Getting a baby to sleep alone

I have yet to figure out how to get Kaelyn to sleep by herself. As in, how to get her to go to sleep when she's alone. When she was first born she would fall asleep whenever and we would just hold her. She was so little, who wanted to put her down! Then I realized I would be much more comfortable sleeping if I put her down somewhere. And I was DESPERATE for sleep, being up much of the night and all. But I fast discovered that Kaelyn would not STAY asleep if I put her down, the little rascal! After many attempts in many different ways, I resigned myself to just holding her. If she slept, she was in a better mood. I found various ways to get comfortable myself. She would fall asleep, I would ease into the rocking chair and lean back. I had several pillows nearby in strategic locations that I could reach to prop my arms and/or head on so I could get some sleep as well. It worked for us.

After many months of this I came to the realization that I could NOT hold her for every nap anymore. I had NO opportunity to do anything on my own. I was just getting tired of sitting around all the time while she slept. It took some time but I perfected bouncing her to sleep and dumping her in her bed. I would then often have to pat her for long periods of time. From there we moved to rocking to sleep, then dumping her in bed.

And that's where we remain. This is for nap times. She also naps in the car pretty well or in the stroller when we go to the zoo. But when we're at home, it takes plenty of rocking, a carefully crafted dump into the bed, and a soft footed sneak out the door.

At bedtime Kaelyn still nurses herself to sleep but this, too, will soon enough come to an end.

However, I am now tiring of the constant rocking. I certainly don't mind holding Kaelyn and watching her drift to sleep. Sometimes it's only a matter of 5-10 minutes. Other times it's a matter of 40 minutes and when I dump her in bed she wakes right back up and we have to start all over again. I'm just getting plain frustrated with it. And I'm starting to wonder, if I keep rocking her to sleep, how will she EVER learn to go to sleep on her own? And why should she? What kid wouldn't be happier with a cozy rocking session?!

Ah yes, she has me well trained.

In anticipation of stopping the night time nursing session maybe in a few months I'm thinking I might want to try something different at naptime and see how it goes. What? I'm not exactly sure. Perhaps take her to her room, read her a few books, rock for just a couple of minutes to relax, put her in her bed and go.

Now, I've tried just putting her in her crib. She thinks that's fun. She gets all wide-eyed and coos and rolls right over and sits up. If I leave her there, she cries. When I THINK she's asleep after a rocking session and ease her into bed and she wakes up, she immediately starts poking the side of the crib and having a great time like she's slept for an hour instead of two seconds. I really think she needs to learn how to go to sleep on her own. And she needs to know that she's okay alone and that I'll ALWAYS come back. She has some severe separation anxiety issues.

So be thinking of me in the next week or so as I experiment. A friend of mine said I probably just need to let Kaelyn know who's boss. Don't let her train/control me. When it's nap time it's naptime and that's that. That makes perfect sense. But that is also SO much easier said then done. When she cries my heart breaks and I just want to FIX it. So we'll see how far I get with the idea. But at this point, I really feel like I need to try something different. There aren't always rockers available when we're away from home...like the in-laws house...when we go camping...if we ever stay at a hotel. I'd be up a creek without my rocker at this point and really need to find myself a paddle so we have other options. Guess we'll see how it works out!

Not sure what I could have done differently to prevent it. I think if I had just laid Kaelyn down when she was little...but then I think about how tired I was and the only way I could keep her asleep was to hold her and just sit. That was the only way I myself was getting sleep as well. It's easy to think about what I SHOULD have done when I'm more well rested now. But actually having DONE it on NO sleep...not so simple!

I guess we'll just see how it goes. I hope it's not a totally miserable experience. I keep reminding myself she won't remember this stage when she's older....but I always will!!!

One year check up

Kaelyn saw the pediatrician this morning, oh joy! She weighs 21lbs 10oz which is in the 50th percentile. She is 29 1/2' tall which is in the 60th percentile. I don't remember how big her head is but it was in the 90th percentile. So she must be smart! :)

The office labeled her "the screamer" because she started screaming big time when anyone barely looked at her much less messed with her! How dare they come near and take her blood pressure or look in her ears? So you can imagine how well it went over when they had to hold her down for shots. That was bad enough but when the actual needles went in, oh my goodness, a whole new decibel of screaming that I never knew existed. The poor thing. But now there are several diseases she will never get so it's all for the best. It sure is hard to watch, though!

Kaelyn recovered well, though, and has been in a good mood the rest of the day (so far!) This is the picture Sean took on her birthday that we're using as her one year picture. Of course he cropped it nicely so it looked better, but you get the idea.

I also asked the doctor about the fact that Kaelyn won't eat any REAL food other than baby food, really, and she just said to keep trying. That's what I figured. She said at some point just stop buying baby food and she'll eat what she gets. Easier said than done. We'll see if she picks up the idea pretty soon on her own before we get too drastic!

We "get" to go back for more shots at 15 months. So with any luck (no offense to the pediatrician!) we won't have to see them again till then!

Kaelyn is one!

Today is Kaelyn’s very first birthday. I can’t believe she’s a whole year old already. She started the day off right by sleeping through the night. I think that is the fourth time that has happened in a year. Great, huh! Something like that. I can’t complain. ANY time it happens, I’ll take it! She got up at 6am and I let her nurse for as long as she wanted. She was still sleepy so she laid on the boppy for awhile and just relaxed. Then we got up and I made some toast for myself and prepared a nice warm bath for her. Bathtime is one of her favorite times of the day so she had fun playing and splashing, as usual. It was an extra long bath just because it was her birthday.

Sean and I got ready and we gave her a present my mom left for her, a cool piggy bank to keep her change in! It’s blue and has her name on the side. She’ll love it. And there was a hole in the bottom so she already loved it!

Then we took off for the zoo. We were one of the first through the gates so we breezed through the jungle and the aquarium before they got too busy. Then we walked up by the elephants because it’s quiet up there and Kaelyn got a good nap in. We swung by the sea lions and then headed for the bears. Kaelyn got out to walk there and enjoyed that quite a bit. We went through the gorilla area and had a picnic. Then through the desert and Kaelyn walked all the way to the butterfly exhibit, a long way!! She was having a great time in there looking at the waterfalls. We visited the zebras and headed home.

Once we got home Sean ran his remote control car all around the yard and Kaelyn was having so much fun with that I brought her afternoon yogurt snack outside to eat. Then she did some swinging and napping and then a couple of small presents for us...The little miss and mr birthday books, a plastic jar of foam animals to empty, and a light up music toy for the car. Along with a birthday card that sings, she loves those. Then we went back outside to play with bubbles and roll the golf ball around on the sidewalk. She was getting a kick out of running from me and I would chase her, catch her, and swing her into the air. And, watching cars, of course!

We grilled steaks for supper and Kaelyn ate a whole container of carrots and a whole container of chicken and apples. And lots of zuchinni bread and a few bites of cupcake too. She's stuffed, I'm sure! We played inside after that since it was getting cold and rainy looking.

I think Kaelyn enjoyed her birthday. She got to do pretty much anything she wanted and seemed to like it all. She was the center of attention but not overwhelmed with lots of people. I asked her if she wanted to have another birthday next year and I think she would prefer to have one next WEEK. It was a great day, I wish we could have this much fun EVERY day! That would be way too cool. But good days and bad, we made it through a whole year together! I can't believe we will no longer be saying she's 11 months or 10 months. No, she's over a WHOLE year old now!!!

Happy birthday Kaelyn!!

Happy Birthday Kaelyn

Tomorrow at 12:01am Kaelyn will be one year old. Wow! She's no longer a baby. She's a big girl now! Sometimes I wonder what the last year would have been like had Kaelyn not come along. I would have worked. Read books. Watched movies. Slept through the night. All of the things that seem so normal. But I wouldn't have gotten any of the sweet smiles. None of the cuddles. No babbling sounds. I'll take the frustrations of being a mom just for the good moments.

I still can't say I ever really want to be pregnant again or go through all of the baby stages. I reserve the right to change my mind later. Part of me thinks Kaelyn should have a sibling but the other part wants to just put all of my time and energy into her and not worry about sharing it with another baby. Though knowing what I know now, if I had to do it all over again, I'd for sure have Kaelyn again. Late nights, early mornings, restless sleeping and all.

Everyone said a mother's love is like no other. Kaelyn can frustrate me to my wits end and then when she falls asleep in my arms the whole world melts away. The worst sound in the world is her cry. I just want to fix whatever is wrong and make her my happy girl again. The best sound in the world is her happy babbling and cute giggle. The best sight is her joy when she sees me after a nap.

Kaelyn, I hope no matter what the future brings for you, you know without a doubt your mama loves you! No matter what you do or who you become, that will never ever change. We made it through this first year together. You've taught me a lot about being a mom. It seems you survived okay even though I never claimed to know what I was doing! I hope in the years to come I can teach you a few things too and together we'll take the future by storm! I want you to be my best friend but you are now, and always will be, my baby. Happy Birthday

Update

Kaelyn is a little book worm! Course she turns the pages so fast I don't usually get to READ it to her. But I'm so glad she enjoys pictures. I hope her interest in books continues when she actually can read. And that someday she'll turn the pages slow enough for ME to read it to her!!

The Hawaiian shirt she's wearing in this picture is from Sean's great grandma. She brought it back from HAwaii last summer. It's an 18 month size so we wanted her to wear it for her birthday celebration since Great grandma would be there.

Okay, so when does the whole separation anxiety thing end? I know I'm probably always going to be Kaelyn's source of comfort and the one she feels most comfortable with, but when will she stop yelling at anyone and everyone else? Family, non family, people that get too close, attempt to touch her, talk to her. Come ON girl!! She's almost a year old now and you'd think she'd realize by now that I'm NOT going anywhere. I don't leave her with people other than my husband or my mom. No one ever hurts her by talking to her or playing with her. I'm just starting to wonder when she'll catch on to that! I suppose one of these days EVERYONE will be a friend and it'll be hard to KEEP her from talking to strangers! Which, as long as I'm around, that will be okay I guess. It just gets old when we have people around when she yells at everyone for just trying to be nice to her! She cowers to me like they're terrifying. They brought her presents this last time, even!! :)

I'm anxious for Kaelyn's pediatrician appointment one week from today. I need to write up a list of questions. I probably need to start giving Kaelyn whole milk. I hope she enjoys it and doesn't resist it like she does pretty much all OTHER food. I don't feel like I can completely stop nursing her until she's getting a balanced diet outside of that. Or at least until she starts getting the milk thing down. Then maybe the rest will fall into place. If she gets hungry enough, hopefully she'll eat real food? Maybe?

She's had a cold in her eyes the last few days. At least that's what I think and hope it is. They're kind of bloodshot and she rubs them like crazy and they get real watery. She doesn't have any other cold symptoms so that's good. She wasn't sleeping real well up until two nights ago when she slept through the night for the third time, yeah! And last night she slept from bedtime till 5:30, then had a nursing snack and went back to bed. So things are looking up in that area again, thank goodness. I'm starting to wonder how I will get her back to sleep at that time of morning, though, when she is no longer nursing. I'm hoping she'll just stop getting up but will I be so lucky? I kinda doubt it. Guess we'll find out soon enough!

This weekend we'd hoped to go to the zoo to celebrate Kaelyn's ACTUAL birthday SAturday, but rain is predicted so we need to think of indoor backups. So far we're drawing a blank. Until then, she's still UNDER one and still my baby! Though I imagine she'll always be my baby no matter WHAT her age!

Second First Birthday Party

Kaelyn's Second first birthday party was today with Sean's family. She had a rough night overnight that involved an hour long scream session and sleeping in the rocker with daddy for awhile. She's been rubbing her eyes a lot and they're pretty bloodshot so I'm thinking she's getting a little cold in her eyes or something. Anyways, due to that long night she slept late this morning which meant she only got a 15 minute nap on the way to church. That's not a long nap! She was good through lunch and then the guests arrived and the screaming began again. She was happy in her swing a few times and enjoyed watching the boys race their remote control cars but she was definitely out of sorts. Her uncle Joe and aunt Dacia and cousin Nevaeh along with Uncle Jason, his new girlfriend, and grandma and grandpa and great grandma were all here. We all milled around and watched the car races, visited outside, Kaelyn did some swinging, Nevaeh did some chalk drawings on the driveway, that sort of thing, most of the afternoon.

Kaelyn napped started at 2:45 and she was TIRED! I felt a little trapped in her room. I closed the door when I took her in and there was so much door opening and closing downstairs and so many voices and noise I turned her music on LOUD to drown it out and then I was afraid to open the door to leave when she went to sleep. Plus I wanted to stay close by in case she woke to get her BACK to sleep because she REALLY needed that nap. I finally left her room around 4 because I didn't mind if she woke up at that point. She was STILL asleep by 4:30 so I kind of woke her because it was getting too late for her to go to bed on time if she slept much longer. We came back downstairs and she was greeted with PRESENTS! Joe and Dacia gave her a musical phone toy, a swimsuit and grass skirt, and a Hawaiian looking dress. Jason gave her a 4 wheel riding toy!! Her uncle James lives in Atlanta and didn't make the party but he sent a couple of books, including a lady bug book that she would NOT stop looking at. I wasn't sure she wanted to see anymore presents after she got that! She also had some clothes and books from Sean's aunt Myra and Uncle Brendel and clothes from his uncle Tom and Aunt Denise. Great grandma brought her a cute one piece short outfit and a birthday beanie baby. And grandma and grandpa had several cute outfits including a hot pink skirt set that Kaelyn carried around EVERYWHERE with her when we went shopping at Kohl's awhile back. They also brought her a push bubble popper and a holey ball.

After the presents we grilled burgers and out came the
cupcakes! Kaelyn didn't put any in her mouth, again, but didn't mind the three bites I gave her. And as you can see she had a great time with the whole thing! Smooshing it around was quite the process. It started with one finger poking it and ended with her gazing into the distance, worn out, I guess! Her sleeves were so messy I completely changed her when she was done.

Once that chore was complete everyone had had enough fun, I guess so we played around a bit here and there and they left. We had quite a mess of tissue paper and boxes to clean up, but that's to be expected! I wish Kaelyn had felt a little better today and been a little less screamy but at least she seemed to enjoy the presents, meal, and cake part. The rest of the day was pretty rough. I always hate it when she's like that when other people are around because I feel like they probably think she's ALWAYS like that and she's just not! Sure she has her moments, but she's a real sweet kid most of the time! Other people don't always get to see that and I wish they could!!

Kaelyn went to bed a little early, all that partying wore her out! We'll see what the night brings, if she STAYS worn out! :) Two parties in two weekends!! Whew! Next weekend is her ACTUAL birthday. Not sure WHAT Sean and I will do, a trip to the zoo may be in store if the weather is okay. I'm hoping I won't be up at 12:01am on her actual birthday to commemorate the event. We'll just celebrate the next day, Kaelyn, thank you very much! :)

Clapping and Dancing

Kaelyn has started clapping along to things and dancing quite a bit as well. We had American Idol on the other night and she just danced and danced. Sean liked that, of course, because they were singing Elvis songs! Sorry, Sean, she'll dance to about anything! She danced away to KGBI on the radio the other day. And she danced to the song her new little musical teapot sings. She's an equal opportunity dancer.

The clapping is cute too. She started clapping from playing a lot of patty cake with my mom. But now she claps for other things too. When we were at my parents house last weekend we went to their church and they had a children's program for most of the service. At the end everyone applauded...including Kaelyn! I feel mighty special today, too, because she nursed first thing this morning and then clapped. I must have made some tasty milk.

On those cute notes, sleeping hasn't been going so well lately. Kaelyn has slept through the night twice in her almost one year. For quite some time she was going to bed around 8:30 and nursing at 5:30am and then sleeping till 7am. That has completely stopped. Now if I'm lucky enough for her to sleep till 5:30 it's REALLY hard to get her back to sleep. Or at least back to sleep in her own bed. This week she just got up for the day twice at that time. A couple of times I took her back to bed with me and with lots of urging she slept on. Once she got up at 4am and partied for an hour and a half. She wasn't even tired, it seemed! And once she would NOT sleep alone from 1:30am on so she had to sleep with me. That night she would NOT stop moving, the only way I could keep her from moving long enough to fall back asleep was to hold her tightly against me. I was exhausted the next day because I didn't get much sleep, but thankfully, Kaelyn was in a decent mood so at least we weren't BOTH grumpy! Just when I was getting used to having my blissful mornings alone to run and get a massage and read and write, of course, things had to change.

I would love to find a way to get Kaelyn to go to sleep by herself. I still have to rock her to sleep for her naps and then dump her in her bed. It's an artform, really. If I try just putting her in her bed she either screams bloody murder or laughs and giggles and plays like it's a great time! Not sure how to transition here...

And I'm not sure how to get her to eat food other than baby stuff. She likes zuchinni bread, gram crackers, and veggie puffs. That's it for "real food." Everything else she just pushes away. She's going to need something other than baby food at some point! But most of the time she won't every TRY anything much less eat more than one bite if she DOES.

Sometimes Kaelyn babbles endlessly. That's pretty cute. She's quite the little storyteller! And now she has stories to tell. We went to the church garage sale yesterday and she picked out a 300 page chapter book. No pictures! She flipped through that thing ALL the way home. I had no idea she was so advanced! And here I keep getting her board books from the library! We'll have to go to the big people section next time!

Tomorrow is Kaelyn's second first birthday party with my husband's family. They're coming to our house. Probably from 6-9 people total. We made chocolate and funfetti white cupcakes this morning so all we have to do is ice them and we're set. We'll have hamburgers on the grill so we have some hamburger patting to do too. We have a LOT of cleaning up to do today, there's stuff EVERYWHERE! Don't want people to have to kick their way in! :) Hopefully the party goes as well as last weekend's. That one was fun and Kaelyn was good and all was well with the world!

Hey, if the party is REALLY good maybe she'll even clap and dance for us! :)