Friday, January 30, 2009

Baby food


Ru still doesn't eat much more than breastmilk. When you feed her babyfood with a spoon, she always makes that same face as when she first had her first bite. So this week I experimented, and let her try to do it with her hands. She can pincher grab cheerios and such, and when I approached her with a spoonful of applesauce (one of the few baby foods of which she will eat more than one bite) she reached out to grab it as if it were a nice, solid cheerio. She seemed to be enjoying herself, so I let her go at it. :)


She got a little messy, but what fun she had! (and she DID continue putting it in her mouth!) It wasn't a very efficient method of eating tho. Oh, and on this bottom pic, you clearly see her first tooth. (the second is there too, but it's blocked by her thumb)

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

9 months old!



I love this dress! I guess I'd better do her height and weight, she's right around 22 lbs, I'll have to get her to hold still for her height! She is getting very good at rolling around, and walking if you hold her hands, etc. She's ready to be mobile!

She still doesn't like baby food, so we give her cheerios and other little bites of fruits, veggies, and crackers. We're still a LONG ways away from her being weaned.

Her sleep patterns are still a long ways from ideal, but we get by ok now. She's got two teeth on the bottom, and I suspect a top one is causing her trouble as we speak. (fussy fussy!) No words yet, but lots and lots of babbling! :)

Monday, January 12, 2009

Nope, not progress.

Just a quick update, the long sleep time was a fluke. The next night she also refused to go to bed until midnight, but still woke up every 2-3 hours. We're not letting her take naps after about 5:00 now, so we managed to get her asleep by 10 last night. Ugh.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

??? Progress ???

A recap since it's been a while since I discussed Ru's sleep patterns. REcently the trend has been to take 2-3 naps each day, usually at least two of which are only 1/2 hour. Altho sometimes she sleeps for two hours. She's pretty inconsistant.
She goes to bed between 8 and 9 most nights. She fights sleep for anywhere between 5 minutes and 1.5 hours. Daddy has great fun on those 1.5 hour nights.
Then she sleeps for anywhere from 1/2 hour to 3 hours. (usually depends on how much she ate, if not much than 1/2 hour later we feed her more and then she sleeps longer.) She generally sleeps anywhere from 1.5 to 3 hours at a stretch all night, and wakes up to be fed breifly, then goes back to sleep. She does know it's night time, altho occasionally she thinks a 1 am party might be fun. She's usually only up for an hour if that happens, since we keep it dark and boring in her room all night long.
By 6 am she is usually waking up every hour or so, maybe every half hour. I usually climb in the twin bed and snuggle after 7, my goal is to get to sleep in until 8.
We usually get up for the day around 8:30.

Still reading? I shall reward you with a totally unrelated but very cute pic of Ru.

So the first set of question marks is for the beginning of last night. We had choir practice last night, and Auntie Judy is out of town so I figured I would have to handle Ru mostly by myself. So when she was fussy and looking like she really needed a nap around 5:45, we decided to give it a go even tho we usually don't do naps after 6. She did go to sleep right around 6, and stayed asleep until right around 7. We did go to choir, and she was very good, she sat happily on auntie sharon's lap the whole time. (the kid has a jillion aunties at church... ;)
We got home around 8:30, and Brian went thru the standard bedtime routine while I caught up on my email and played on the computer.
Sometime after 9:30 I noticed the noises from Ru's room were getting louder instead of quieter. So I went to pump so I could relieve Brian, as he gets very frustrated when she refuses to go to sleep. By the time I was done she was yelling pretty constantly. Not crying in distress or discomfort, just yelling/crying because she's bored and refusing to go to sleep.
So I let Brian go to bed, and I turned on a lamp and got into bed with her and played my nintendo DS and chatted with her. She quieted down and watched for a while. When she got bored and started fussing I gave her a toy, and when she got bored with that I switched to another toy, etc.
Soon it was after 11:30, so I decided to change her diaper, and maybe spike her bottle with some rice cereal. We had to go get the rice cereal, and then the dog wanted out, so we finally got back into bed, lights off, at midnight. She went to sleep pretty quickly. Finally. So bedtime was not a good time last night.
Fast forward to about 4:30, when Brian came in to wake me up to pump. I was aware Ru had woken up enough to wimper and shift around a bit, but she had not cried or needed me all night! I pumped and went back to bed, she didn't wake up and need to be fed until 6:00. She didn't eat much, so I wasn't suprised when she woke up again at 6:30. I was a bit more pushy with the bottle when she started to drift off and got her to eat a bit more.
We woke up again (and for the day) at 9:30. So in 9.5 hours, she only woke up twice!!! That's a record for her!

Here's another fun, totally unrelated pic.

So the second set of question marks are for my wondering: If she did this 9.5 hour stretch consistantly, would it actually be an improvement over our 12 hours of broken sleep? Was it the late nap that made her stay up so late? Was it the staying up late that made her sleep so well? Should I wear my lucky socks more often??

Tune in next time for more nighttime adventures of the Olsen kid....