Mary has historically been a tough sleeper and while she did give us a reprieve for quite a few weeks, she back in another season of fussy naps and trouble going down and staying down at night. But - that's what these years with the little ones is full of and although we can do everything to set up her for good sleep, sometimes we just have to throw our hands up in the air and roll with what she's giving us. Sometimes that means bouts of crying, and other times that means someone is camped up in the nursery with her. I loveeeee when I randomly get the chance to snuggle her during one of her naps. We have a big cozy chair in her nursery and if she's having trouble sleeping during the nap she takes that coincides with Drew's afternoon nap, I quick scoot in there and scoop her up and just snuggle the daylights out of her. Although she has a true gift for picking the days I have mile-long to-do lists to tackle during their afternoon naps. Some days that makes me really frustrated at her, but the snuggles soon erase my bad mood because she is just so lovely and precious.
Mary is no longer swaddled for sleep. I'm really glad we stuck with transitioning her away from it, because it only took about a week and she was sleeping fine again without it. Our hope was that she would use the access to her hands to self-soothe, but it turns out she still just really likes her pacifier. She usually wakes once in the early night between 10pm-12am, and that when we go in and roll her over onto her tummy. We have a breathing pad set up under her mattress that would sound an alarm if she stopped breathing, so we feel comfortable rolling her over at this point. She clearly much prefers to sleep on her tummy, and she can roll over onto her back if she gets tired of her tummy. She's almost able to roll back to tummy, too, which will be really nice! We say that she "sleeps through the night" because she doesn't wake for feedings anymore; she only wakes if she's lost her paci and wants it back. The paci is a sleep prop we're okay with keeping around for right now because it works like magic to put her to sleep and that is really important to me during the day when I have Drew to look after too.
Her 4 month appointment went great. She's medium weight for her age, but super tall. Hello Hansen genes!
Nursing and bottle feeding before bedtime are going great. Right now she nurses every 4 hours during the day, and we just started adding in some oatmeal cereal at each mealtime with the family. The other night I unearthed all my materials for making and freezing baby food and got batches of sweet potato and butternut squash pureed and into the freezer for future use. Felt good to get that knocked out now before the holidays.
Mary is almost sitting up by herself; she can hold the position for a few seconds before tipping over. I know that once she can sit by herself that will unlock a whole new level of playtime abilities. Right now she does some independent play on a play mat on top of our bed every morning, and I plan to move that to a pack n play in our room once she can sit up and get better leverage with her toys.
This holiday season with her in our family is sure sweet. She's definitely more social than Drew; just today she skipped most of her naps (much to my dismay!) and hardly fussed at all until right before bedtime. She just wanted to be up and hanging out with us! I warned her that would not fly long-term - babies need their sleep!
We had a really fun little photo shoot this month - she's such a little muffin in front of the camera!
And here's one of Drew from 5 months old, just for fun :-)
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