The Ashlan show: May 2011

This blog entry is way overdue so it’s going to be long! Pics are from the 19th too and on, so I am very behind on that too!

Well, sleep went very well for about three weeks or so (meaning her sleeping straight for about 8-9 hours) but then declined slowly and now is getting better again. Two Sunday nights ago she got up every hour from 8:45pm until 1:00am and then again from 4:00am until 7:30am. And she only ate at 5:30am! That night (and the next day) was just awful. Then the last few nights have been just great! Today and yesterday she slept in until 6:30. That made for a hot and stuffy morning run for mommy though! One thing that makes us feel better, despite her wishy washy-ness of getting straight sleep is just how wonderful her personality is! We just couldn’t ask for a happier baby and her many hourly smiles and laughs make up for the sleepless nights!

In the last few weeks we have also been putting her down awake and she can now usually fall asleep on her own. Sometimes she needs extra rocking but the majority of nights she just knows it’s time to sleep now. We have done nothing different, she must have just grown out of needing to be rocked (which makes mommy sad!). She also has made major progress in her crib for nap time! About a week or two ago we began putting her down in her crib for naps since she was starting to be able to fall asleep on her own at night. We still rock her asleep for naps, and normally she’ll only last 40 min or so in the crib, whereas when she slept on us, she would sleep for 2 hours or so. However, she is getting used to soothing herself back to sleep and she had a few naps this week where she last about an hour and a half in the crib, so that is progress! Again, we haven’t done anything different, and there is absolutely no crying involved (except maybe a little from mommy when realizing she doesn’t need me as much!) so she must just be ready. So, instead of two naps of 2 ½-3 hours, she takes three or four 40 min naps or so (and sometimes longer ones).

She is still eating a jar of baby food a day and then 4-5 tbsp of oatmeal at night mixed with breast milk (besides her regular other meals). She still loves eating any kind of baby food! We’ve tried all the organic jars in 1st foods so now we’re just rotating them all until she is ready for 2nd foods. I know other babies eat more baby food at her age but considering she’s still getting the majority of her nutrition from breast milk and she doesn’t seem to need more jarred food, we are just going to ask our Ped about it at her next appointment on the 8th. It’s a little late since she actually turns 6 months on the 3rd, but we didn’t want to get her shots before we went on vacation and then have something happen when we’re far away from home. She feels like she weighs almost the same but looks like she’s gotten longer since all her 9 month outfits look like they’re fitting better. She’s been in 9 month outfits since about 4 months but she was so chubby then that smaller sized outfits couldn’t fit around her! So we switched to 9 months even though they were a bit big…but now they fit her perfectly. I’m interested to see where she is in sizing since it looks like she’s long and skinny now.

Sitting is coming along just great! She can last up to 30 sec or longer sometimes before she falls over…we’re so proud of her! We still sit behind her though because she can fall pretty fast (and hard)! No crawling and no teeth yet, thankfully! She still pushes up on her hand and then sticks her butt in the air but hasn’t put them together yet. She is still rolling all over the place though, and still ends up all over her crib. And now she is laughing more often it seems. I love hearing her laugh! What a wonderful sound!

We took her into the pool two Sundays ago for the first time. The water was 84 degrees and the air temp was about 96 degrees. We figured she’d be ok since she LOVES baths even though the water still felt a little cool compared to bath water. Well, she was ok for a minute or two but then started bawling! Poor girl! We should have tried it when she wasn’t tired because after we dried her off she fell right to sleep. Next time we’ll make sure she is well rested first.

Well, Caesar is starting to show more jealousy now. We had friends over with their baby on Sunday and as we were sitting next to each other letting the babies interact with each other, Caesar walks over and right in front of us proceeds to pee on the carpet!!!!!! He’s never so much had an accident in the house! This was definitely on purpose! And we just got the carpets cleaned a few weeks back. I still can’t believe he did that! He obviously wants more attention. I wish we could take him on more walks but he will not leave the house in the mornings because of the buses, it is way too hot during the day, and even in the evenings it can be in the high 80s. Plus, evenings are usually really busy getting Ashlan ready for bed and us having dinner and such. So, we feel bad we haven’t been able to take him on walks lately. We also finally took him to the vet after two weeks of sneezing. He was put on two different medications and thankfully, they have been helping. He is always such a problem child!

So we had Ashlan’s 6 month pictures taken this past Monday. It was a few days early but we have big plans on her actual 6 month birthday which includes Ashlan’s first trip to the beach (Long boat Key!!!)! We went to JCPenney’s this time…they had an awesome deal and, as usual, we ended up getting way more pics that we originally planned to get. To the grandparents…we got you a 5x7 of Ashlan. I sent you the link via email to view them but if you didn’t get it, just let me know and I can either resend it or give you my login name and password.

We got our new diapers a few days ago and they are so cute! We have been exclusively cloth diapering for a few weeks now, even at night. The hemp inserts we have hold a lot more than the regular inserts so she has not leaked once at night time, despite being in the diaper for about 9-10 hours! She hasn’t had a rash in ages either. And since I purchased liners for the inside of the diaper (to catch poop), we don’t have to do anything but turn the diaper upside down over the toilet for the soiled liner (which is flushable) to come out! It is just awesome! So much cleaner than disposables! I don’t understand why more people don’t use cloth diapers…if everyone is supposed to flush poop down the toilet anyway (even with disposables), what is the big difference besides a load of laundry? I am so happy we decided to cloth diaper and everyone who said we’d regret it was so wrong! It doesn’t even present a challenge for us when we go out. Sure, we have to change her diaper every 2 hours but that’s not a big deal to us. It’s definitely paid off for us!

My skinny girl! And this is even with a cloth diaper on!!