Friday, August 1, 2014

Golden weekend

I'm on day 2 of a 4-day weekend! And even better, it's a golden weekend - meaning that we BOTH have off BOTH Saturday and Sunday!!! That happens maybe 5 times a year, so it's always very exciting. And flies by way too quickly, of course.

The Doodle has been sleeping pretty well for the past few nights - she's been a more challenging sleeper than H ever was, but for weeks she'd been STTN or only waking up once to eat, then going right back to sleep. Then we went to the beach for a week with my sister's family in mid-July, and we shared a bedroom with both kids, so anytime E cried at night I would get her out of the crib and nurse her so that she wouldn't wake H. Apparently she got used to that, because her sleep got worse and worse even after we got home, to the point that she was waking up 4-5 times a night and needing milk to go back to sleep. I'm not a "cry it out" fan, but I don't get up with her at the first peep - often she's just griping a little bit between sleep cycles and falls back to sleep on her own within a minute or two. So I will let her cry for 3 minutes while I wait to see if she's settling down or ramping up into being really upset, and recently, each time she woke up at night she'd get really upset and need to be picked up and fed. She's 9 months old and eats well during the day, and at those middle of the night feedings she'd be rubbing her eyes and fussing, and only end up drinking 1-2 ounces, which made me think she wasn't really hungry and just wanted to nurse back to sleep. Anyway, I ended up changing her bedtime routine a little bit, and waking her up fully before putting her in the crib (instead of letting her fall half asleep nursing or drinking her bottle and then just moving her to the crib still half asleep). Since I started doing that, she either cries for 1-3 minutes then falls asleep, or falls directly asleep with no crying at all, and then sleeps through the night without intervention! Hallelujah!

So last night, MM and I made our third attempt to move her into our bedroom (previous 2 attempts obviously failed) (oh - H sleeps in our bedroom [in his own bed], and E sleeps in a crib in the living room. Whoever is on baby duty that night sleeps on the couch. I'm tired of sleeping on the couch every other night.) and it went very well. The two bonuses of this setup are that we can both sleep in bed together, which I miss, and that we can stay up after the kids go to bed and not be crowded around the little light above the stove trying to read without waking E, who was sleeping in the living room. We actually started a MOVIE!!! On the television! It was amazing!!! Previously we'd have to huddle around an iPad, each with one ear bud since we'd be sharing a pair of headphones, and it wasn't really worth bothering. But last night we sat on the couch together, we conversed above a whisper, we ate Ben & Jerry's ice cream out of the carton, and we watched Star Trek Into Darkness! Well, we watched half of it, because then it was 10 PM and goodness knows I can't stay up any later than that. :)

Anyway, it was a very nice start to our golden weekend. Additional plans include a picnic, a trip to a local pick-your-own orchard to pick blueberries (or whatever; we're not particular) and visit the goats, making blueberry galettes, doing laundry, swimming class for H, making biscuits and gravy for breakfast one morning (MM spent summers in the deep south with his extended family, and LOVES biscuits and gravy. I used to make them for him regularly, but it's been awhile), and finishing Star Trek. I can't wait. :)


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