After having another successful sleep last night (only fed Anja once, at 4:00), I decided to try something new today - putting Anja down for a nap when she's awake. She generally takes a nap around noon of an hour or so and then around 4:00 gets really cranky. I've always waited until she fell asleep before putting her in bed for naps, but she won't fall asleep in the afternoon. She then remains awake and cranky until bedtime at 8:00, leaving me exhausted after 4 hours of squirmy, complainy baby who does NOT want to play with toys, be held, or read a book. So today I put her down at 5:30, checking on her every 3 minutes until she stopped crying. In 20 minutes she was sound asleep!
I realize that I am not the first mom to ever put her baby down for a nap successfully. But this concept of giving her a nap when she needs it will change everything for us!
In baby-unrelated news, we have decided to put our house up for sale. Since we live in Michigan, and Lansing in particular, it may take a while to sell our house. It will be harder to do if we get jobs and have to move to another state right away. On the unlikely chance that the house sells quickly and then we get good jobs in Lansing, we can certainly pick up another house easily, or rent temporarily. I sure will miss our cute little house so close to downtown, work, parks, etc. And what a great garden we had in the backyard.
This picture is pretty typical these days. She likes to feel her bottom teeth with her fingers.
Last night was pretty good again. Jay spent about 30 minutes alternating comforting Anja and leaving her for 3 minutes, then comforting her again, until she fell asleep. Then I got up to feed her at 4:00 when she cried. When I put her back down she cried, but I waited for 3 minutes before going to her. Before 3 minutes came we were both asleep again! Jay said last night was the most sleep he's gotten in a long time.
So far we've had two nights of "sleep training". The first night was pretty busy, although not too bad (Jay may have a different view of this, since he had the first shift and there was more crying involved). But last night (the second night) I put her to bed at 7:30 and she slept for 9 hours straight! Then I fed her at 4:30 and she went right back to sleep and slept for another 3 hours! It's funny to think of "only getting up at 4:30am" as a luxury, but it really is. I'm hoping tonight is similar. If we can successfully eliminate all but one night feeding, we will start to make that feeding later and later until it is also gone.
Did I mention Anja is fascinated with Blue?
Blue has decided that Anja should be able to throw her toys just like everyone else:
Anja's second tooth has come through, and you can see the first one pretty well now. It's sharp!
We're starting "sleep training" this week. She is nearly 7 months old and is still up multiple times a night to eat and Mom and Dad are tired. So we are going to limit her to one nighttime feeding, and we won't pick her up the other times she cries. What we will do is comfort her when she cries, while leaving her in the crib. Hopefully over time this will teach her to go back to sleep on her own, instead of needing to be picked up and fed every time she wakes up.
We have been very busy around here lately. I've been applying for jobs everywhere and completing training for substitute teaching here in town. Jay has to turn in his written dissertation material in about a week. His oral defense will be Dec 1st, so he will have two weeks to prepare for that. He's pretty much working 'round the clock these days. I'm almost always asleep before he comes home, often around 1:00. Not getting much sleep at night doesn't make this any easier for him. He has a much harder time falling asleep after Anja wakes him. Sometimes he just stays up and works. Once last week he left the house at 5am to go to work because he couldn't sleep anyway (I of course was completely unaware). I'm suffering from sleep deprivation too, but I can usually fall asleep eventually after getting up to feed her. As hard as this is, it is still not as hard for me as the last month of pregnancy was, when I couldn't sleep at all because of the heartburn and reflux. Broken sleep is still better than no sleep, although 7 months of broken sleep is no picnic. At least Jay will be done soon, and we will laugh about how hard these few months were. But we aren't laughing yet!
We have two leads on jobs right now. I had a phone interview last week for a job in northern Virginia (outside DC) working for a land trust group; they are calling people back this week to schedule in-person interviews. Jay is a finalist for a job in Petaluma, CA working for a Bird Observatory. I'm really interested in the Virginia job, but I'm not keen on the area (super expensive and big city lifestyle). Jay's job lead is in a really interesting area, and I'm pretty sure I could find something out there as well, so I'm pulling for the California job, but we're not ruling anything out yet. We should know more in a few weeks. Meanwhile I have two temporary jobs lined up here that can start in a few weeks.
Anja is very happy. I'll leave the politics out, since this is Anja's blog, but Americans did something right this week:
I'm way behind on fruit comparisons for Laura's baby. Here are the week before last (cantaloupe) and this past week (honeydew melon):
Laura is doing a great job, and she's almost there!
Anja has also been doing well lately. Her evening schedule is really regular now, she goes to bed at 8:00. If we try to keep her up later so she'll sleep until morning it doesn't work, she still wakes up at the same time regardless, so 8:00 it is. Her little tooth (bottom middle, right side) has really come through quite far. You can see it sometimes when she smiles, although I don't have a picture yet. She has been pulling on her left ear the last few days, so I think the second tooth will come through shortly (the pain of teething radiates up the jaw near the ear, so babies pull on their ears when it hurts).
She is so good at standing now. She almost never falls. Almost never, so you still have to stay near.
I've taken advantage of the unseasonably good weather to take the jogger out several times lately. I'm finally really starting to train again now. It took longer than I'd expected to get back into it, my stomach muscles were really weak for a long time, and the recommendation is to let them recover properly before hard exercise. Unfortunately this is the time of year I least like to run, but on the bright side there's very little competition at races, only the hardcore runners race in the yucky weather. The stroller we use has been great. I try to mainly run on the paved river trail, which is a mile from our house, and I have to run through construction and some bumpy sidewalk to get there, but she doesn't seem to mind. Here's Anja after a run to campus and back Thursday, over some pretty bumpy sidewalk. She fell asleep anyway. We'll use the stroller a lot next summer, but now that it's cold again I think we'll have to put it away for the winter.
I've been thinking about what Anja wants most for Christmas. Based on her current interests, this is what I've come up with: -a set of remote controls -Jay's cell phone -dog toys -a shoe rack, complete with dirty running shoes -a wristwatch -anything with tags
Anja is very interested in exploring and touching everything now. But she can't properly assess something without putting it in her mouth. Aunt Heather sent her a fun soft bug book with a crinkly page and textured bugs with wings that you can grab. She really likes it. And likes eating it.
Here she is, SOOO tired but still playing with her book:
Anja is pretty good at standing now. When she uses something to help her stand, she hardly uses it for balance once she's up. And now she's started to let go of her support once she's standing. She can stand alone for a second or two before falling into a sitting position. Her progress seems to come in bursts, so it's hard to say whether she will just do this for a while or whether she will start to take steps soon. My mom says when I was little, one day I sat up for the first time. That same day I stood up. Three weeks later I was walking (I was older than Anja is now, though), so she could try to walk soon. I'm excited for her to learn to walk, but I would also be pretty glad if we didn't have to deal with walking-related issues yet.
We've been on an okay schedule lately. She reliably goes down for the night at 8:00. She is then usually up to eat 5 or 6 hours later. Then she's up a 6:00am for good. It's not perfect, but we can live with it. Often there are a few other times throughout the night when we have to get up and settle her back down, but she doesn't need to be fed then. Of course after the time change she will be getting up at 5am!
Anja has begun making more consonant sounds. She likes to say Da-da-da. It seems like she says it preferentially to Jay, but we're probably imagining that. She is having some teething pain again today, so we wonder if her second tooth is coming through.
