For the Record

There are a couple of things I wanted to record in yesterday's post, but as we know, I was interrupted. If I don't write this stuff down I forget it within two weeks.

First: teething. Yesterday I was going to write that Amelia seemed to be getting her molars but this morning we discovered that the one on the left side has almost broken through! Finally. She has been gnawing on things on that side and drooling like crazy. Now for the other side. Then, totally unexpectedly, while we were reading our pre-nap stories, I noticed that not one but both of the two bottom front teeth are coming through also! (These are the two on either side of the two very front teeth, which she already has.) So that is three new teeth at the same time. Maybe that has something to do with her disrupted sleep?

(Note: if you are Dean and you happen to be reading this, normally I would call you at work to inform you of this breaking news, but Amelia and I have plans to show you her new teeth when you get home. Try to look surprised.)

Second: naps. It has been a long time since I complained about naps and I wanted to record the progression what what has happened. If you recall, Amelia was moving from two naps to one and her doctor had suggested that I keep her up till 1:00, saying that if she napped in the morning I should wake her up after half an hour. I tried that once and let me say that it goes against every fiber in my mother being to wake a sleeping baby from a nap. But I did it and Amelia was sleepy again by noon. However we had unusual circumstances that afternoon and she ended up falling asleep in her stroller. In my second stupid move of that day, I tried to pick her up from the stroller and move her to her crib. It didn't work and that was the end of the waking-the-baby-from-a-nap experiment.

My next idea was to keep her up until 1:00. The problem with that is that she would wake up still crying and very tired in an hour or less. So I tried leaving her in the crib to see if she would go back to sleep. She would not. After that, I decided to forget the whole thing and let her sleep as long as she wanted whenever. For about two weeks she would go down anytime between 9 and 11:30 but then sleep for at least an hour and a half, sometimes nearly 2 hours. And this past week or so, she has been pretty consistently going down at 11:30 and sleeping for almost 2 hours.

So we have once again hit a predictable pattern, which makes everyone happy, mainly me. It's just so hard to plan anything when you have no idea when the baby will need to nap. With this pattern I know that if need be we can have a short outing in the morning and a longer one in the afternoon. The only sad thing is that most of Amelia's friends are still taking two naps so she is basically asleep when they are awake and vice versa. The other moms are very concerned that the two nap thing will end but actually, I prefer the one longer nap. Amelia's second nap was always unpredictable anyway. This way we actually get out of the house a bit more.

Anyway I am sure this new pattern will last only as long as it takes me to really start getting used to it--here's hoping that this riveting information about Amelia's naps and teeth have enriched your Friday. I am off to read.