Archive for October, 2007
Sleep Progress?
We’ve had a couple of incidents that give us hope that putting Natalie to sleep won’t always be so much of a project.
Earlier this week, I had nursed Natalie into a deep sleep in our new glider. We test her level of sleep by performing the “arm test.” The test is picking up her arm and dropping it. If it’s completely limp, she’s out. If she resists at all, she’s still in a light sleep. Apparently the test isn’t always fool-proof, because when I put her down, she woke up. But instead of nursing her or getting Chris to walk her, I decided to try rubbing her back. When I’ve tried this in the past, she usually revs up into full-blown crying and I end up nursing her. This time, Natalie got up and flopped herself face-first into the mattress a few times before settling on a comfortable position. I rubbed her back slowly for 5 minutes (I watched the clock) then sat next to her for a few minutes to make sure she was really asleep, and then gleefully walked out of the room!
Then a couple of nights later, she stopped nursing while she was still awake and fell asleep just rocking in the glider! I made myself rock another 10 minutes, did the arm test and then put her down—she didn’t move a muscle!
Baby steps…but I can see light at the end of the tunnel. One day, we’ll be able to read Natalie a bedtime story and leave her to fall asleep on her own. Hopefully by the time she’s 5. I like to keep my expectations low.
Words!
Natalie has added a couple of words to her vocabulary! Around the time Natalie was 9 months, she started saying “baby.” We have yet to get it on film, so you’ll have to take our word (ha!) for it. She has said “baby” looking at other babies, seeing pictures of babies in books, and looking at herself in the mirror.
Her next word is…”cat.” No surprise there, since Natalie loves the cats and we label them several times a day. She can’t quite make the “kuh” sound, so it sounds more like “Dah,” but she clearly means “cat” when she says it.
Natalie with one of her favorite buddies, who inspired her fourth word:
The Best $4.99 I Ever Spent
The snack trap has made traveling in the car with Natalie 1,000 times better than it ever was before. Natalie was never super happy in the car, and it got worse as soon as she started creeping. She wants to be on the move constantly, so being strapped into the car makes her really mad (if it’s not nap time).
We’ve tried toys, books, music, singing, bottles, and sippy cups, but none have kept Natalie as happy for as long in the car as the snack trap. I was hesitant to let Natalie eat in the car for fear that she would choke, but she’s proven herself very capable of self-feeding small items like cheerios and puffs. Sure, when I take her out of the car seat there are cheerios all over the place—the snack trap isn’t spill-proof, it merely slows the spillage down. A few spilled cheerios is well worth Natalie not crying during car trips longer than 5 minutes.
I feel only mildly guilty for setting her up for a lifetime of using food to fight boredom…
As you can see, Natalie is very possessive of her snack trap. It makes a good maraca, too!
