Sleepytime

Last night was the night we decided to start "sleep training" Beia. I don't know if what we did is technically considered sleep training though, since we can't figure out what sleep training actually refers to. Getting baby to fall asleep on her own? Getting baby to sleep through the night without waking? Getting baby to fall asleep for the night at a specific time? Who knows? Regardless, after skimming a few articles and having a few spotty conversations about the topic, we dove in and tried this:

Beia always eats around 6:30pm and then again around 8:30pm. In between the two feedings she gets quite fussy, but after the second feeding (which includes bath time) she will fall asleep for the night. By "night" we mean the longest stretch of sleep she will have in a given evening. Usually this ranges anywhere from around 4hr 45min to 6hr 15min. We pray for the latter.

Anyway, she is usually good about getting to sleep after we feed her as she is pretty tired by then. In addition, she's been practicing getting to sleep on her own during nap times. So we thought that perhaps Beia was getting overtired by the time her 8:30pm feeding rolled around and that maybe—just maybe—we could move UP her bedtime AND get her to sleep longer as a result. Wishful thinking, we know.

So last night we did Beia's bath during her 6:30pm feeding, and put her down for the night immediately after. Although she didn't fall asleep right away, she only minimally fussed and eventually fell asleep within the half hour. She did wake up and squirm and fuss for a bit around 8:30pm (presumably since she was used to being up at this time), but she fell back to sleep after I went in to check on her. Then she slept. And slept. And slept. She didn't wake up again until around 3:45am, which is her usual middle of the night feeding time. At that point she'd slept 7hr 15min! HURRAY! PROGRESS! Of course at that point I went in to feed her (after all, we saw "eye balls") and then she went to sleep again, until her normal wake up time of about 7am.

What a good, good little bean. We hope it continues and will try again tonight. Cross your fingers...

Exhibitionist

Beia loves the changing table. This is a good thing since she hates a
dirty diaper and we are always changing her. During a recent crying
fit we found that the only place she would calm down was on the
changing table. She just lay there contentedly watching her projection
movie that we play her there. Odd but true and we weren't going to
question it.

In addition to being on the changing table, Beia loves to be NAKED on
the changing table. She's all full of smiles and happy sounds when
she's lying there naked. It's a good opportunity for us to admire her
ever expanding belly (note the muffin top pooch-ing out over her
diaper) and her Sneech-like belly button (due to the red spot right in
the middle).

Roll-y Poll-y

This weekend Beia figured out how to roll over from her tummy to her back. There I was, talking with a friend about how we'd have to stop swaddling Beia once she learned how to roll, and then she did it as if on cue! She must have been listening to our conversation. Luckily we've since found out that we only need to stop swaddling once she can roll from back to front, which is harder to do. For now we keep waiting for Beia to recreate her newest party trick. So far she's only done it four and a half times, but hopefully with practice she will be able to roll regularly. We think she looks pretty happy about it too.

Tonka Sheep