense, no.

Sunday

But I was wrong. Ye of little faith. We all (baby, pug and I) slept in 'til around 7 a.m. again! A couple good nights of sleep has never been so meaningful. I think it was a confidence builder for everyone. Jay and I are more confident in our parenting decisions and Grace is more confident in being on her own. We'll she's not totally on her own, of course. Bitsy Bear is there for her, sometimes as a comfort object, sometimes as a hostage.

True Colors

As many of you know, I'm finishing my dissertation (I've been "finishing" it for the past few years now : ), and my topic is images of girlhood in the media. When I was pregnant, there was a part of me that was worried about having a girl. I didn't want to end up over-analyzing my kid's childhood. To tell you the truth, I haven't been that preoccupied yet, although I do pay attention to how gender-focused babyness can be, especially what I call the pink/blue dichotomy. I was going to buy a sippy cup a few months ago and my two options were a pink cup (with princesses on it) or a blue cup (with cars on it). I decided to postpone my purchase and later bought one that changed colors when you put cold liquids in it. Ha! Take that, you producers of gender-specific sippy cups.

I'm not opposed to pink and we dress Grace in pink on a weekly basis. That said, I do have some outfits that could be considered more boyish because they are sans bows and glitter. Many of these have doggies on them, because, well, I love dogs. Turns out the "boy and his dog" thing is prevalent in baby clothing because I've only found one doggy top in the infant girl area of the store. Most of her doggy-themed clothes are from the boy's section. When she wore one of these non-pink outfits to a holiday craft sale I had people ask how old he is. I understand that clothes are all strangers have to go on when trying to identify the gender of a baby, but it just bugs me that no pastels = boy.

Still, I am not as hyped up as I thought I'd be. I love seeing Grace in girly clothes just as much as I like seeing her in overalls. (If you look closely at this picture you'll see her onesie has pink and glitter on it.) I am excited to see her play with the doll we got her for Christmas, just as much as I'm looking forward to seeing her play with cars and trucks. If she ends up being more of a girly girl than I was/am -- and it wouldn't take much -- that's fine with me. I just always want her to know she has choices.

My mom offered to by her a knitted hat at the aforementioned craft sale and I selected the pink one, hoping to plop it on her head and dispel any confusion. Grace promptly grabbed the hat and yanked it off her head. Her choice. That's my girl!

Gestures of All Kinds

I really enjoy taking Grace places and that's so the opposite of what I thought I'd say before she was born. Part of the reason is she's so dang sociable and chatty. So much so that it's hard for us to figure out when/if her first words have/had happened. Usually it's the parents that are trying to convince others that their kid's said his/her first word. But in our case, others have been trying to convince us. I finally got a library card at the Menomonie library and while I was filing out a form Grace looked at one of the librarians and made a "hi" sound. The librarian looked at me, and asked, "Did she just say hi to me?" I said, "Maybe." The librarian was convinced after Grace repeated the word a few more times and told me, "I'm going with it. She said hi." Then the next evening we had company and she seemingly said hi to our friends. They did a double-take and had the same reaction as the librarian, again convinced that Grace had just said hi.

Along with the "hi" is often a wave. She has two styles of waving right now. One is a graspy, grabby wave and the other is more of your homecoming queen-on-a-float wave. The first gesture that she learned though was from our nanny. The ever-popular "so big" with arms stretched over her head in a touchdown motion. She does it if we ask: "How big is Gracie?" (She also sometimes does it when I ask: "What do the Vikings never get?" Hee.)

My two proudest teachings so far are doggy related. Grace was initially grabby when it came to interactions with Ella, but I always would show her how to pet a dog nicely and I would say "nice pet" in a soft tone. So now Grace does smooth petting motions and says "Nice." Well not really. She says some sort of "word" in a soft tone though and it's super cute and an especially good lesson for her to have learned. Grace is quite the dog person already and loves to crawl after Ella. Poor pug who's used to napping 20 hours a day gets exhausted with all of this activity sometimes. The expressions on the faces of both of our girls in this photo really says it all. Gracie says: "C'mon, lets play!" Ella says: "Where's the off button on this kid!"

The other dog-related teaching occurred through me pointing at dogs in her books and pointing at Ella and saying "doggy" and then panting like a dog. Grace will now mimic that. Very cute, not very practical. Practicality can wait.

Little Things

I got up in the middle of the night one night last week ... well not in the middle of the night since it was quarter to 4 ... anyway Grace woke up. Since she goes to bed before 8 p.m., if she gets herself awake after 2 a.m. or so, she's going to be hungry. She only does this once a month or so, so I don't mind getting up too much. We are usually not totally sure why she wakes up. It could be that she gets herself into an awkward position, although she has the ability to fall asleep in the weirdest poses -- in fact, we call her yoga baby when we see her in the monitor sometimes. Then we were thinking that we may need to turn the heat up a bit. (She might have her mom's preconditioned coldness.) But after a few ornery evenings and naptimes we think it's just that she's getting a plethora of teeth. So on this fine evening/morning, I got a bottle made and went in. She was wimpery and I popped the bottle in her mouth. She grabbed the side of the bottle with one hand and held the bottle up. One hand. This was the first time she ever truely held her own bottle. After a few seconds she started to use the other hand too. As I sat there and watched, I was thinking that it was highly likley she needed a diaper change, as it had been about 8 hours. So I thought I'd tempt fate and put her down on the changing table. She kept holding her bottle througout the change. I was so proud. Proudness over "little" things -- noises, movements, looks, interactions. Those little things add up so quickly these days and are in fact a big deal.

Speaking of big deals. We've had trouble with our laptop computer lately and it just so happens that we download all photos of Gracie onto that computer. I save them on to disks in three-month increments so this was the weekend I was planning on doing just that. But last Sunday the computer locked up and wouldn't let us get our documents. At first I was ornery about it and mad at myself for not saving them more frequently. Then I was sad that we may lose all the photos we had of Grace from ages 6 months to 9 months. (Her Halloween pumpkin photo was taken after the computer meltdown.) The missing photos would be especially noticable because I'd purchased a little photo album thing which had a separate book for each of these quarterly increments of photos. Then I became OK with it. I figured it'd be just a story we'd tell Grace when she was older. "Back in 2008 we used this thing called a laptop computer where we stored digital photos of you ..." Jay was ultimately able to recover the images, but we've learned our lesson and are asking for an external hard drive for Christmas (hint hint). This will not be happening again ...

Sound of Silence

Gracie and Jay have taken a trip to Elk River to visit Grandma Patti and I’ve stayed behind to work on my dissertation. For those that don’t know, the labor and delivery of this 200-some page paper has been drawn out and painful. Giving birth to Grace was a snap compared to this task. I need to be disciplined because I know Jay will not be pleased if he comes home to a pug that knows 5 new tricks.

I have been so excited to have this 36 hours alone (well, with pug : ) to focus on my work, but I’m missing my little girl. It's so quiet and calm! Grace has so much going on these days with substantial changes in her mobility, vocality and size. She’s officially crawling. It took a few trial runs, but she’s got it down now. She especially likes to follow Ella’s tail. Good thing the dog’s still quicker than the baby : ) Since I can no longer trust that she’ll stay where I put her down, I take Grace around from room to room with me when I need to get things done. One place she’s come to like a lot is our walk-in closet. I bring her in there when I’m trying to get ready to leave the house in the morning. While I’m figuring out what to wear, Grace rearranges my shoes and sometimes pulls down a shirt or two. It's almost as if she's trying to tell me what I should put on. I never thought about wearing strappy, sparkly high heels with my pink "Got Milk?" sweatshirt. Might just have to give that a try.

Chatting, “singing” and clapping are now common sounds around the house. The clapping is awfully cute, the "singing," not as cute. ("Singing” is what I like to call her shrieks.) Now her chatting, on the other hand, is indeed cute. She's much more expressive these days. She really puts some emotion into her “words.” When she’s upset, I swear I hear some four-letter words in her babbles.

A big change lately is the transition to a bigger car seat. She was starting to look like a giant in the infant seat and seems a lot more comfy in this new one. No more infant seat means that when we go shopping she actually has to sit in the cart like a big girl as you can see in the photo. (Yes, when I went to Kmart last week I was the goofy mom snapping pictures of my daughter in a shopping cart.) She loved grabbing at things as we weaved through racks of clothes.

Speaking of clothes, I keep getting asked what Grace is going to be for Halloween. My answer: “Whatever costume is cheapest when I go shopping next Friday.” I keep looking for clever, easy baby costumes (any suggestions?). We’ll see how ambitious I get. Tune in next week.

Moving Forward – Looking Back

Last weekend we had the chance to get a glimpse of what life was like before baby. We had tickets to a concert in St. Paul and signed up Grandma Patti and Grandpa Dennie to watch Gracie girl overnight. (It took a lot of arm twisting : ) Then Grandma Jane and Grandpa Greg agreed to take Ella for the weekend, so we were totally “kid” free.

The weekend was good for us all. Grandparents had a good time taking care of our girls. And perhaps more importantly we were comfortable with being away. I even fully slept through the night – something I didn’t do at all the first night we spent away from Grace. (The restful sleep might have had something to do with the fact that when we were at the concert I had a few drinks, the first in over a year.)

On the way to pick Grace up we commented on how it seemed like we’d been away from her for much more than 36 hours. When we reunited it was great to see that little smiley face.

The whole family was smiley that weekend, because we just learned we got renters for our house in Apple Valley. Although we’re extremely happy we got renters, there is a bit of sadness about officially leaving the house. The main reason: it’s Gracie’s first home and our first home as a family. To prepare for the renters we needed to redo the nursery which had been custom painted with Snoopy and Woodstock. While we do feel a tinge of sadness, we’ve also come to realize how much (and how quickly) our house in Menomonie has truely become home. The open floor plan really fits how we function as a family.

Speaking of floor plans, Gracie’s exploring ours more fully. She’s so very close to crawling. In fact, the other night I was readjusting her crib mattress and set her on the floor close to me, but not right next to me. I turned my attention to the mattress for a few minutes and turned back and she was tugging on my pant leg. She's always surprising us with her mobility. In fact, I heard her wake up around 2:30 a.m. a few nights ago and turned on the monitor, expecting to see her kicking her legs a bit. Instead, I saw her sitting up, looking around and exploring her new view. (Thus, the lowering of the crib mattress.) As this video shows, she’s much more adept at sitting than crawling at the moment.

We’re excited for her to become more mobile and independent, but are also a bit melancholy and nervous. And it’s only the beginning …

Take a Look

Jay and I always get comments about who Grace looks like. The resemblance can’t be based soley on hair and eye color because all three of us have brown eyes and brown hair. It seems like the “She looks like Jay,” comments outnumber the “She looks like Kate” comments by a slim margin. (Regardless, everyone agrees she's a cutie as you can see : )

Here are some other themes:

Newborn -->Infant: Personally, I think she looked more like me when she was a newborn and is starting to look more like Jay now.

Features: Another comment is that the top half of Gracie’s face is all Jay, and the bottom half is all me.

Mood: The resemblance seems to shift depending on what mood she’s in. When she’s thoughtful and contemplative, she looks like me. When she’s laughing and mischievous, she looks like Jay. (This isn’t based on just my opinion, but I can’t divulge my sources : )

Speaking of family resemblances, I did this Yearbook Yourself thing that has been on a few friend’s blogs. If you haven’t seen it, it puts your photo into yearbook photos of different eras. Quite interesting and such a good use of my free time, I might add. A few photos were eerily familiar because they looked so much like relatives, especially my mom. Others also showed me what I would have looked like if I’d have developed my styling skills in high school.

For your entertainment:

Bet that some people (i.e. Jay) would say the glasses in this photo (1966) aren't that much different than ones I acually wear today.

This looks a lot like my mom at that time, or so I think she did, since I wasn't around in 1966 : )

And finally, this (1990) is how I would've looked if I could've ever gotten the hang of how to use the dang curling iron. Truely a skill I've never mastered.

And that might be for the best. That said, I was the recipient of many a perm in the late 1980s, so I'm not sure that's any better. I'm hoping Gracie never learns what the perming experience is all about and I'm crossing my fingers that she doesn't ask her mom for curling iron tips.