I read something funny the other day.  It said that until you become a new parent, you don’t realize what a full night’s sleep means to you and that most new parents, if given the choice between one good night’s sleep and world peace would probably choose the night of sleep.  I know I would.

We’ve had a bit of a rough week here.  Yesterday I was desperately trying to get Alethea to take a nap in her crib.  After she only slept for half an hour and then refused to go back down, I called a friend in tears and explained that the only way Alethea would sleep is in her swing and I can’t get her to sleep in her crib and I don’t know why.  After listening to me vent she very calmly said to me, “Elise, if Alethea sleeps better in the swing and your day is easier if she sleeps in the swing, why don’t you just put her in her swing?”

Well, I feel like a cop-out parent, but Alethea is now sleeping in her swing and last night she slept for 12 hours and only woke up twice and today has been easier.

I just hope that I don’t have to buy her a hammock when she gets bigger.

Today I decided that since Alethea is starting to grow out of some of her smaller 3-6 month clothes, I would go through her stack of 6-9 month stuff to see if she is big enough to wear any of it.  And here’s what I don’t get…

Alethea is still a size newborn (yes, she weighs almost 15 pounds) in Gerber pants, but the 6 month Circo shorts were already too small (oops! should have pulled them out sooner.)

Despite the fact that she can still wear the Gerber newborn pants, she’s in a Gerber 6-9 month Onesie.

And, to top it all off (no pun intended), the 6 month Circo Onesie-style shirt that came with the too small shorts is huge on Alethea.

Does my child have weird proportions or do baby clothing manufacturers just throw darts at a dartboard to determine what size label to put on their garments?

Today is Alethea’s three-month birthday.  Happy Birthday Baby!

Last week on Tuesday and Thursday she decided she didn’t want to eat anymore.  We ended up taking her to the doctor on Friday morning to talk about possible causes.  The doctor suggested that it could have been something I’d eaten or perhaps it was acid reflux bothering her.  I’m inclined to think the later is true, since my diet hasn’t changed much lately.  As a result, we’ve let her sleep in her swing (not turned on) the past few nights since that holds her in a reclined position, rather than flat on her back and that really seems to have helped.  Now she is waking up one or two times a night rather than five or six and is also eating a bit more regularly.  Whew!

When we were at the doctor she weighed in at 14 lbs, 11 oz, so she is still gaining weight nicely.  (Since it wasn’t a well-baby visit, they didn’t check height and head circumference.)

Her motor skills continue to advance.  She can now grasp toys and bring them to her mouth in a deliberate motion.  Her favorite toy continues to be her play gym where she lays on the mat and toy animals hang over her head.  She can spend 30 or 40 minutes happily batting at the animals, trying to get them into her mouth, and admiring herself in the attached mirror.

She is very close to being able to sit up on her own.  If she leans to the front and puts her hands on the ground she can stay that way for 4 or 5 seconds without any help.  Then she tries to put one of her hands in her mouth and proceeds to fall over.

Alethea is still doing a lot of talking and it always cracks me up when she manages to get the sounds of a real word out.  So far she has said, hi, hello and yellow.  And to make my side of the family proud, the other day out of the blue she just looked at me and said, “Iowa.”  Well, more like, “Eyeeohwaaa” but close enough, right?

All in all, I would say that of the first three months of Alethea’s life, this past one has been the hardest for me.  Still, it’s always great to see Alethea’s personality coming out more and more and I figure every night that passes can only be bringing us closer to that beautiful time when she begins sleeping through the night on a regular basis.

I finally caught it on video:

Sorry it’s been so long since I last posted.  I’ve been too exhausted to do much of anything lately.  For the past two weeks or so Alethea has been waking up three to six times a night so most nights her longest stretch of continuous sleep is about 3 hours.  As a result I want to burn all of my “Baby’s First Year” type books which include a congratulatory note in the 12 weeks chapter about how my baby is probably sleeping through the night now.  Ha… right…

It sure does feel like we’re going backwards on the sleep front.  Alethea hasn’t slept for 6-7 hours straight since she was about 6 weeks old.  Ever since I figured out how to get her to sleep with the swaddle/pacifier combo, she has been taking better and more regular naps during the day, but nighttime sleep seems to have gone out the window as a result of daytime naps.

I told Peter jokingly last night that maybe we should go back to keeping her up all day without naps so she’ll sleep at night.  His reply was, “Sure, if you also want to go back to spending all day with a cranky, difficult child who won’t let you put her down.”  Hmmm… maybe not.

I’ve been reading the blog Chronicles of a Babywise Mom lately.  (We’re not totally following the Babywise method at our house, but I’ve found a lot of the information to still be helpful.)  In her blog she talks about progress with children as an upward spiral.  From different points on the spiral, it may appear as though you are moving further from your goal, but in time you will circle back around and realize that in fact, progress is being made.

Here’s hoping we loop back around soon…

This weekend we did babysitting swapping with our friends from church, Ben and Sarah.  On Friday they watched Alethea while we went to the Twins game and on Saturday we watched their son Judah while they went out on a date.  It was fun to get to spend a little more time getting to know Judah since he is Alethea’s hospital buddy.

What’s a hospital buddy?  It’s the term we came up with to describe the odd sort of way Alethea and Judah are related.  You see, Sarah and Ben started coming to our church when she was pregnant with Judah.  Her due date was in early May and Alethea was supposed to arrive in early April, so theoretically Alethea was going to be a month older than Judah.  After I went a couple weeks over due, I was scheduled to be induced on April 24th.  Then on the 23rd Sarah called me and said they were sending her in early to be induced because of some potential complications with continuing her pregnancy.  I asked her what hospital they were going to (somehow that had never come up in all the pregnancy conversations we’d had) and it turned out they were going to the same hospital we were.  Thus we ended up in the same hospital on the same weekend delivering our babies.  Judah was born April 24th and Alethea arrived on the 27th.  It was kind of a funny coincidence and apparently fairly rare as one of the nurses commented that she’d never seen it happen before.

Here are some cute pictures of the hospital buddies:

Judah says,"Hey man, give me five!"

Holding hands was their idea

Check out Alethea’s film debut:

We’ve had three rough nights in a row now.  It seems that when I thought we were turning a corner on the sleep front, we were actually just doing a U-turn.  Sigh….  Alethea is still going to sleep fairly easily with the swaddle/pacifier combination, but she won’t stay asleep and I’m not sure why.

At 2am I just have to keep saying to myself, “At least she’s cute, at least she’s cute.”

Here’s a couple pictures of our cutie: