Wednesday, May 30, 2007

aw hail no

It hailed yesterday. Marble/grape sized. It looked like it was raining a million white marbles really hard and really fast. Thank goodness for carports.

In other news, wow it's really hard to find time to blog. Or shower. Or brush teeth. Or [insert activity of your choice here]. Babies take up a lot of time.
On the mooshy gooshy cutesie tootsie front, aw I just love my little girl to pieces. My daughter. Still seems strange to say. Like maybe that repo man might show up again and take her back. I'd like to see him try. Did I mention that she's adorable? And also brilliant. She is cooing and gurgling more and more. No doubt she'll be working on her masters thesis soon. Also she is getting huuuge. It's good to know the thousands of hours of nursing time I've clocked since her birth are not for nothing. We estimate her to be 12+ pounds now. She has a checkup coming up on Friday, so we'll report back with exact facts & figures.

Oh so I guess the last time I had much to say about Roan we were about to try putting her on a routine, and also dealing with more and more crankiness. Boy, we've come a long way baby. I learned that 1) if you think your child might have colic then he/she does NOT have colic and 2) if you don't let your baby nap enough they will get so grumpy you might think they have colic. I read this book (yes! another book) called Babywise which I do not agree with in its entirety but I must concede totally saved our bacon here. They suggest putting your child on a 3-hour eat-play-sleep routine, allowing them to sleep as much as 1-2 hours out of every 3.

This was a lot more sleep than we were letting Roan get, especially after 6 pm or so when I thought she better stay up to help her sleep longer at night. It's not like I was using the sleep deprivation techniques employed at Guantanimo or anything; I just wasn't recognizing that her fussy cries in the evening were because the poor thing needed a nap. The beauty of the eat-play-sleep routine is that it pretty much takes the guesswork out of why she's crying. When she wakes up crying I know it's because she's hungry. After feeding we play until she gets fussy again, which I know means she's tired. It's that simple. I couldn't believe that the very first day we started trying this approach she hardly cried all day, and when she was awake she had many more happy moments.

The other thing that's great about the Babywise routine is that now I feel much more confident about leaving the house with her and not having to worry about her having a major fuss attack. Basically, after I feed her we can go for a walk or go to the grocery store or get in the car or whatever. She'll stay awake as long as she wants and then fall off to sleep. I usually get a 1-2 hour window before she then wakes up and needs to be fed again. It's worked great.

PS. We have some new photos posted on Roan's site: http://www.babysites.com/sites/roanvaughan
If you forgot the username/password, just email me.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh my gosh!! She looks like a little vinilla cherry gum drop in her red & white. No wonder you guys don't let her get enough sleep. I would want to play with her all day, too.

Anonymous said...

I can hardly write anything coherent without sounding like a gushing great grandma--but seriously, Roan has to be the most precious baby girl born in this decade (dontcha think). Just please keep on posting those precious pictures and stories about our little darling. Love to all--Grandma Carolyn