2 Days until 11 Months October 15, 2012

Since my last post, Sydney has literally made strides in her walking. She no longer crawls except while going upstairs, she is now a full-time walker. She spends her days walking back and forth from the living room to the kitchen to the eat-in kitchen carrying various toys in her hands. Sometimes she stops to clap or wave at me or to tug on me to pick her up.

Naps have improved drastically. Her typical schedule is a nap around 9:30-10 for 1 hr.-1 hr., 15 min. and then a 2nd nap for 45 minutes or so. This still varies by day though as some days she will not go to sleep for a 2nd nap and just plays in her crib for an hour.

She has become a very happy and even more vivacious baby who is obviously on the verge of being a toddler. We just took her to the pumpkin patch for the first time and she was a bit overwhelmed, but ended up getting a few good pictures.

Her favorite foods now include: pasta, cheerios, whole wheat pancakes; obviously she is on a carb kick :).

Nighttime Sleep- Sydney is still not technically sleeping through the night. She will sleep all of the way through about once a week, but most nights she wakes up once for a small, 5-6 minute feeding and then falls right back to sleep. I still don’t mind it too much, but at 12 months we are going to work on night-weaning the week of Thanksgiving while Ralph is off of school so that he can go in to her and calm her down if she does wake to eat.

Almost 10 months and a walker!!! September 11, 2012

Big news, Sydney started walking on September 7th at 9 1/2 months!!! I knew it was going to happen any day and now she is taking steps to and from everything, though to get around quickly, she still prefers to crawl. 

Her naps are more consistent with 2 aday anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour, 5 minutes. Some afternoons, she refuses to go down though and I fear that means she is almost ready to transition to 1 nap, but I’m holding on until she is at least 12 months, fingers crossed.

Sydney is the most amazing little girl and we couldn’t ask for a more wonderful daughter. Her belly laughs are the most wonderful sound on the planet and I love her smile with her 6 big-girl teeth :). 

She loves people food and her favorites include avocado, all meat(if she can feed it to herself), Cheerios, puffs, and most fruits and vegetables. If it is on my plate, she is especially fond of it :). 

Almost 9 months August 11, 2012

Our round of visitors are now gone after a fun 3 weeks. As anxious as I was about Sydney’s naps and so forth, things actually went relatively well and I think made me a little less anxious in general.  Though we were basically transitioned down to 2 naps, we have had about a week of getting back into the swing of things with 3 30 minute naps. Some nights we have been able to get her down around 6:30 or so as opposed to 5:45 which makes for a nicer wake up. Today, she surprised us with nap #1 lasting 1 hour, 12 minutes and the 2nd nap lasting 40  minutes. I don’t anticipate them being like this from now on, but they are nice when she extends them just a little so that I can get something done :). She is still not walking, just pulling up on absolutely everything in sight, the tv stand, walls, cabinets, the stove, fridge, windowsills, etc.

Sydney has really turned into such a happy baby and we love to hear her laugh. She loves to play hide and seek and within the past week has really started babbling. She makes pa, Ba, da, and ga sounds almost all day long. She is very inquisitive and never sits still unless she is sleeping.

8 months July 19, 2012

We have been working on nap transitions for 3 weeks now and they seem to be going well, at least well for Sydney, haha. We currently have family in town and yesterday she went from 10:45 until 5:30 bedtime awake. We went to the mall for quite a few hours and once she was tired at her normal nap time in the stroller, I had to carry her the rest of the time in the Baby Bjorn. I thought that she would for sure fall asleep on me, but no, not my girl.

On days we aren’t out and about, a good day consists of 2-1 hour naps around 9 and 1, with bedtime around 5:45 or so. Most days the 1st nap is 45 min.-1:30 and the 2nd one is usually another 45 minutes or so. At this point, I feel like I have done everything possible to soothe her, put her down at the appropriate times, etc.

I have let myself be ridden with such anxiety over her napping and schedule that it is ridiculous. If she has an off day, there is always another :). Babies schedules change so quickly anyway that if something is frustrating you, there is always something else around the corner :).

We are almost walking– Sydney has taken 2 steps, but then falls. I’m hoping walking will happen while Gma and her aunties are here within the next 10 days or so.

7 1/2 months July 3, 2012

Major topic of issue yet again: NAPS

We had a good few weeks with some pretty decent 1st and 2nd naps of roughly 1 hour-1 hour 30 minutes each. The 3rd nap has always been short and pretty fitful, but about 2 weeks ago, it involved screaming and crying for 30-45 minutes. As of yesterday, we decided to increase Sydney’s awake time from 2,2.5, 3 to 3 hours and start her on 2 naps. Hopefully everything will work itself out and we will all be happier. Updates to come in a few weeks after we see how this goes. Wish us luck!!!

It’s Been a bit: Months 6-7 June 19, 2012

Since my last post, Sydney began crawling just about a week after she turned 6 months and started pulling up onto furniture just one week after that. She just turned 7 months on Sunday and is working on perfecting her pulling up skills and scooting across furniture while standing. Way too soon if you ask me, but I knew she was a go-getter from the beginning.

Night sleep- About a week ago, she began having a dream feed around 9-10 and then sleeping through the night until 6 am, woo hoo :). We tried letting her go from 6 to 6, but she was still waking around 11 or 12 to eat, so we decided that we would rather feed her before we head to bed as opposed to being woken up by her within an hour after going to sleep. Next comes the sleeping through the night, officially. 

Naps- Still not perfect, but they have gotten better. We do have some days where she will take up to a 2 hour nap in one stint, but others they top off at 45 minutes. They are still pretty all over the place, but most times there isn’t 30 minutes of crazy crying beforehand. I think I have pretty much got her awake time down, but as always she is a bit unpredictable for naps, so from day to day, I really don’t know what to expect. As of 2 weeks ago, most days she is omitting the 3rd nap by crying in the crib the whole time, so we are working on that transition which won’t be ideal until the other 2 naps move a bit later and not leaving her awake for 5 hours before bed because her 2nd nap ended at 1 pm. 

5 months old: Weeks 18-23 April 27, 2012

Sydney has now become proficient at rolling both ways. She perfected the tummy to back roll at about 17 weeks and has been doing it more and more. She now rolls all over the place and just yesterday, managed to roll into the coffee table and into a wall. I did not leave her for extended period of time, literally just turned my back for 15 seconds.

Her sleeping is still not great. Ralph and I are now ready for her to sleep longer periods at night because we are tired of being tired. She typically heads to bed at 6 and eats at 9 or so whenever we head to bed, around 1 or 2 and then around 6 when we all wake up for the day. Typing it out it doesn’t sound too bad, but not getting continuous segments of sleep does wear on you. If I could just drink a pot of coffee in the mornings to get me going, it would be okay, but since I am still breastfeeding and I have determined that she is sensitive to caffeine, I try to avoid it at all costs and just walk around sluggishly at times.

We just PCSed to Syracuse, NY, so we are trying to find a new pediatrician for her and hopefully one that we like. We have already decided that noone can compare to Dr. Popp at Leon Springs Pediatrics.

She is starting to lift herself up on her arms very high and I think that crawling may occur sometime within the next month or so, but we will see.

Other than that, when she does get the rest she needs, she is a smiley, happy baby. But when she doesn’t her nickname quickly becomes fuss bucket and the only place she is happy is in our arms. I’m thinking that since last night’s sleep was all over the place, that today might be one of those days.

4 months and a 10-Miler March 17, 2012

Today, my beautiful Sydney is 4 months old and I ran my first race since 2010.

We have still been struggling with naps, regardless of when I put her down, she just does not want to take them. She is still sleeping pretty well through the night at about 11-13 hours a night. Within the past few weeks she has started noticing everything around her and becomes easily distracted, especially while breastfeeding. My solution for it so far has been to take her to our darkened bedroom just so she will focus on eating as opposed to looking all around her. Last week, she started rolling from back to front at 16 weeks, but we are still working on front to back.

The run today— Surprisingly, I had a really good pace(for me) at 11 minutes a miles all of the way until Mile 6, when everything started going downhill. I had to go to bathroom badly and there was no port-a-potty until the finish line which made it very uncomfortable those last few miles. I had to walk up a hill around Mile 6.5 and my left knee started giving me trouble as I tried to run again. Once the knee started hurting, I was able to maybe run .20 more until I had to walk to the finish, ugh. I was very sad and had hoped to finish strong and running, but I guess it wasn’t the day for that. My goal was to finish though and I did, so I guess I can just wait until next time for a better finish.

14 weeks February 22, 2012

For the past 3 weeks or so, it has been difficult to get Sydney to even calm down and take a nap on me. Around the time that started, I began reading baby books trying to figure out how to get her to nap either in her playpen or her crib so that I could get a chance to do something while Ralph was at work. We tried putting her in her crib for about 2 weeks and regardless of how we approached it, a lot of crying was involved and it was just extremely exhausting overall. I know that it wont be easy, but I am half-hoping she will grow out of it or in the next few weeks we will try it again with hopefully less crying involved. I love my little girl to pieces and hearing her cry just breaks my heart. She goes down very well at night and typically sleeps for 11-12 hours waking once, maybe twice to nurse.

** On a different note, starting Monday evening it is as if she is going through a growth spurt. She was up every 2.5 hours nursing that night and for the past 2 days she has been nursing every 2 hours or so. Of course it just so happens that Ralph is out of town, so that makes me one tired momma, though it hasn’t been quite as difficult as I thought it would be for me without him.

Checking In January 16, 2012

At this point, Sydney is 8weeks and 4 days old and things have definitely changed. Since about week 6, the crying from 9 pm to 1 am has ceased and I’m not exactly sure why. Was it gassiness all along? I will admit that I wasn’t the best burper in the world and still am not, but I have been working on it and manage to now pat her harder in an attempt to get a burp out. The whole time I was just afraid of hitting her too hard. She now goes to sleep around 9 pm every evening and if a little fussiness persists, we will give her a pacifier and if all attempts fail and we know she needs sleep, we will bring in the Swaddle Me. I’m not a fan of the swaddler whatsoever because I feel it looks like she is in a straightjacket, but if it gives her a few hours of really good, much needed sleep, then I am ok with it on occasion. Over the past 8 1/2 weeks, we have had to use it maybe 10 times or so, which isn’t too bad.

The sleep factor has gotten much better for us, we are now able to sleep for at least two 4 to 5 hours intervals at night. That pattern is much easier to keep up than being up every 2 hours to feed or even every 3 1/2 hours. At this point in time though, Sydney is having trouble going down for naps. She has no problem falling asleep and staying asleep in my arms, but once I stand up to put her down or put her down, her eyes pop wide open and she is wailing within minutes. As a result, I get absolutely nothing done besides eat breakfast and lunch while my husband is at work. She currently does not like going in her swing while awake and doesn’t like the baby carrier, so that leaves me holding her in my arms all day long, which makes for a very tiring day.

I plan to work on a few new tactics this week for naps in hopes that I can get something done, whether it be an exercise DVD or cleaning the bathroom, anything. Sydney’s 2 month checkup is tomorrow and I am very excited to see how much she has grown, but a little nervous about the fact that she will be receiving her first round of shots. Fingers crossed that all goes well.