Random Thursday Update

The sleep schedule seems to have been working somewhat. I think part of the issue is that we need to also get Daddy on a good morning schedule. The days when Holly wakes up early on her own are the ones where she is down for a nap on time, rested for therapy, and the day goes smoothly. Days when she sleeps in and Daddy hits snooze, so she doesn’t wake up early, her whole day is off. She refuses her first nap, and ends up only taking one for the day. Sometimes I am able to get her down, if I try early like at 9:30, other times she fights it, because she has been resisting sleep all day. But even on the bad days, she has been in her crib asleep by 11:15 the lasted every day for the past week, maybe a little longer. I think since last Monday we started. And two nights she was asleep by 9:30 and a few by 10:00-10:30.

She has woken up twice though in the middle of the night, and her sleep is not always restful. Yesterday she needed a bottle but most of the time it’s her pacifier, or Mommy to rub her back for a minute. I know this is totally taboo, but we took one of her very flat and soft quilt, put it in a pillow case, and are using it as a pillow. She loves this and has been sleeping so much better. Her head is slightly elevated, and it sinks in just a bit and is very comfy. This I think has really improved the quality of her sleep.

On Monday we went to the parent’s class, but the Babysitter never showed up (sigh) so the parents each took turns, 15 minutes each to sit in the room with them. It was a bit of a mad house tonight, with quite a few older kids. It seems that everyone saw how calm it was last week and thought it would be great to bring their kids. Since Holly was only 11 months she came into the classroom with us. This was a bit amusing. She certainly had her way with the room. She crawled all around, dragged her toys all over the floor and was a bit of a menace. It was cute though; the other parents liked her, picked her up and rescued her when she was getting into trouble. There was a 7 week old there too and her mom put her down for a moment to write something down, and Holly made a B-Line for her. She Sooooo Wanted to see the baby, and play with her. The mom said it was ok, as the baby has an older brother, so she is a tough little girl. Holly lost interest s soon as I let her touch the baby, especially because she didn’t like me telling her gentle. The class was another introduction, getting to know ourselves and each other class, next week we get into the knitty gritty and talk about development and behavior specifics, but I don’t mind easing into it.

Holly is really making an effort to communicate. We played a rattle game on Monday. I would shake a rattle and then she would. I would shake two and she would shake two. She would chew on hers, so I would chew on mine and then she laughed at me. She would then quickly shake it, and I would follow. We had so much fun going back and forth. Well that night she had a communication with Daddy, through blowing Raspberries back and forth with each other. They did turn taking and volleyed back and forth for quite a while, like a whole little conversation in her language. It was so darn cute@!

On Tuesday Night we went to maybe our last Baby Brigade. Holly was such a good girl. She needed to be changed twice and had a bottle, but other than that she played in my lap. Crawled around my shoulders, snacked on pizza crust and had an ok but well behaved time. We saw Revolutionary Road. It was good, but it was really depressing. I can sum it up like this…. “It was about the endless, empty, hopelessness of it all . . . Life, in Suburbia, in the 1950s.”

Today’s session with Sally was a push. Holly didn’t wake up early, and didn’t nap, so by the time Sally arrived she was pretty cranky. We did some stretching, and we played with the pop up animals, although Sally’s can be opened by prying the top up, and well, Holly figured that out. So Sally has to tell her no and prevent her from opening them that way. Of course, she would find a way around doing it the “right” way. Last week Holly had some cool new toys, like a bag of little pillows that were all different textures, like corduroy, or stain, or shiny. There were several, ohh and fluffy, like a lamb. But Holly wanted to et them after feeling them, so we ended up taking them away, it’s not like it was something that would be easy for Sally to clean. Sally brought the Sensory Evaluation today for us to do, but Holly was so cranky that we decided against starting it. Hopefully we cn try again next week.

My mom arrived, we went to go and pick her up after Holly’s PT Session. She was waiting at baggage so once I got on the road; it was a super quick trip. Since I was all the way over near the San Francisco Airport, I decided to buy a High Chair from Craigslist. It was a Chicco Sahara, which I almost never see posted, but the seller was far away, but close to the airport. It is the one that Tracey and Lucian have, and Tracey did a lot of research on High Chairs, and said it was the best. I have been looking at them and really liked it but couldn’t make up my mind, because it retails for $139.99 and I could get a high chair for half the price, and didn’t know if I would use the features, 7 heights, 3 recline positions, super small fold, and two separate over the top clean off trays. Well I ended up getting it for only 60$ I was so excited it was like over 50% of the retail price. We tried it out tonight for Dinner, and Holly is still a little, little in it. The regular seat feels a little reclined so I needed to put a pillow behind her to get her up close to the table tray, so she wasn’t still dropping food onto her lap, but mostly I loved it. I like the features and it folds up small and is easy to clean, plus it will be wonderful once she begins to feed herself.

After that we went and picked up the Veggie box and then headed to Babies-R-Us. We got Holly a bunch of new Pajama’s, as she is growing out of the ones she has, fast. Then we took the plunge, and I finally got her a car seat, well Oma got her a car seat for her Birthday. Originally it was between the Britax Roundabout or the Maxi Cosi Priori, which is the same brand as my current car seat. I didn’t expect them to have that one, but they did, and I ended up not liking it. It was not very different from the car seat she currently has and when completely upright she is still pretty reclined. Well we needed some help to figure out how to do some stuff, and the Manager came over to help us, and he really recommended the Boulevard. This one was more expensive, but it went up to 65 lbs instead of 40. It also had a lot more head cushions, and comfort padding. After debating back and forth with all the pro’s and Con’s we went with the boulevard. But I think it will be really nice and last us a really long time. The Cashier recognized me, because I am in there all the time, and I forgot my coupons, and she and 15% off of one item coupon that she gave me, so all in all we saved like 45$ I was so excited, as that really made a difference in the price.

We went to a really fun play date over the weekend “Wine & Cheese” with Rhonda, Ryan, and Teagan. And then on Tuesday we went to Chloe’s. But since I have so many pictures from both of those, I will make them a separate post later.