Happy Father’s Day!
The girls and I are incredibly lucky to have you.
We love you!
Dear TT-
Five months??? FIVE months? Hold the phone here. Where in the world did that time go? Too fast, too too too fast, baby girl! It’s already April and it feels like Christmas was just yesterday. I blinked my eyes and you went from being a tiny little potato who could barely look around without her eyes crossing to a roly poly 16lb blonde haired blue eyed smiler who is almost ready to sit on her own!
You are such a happy baby. You wake up happy, you smile at everyone and you seem to have a pretty darn good time whatever we are doing. Your favorite person is Mommy, as it should be :), followed closely by Q and Daddy. You’re old enough that know when a “stranger” is holding you and you don’t like that very much at all. That’s not great for babysitting purposes but we are working on it. We’re also working on getting you to take a bottle. We haven’t been very good at practicing though. We really need to work on that!
You have rolled both ways by now but you don’t do it regularly. You’re getting really good at sitting up and when you’re on your back you constantly try to sit up. It makes bath time very interesting! You grab everything within reach and put things straight into your mouth. Nothing is safe from your chubby little hands. 🙂 It’s time to start babyproofing things around here. I have a feeling you’re going to take off in a few months and turn our world upside down. Q is going to be totally amazed when you become mobile.
I hope you don’t mind that I talk so much about your chub. I LOVE how big you are. I love each and every roll on your thighs, your huge cheeks and big soft belly. Whenever I smother you with kisses I can’t help but marvel at the fact that I MADE that. You grew inside my body and I’ve fed you from my body for the past five months so I’m pretty proud of every ounce of you. Only one more month before you start solids. I’m not ready but I think you will be!
Sleep? ehhhhh… I’m going to call Fight Club on this one but you nap for me and you can go to sleep on your own so you’re doing ok by my estimation. Your sister is still giving us a run for our money and between the two of you, Daddy and I pretty much hate the hours of 7:30-10:00PM but we have nowhere to go but up!
My wish right now is that I had more time to spend with you one on one. That’s something that I’m trying to work on. I love napping together and snugglenursing. It’s kind of my favorite thing. Balancing two kids is no joke but we’re learning and we’re getting better.
This might be my favorite picture if us that I have. So sweet and so representative of us right now.
Right now you like “singing” and exploring the noises you are able to make. You do this a LOT. You love when we actually sing to you too. Q has started serenading you on a regular basis which makes my heart explode.
Little TT, you light up my world. I love that you look like me and I love that you’re so happy to be a part of our little world.
Love you always and always,
Mommy
The first rule of baby sleep is that you DO NOT talk about Fight Club… I mean baby sleep. If things are going well and you breathe a word of it to the outside world, things will get bad really fast. Sometimes it will be so bad that your child will never again perform the sleep feat that you were so excited about.
I have bonded with most of my Twitter friends over the common ground of breastfeeding, attachment parenting, and being up in the middle of the night trying to get a baby to go back to sleep, usually via breastfeeding or attachment parenting. There is something we mothers of non-sleepers refer to as “Sleep Karma” which means the moment you mention your child’s sleep success they will either wake up or never do it again. How many times have you sat down after a rough bedtime, texted or tweeted “finally asleep, that was rough” and then had your child immediately wake up? That’s Sleep Karma. It’s an evil beast. This only applies to talking about good sleep though. You can complain about crappy sleep as much as you want on social media and nothing bad will happen except maybe some advice to just leave your kid alone to cry (which you’d be doing if that were something you wanted to do thankyouverymuch).
Three weeks ago one of my best friends assured me that TT would grow out of her “up every two hours” four month wakeful period and gave the example that her nine month old was finally a great sleeper. Her great sleeper woke seven times that night. He hasn’t slept since. Fight Club.
My most recent incident was when I posted on Instagram and Facebook that TT slept 9 hours straight in her Magic Sleepsuit. Everyone oohed and ahhed, some silently cursed my good fortune and… she hasn’t slept well since. Fight Club.
I don’t know why, after nearly three years of parenting, I still let myself fall victim to Sleep Karma. When you’re a parent of a non-sleeper you really want to shout from the rooftops when your kid actually starts sleeping just to have evidence that it actually happened. Now I live in fear though. Sleep ebbs and flows and pretty much drives me nuts so I’m trying to just let it be.
I’d tell you how TT is doing now at 4.5 months but… I can’t. Fight Club.
[…] ehhhhh… I’m going to call Fight Club on this one but you nap for me and you can go to sleep on your own so you’re doing ok by my […]
Dear Q,
It has finally happened, that milestone I've imagined for so long, you're pretty much potty trained! I wasn't sure when it would happen. A few of your little friends potty trained right around 2 and I felt like you were behind the curve but I wasn't in a hurry either. Even though I don't love changing diapers, having you in diapers was pretty easy on me.
About a month ago you became very interested all of the sudden and we had about two days of potty peeing and then you became very resistant so I put you back in your diapers and vowed to wait until you were actually ready. Two weeks ago I decided to put the Elmo Potty Time DVD on for the first time and halfway through you said “I want to go peepee on the potty!” so I set out your frog potty and we haven't looked back!
Luckily for me, you have totally bought into our chocolate chip/M&M reward system and you've been going on your own, poop and all, without much reminding on my part. Hallelujah! So far you go almost exclusively on the frog potty so next we will work on going on the big potty. The day where I don't have to deal with your poop besides to flush it will be a very welcome and happy one.
You haven't worn pants at home for two weeks now and you love it. I find it to be hilarious and endearing. Your Daddy is ready for you to start wearing clothes again. 🙂
Going out is definitely more intimidating now since I have to be able to get you to a bathroom, with TT in tow, whenever we go out but I know it will get easier. I'm very excited for you.
So congratulations, big girl! This is such a big step! Hope this isn't too embarrassing for you to read later in life 🙂
All my love,
Mommy
My original post on Baby Merlin's Magic Sleepsuit is Here.
Week Two – Two steps back and one step forward.
I wasn't feeling very optimistic about the sleepsuit after week one's less than stellar sleeping but we persevered. I didn't think she'd sleep any better in a sleep sack so we kept wearing the sleepsuit.
In addition to hoping she will sleep longer stretches at night, I've been working hard on getting her to a place where she can fall asleep without help from me. It's a pretty darn important skill for her to to have since I can't always spend a ton of time putting her down for naps. She was doing well before we introduced the sleepsuit but during her big growth spurt she wasn't doing it anymore.
Drowsy but awake looks like this.
Thankfully, that skill has re-emerged, for the most part. The past few days our nap routine has been to watch for sleepy cues, put her in the sleepsuit, nurse for a little bit, unlatch then put her in the crib. She usually cries when I set her down so I'll set my hand on her chest and give her some good “Shhhhhhhhh” ing. I want her to be awake when I set her down but very much ready to fall asleep.
It's been working.
The past few days she's also been going back to sleep after partially waking up half way through her morning nap. Go Little T!
Now for night time… About a week ago I was at my wits end. She was up every one to two hours and taking a full feeding every time she woke up. I was cursing the Four Month Wakeful and cursing the suit and cursing pretty much everything at that point.
But, we turned a corner. First it was a a 3 hour stretch, then 4, then on Sunday night she slept 5.5 hours and I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. It's not perfect but we are trending in the right direction. I really hope we can get back to good sleep soon. I was getting really worried that having her sleep in our room wasn't going to work and the only other place that we can put her is in Q's room!
I'm ordering the next size up because the growth spurt has made her almost too big for the 3-6 month size. It's hard to get her arms in. My sister in law ordered a set for my little niece and they have had a much better experience than we have. She took to the suit right away. I'm hoping that the suit will start working better for us soon but I'm not going to give it up. I'll use it until it doesn't make sense to use it anymore. Maybe when the weather gets warm enough that it doesn't make sense to sleep in fleece. 🙂
Sleep tight, angel girl
Just wondering if the sleep suit ended up working for you? We have been using it for over a week now, and haven’t really seen an improvement. Although, I do think that he is going through his 3 month growth spurt right now. I’m hoping it will help him sleep longer stretches soon and become more consistent 🙂 If not, then I am going to try the Zipadee Zip next.
Hey Julie, TT sleeps in our room because we don’t have enough space for her to have her own. On average she wakes 2-3 times a night. She’s 5.5 months old and some times she sleeps 8 hours stretches, some nights it’s 2 hour stretches. We’re still using the Merlin suit for two reasons. 1. She knows it’s time to sleep when she puts it on and usually goes down pretty easily. 2. It keeps her from rolling all over the place when she’s putting herself to sleep. I haven’t been able to get her to sleep longer than 45 minutes without it so we’re sticking with it for now!
Just wondering how you nursed with the sleep suit on. Is it cumbersome?
Amy, I didn’t find it any more cumbersome than a regular sleep sack. I just held her like I normally would. I was also able to nurse in side lying position with her in the suit.