Smiles and cooes

She smiles all the time. I love it. When she sleeps, if I kiss her on the nose, she'll smile at me. Love it.

Over the last week, she started cooing a lot. It's so cute to listen too.

Two nights in a row

I'm quite surprised, but Reagan has stayed in her bed the last two nights. The first night was a battle. Jim and I had to sit outside her room until she settled down in her bed. She did everything from doing a temper tantrum to jumping on the bed. She finally wore down after about 45 minutes. Not bad.

The second night, she was so tired, she fell asleep before Jim got done reading a night time story to her. Hopefully tonight will go just as well.

Bedtime attack starts tonight

We started a bad habit with Reagan when we moved her to her "big girl bed" this summer in order to keep her in her bed - we finished the bedtime routine with us sleeping next to her and the waking up to go to our own bed. Bad Idea. Part of it was because she wouldn't stay in her own bed at the start of bedtime. The other part was because she has gotten hurt twice at school and we were "babying" her a little too much I'm sure (call me a mush).

Because of all that, she flat out refuses to go to bed at night on her own.

Jim and I are done officially.

Tonight we are attacking the problem. The only consistent thing that I've found online on the message boards is to just do the silent solution - walk her back to bed without emotion or noise. Just do it.

So we have to talk it up today. It will be painful tonight and for the next few nights. Hopefully she will not resist for too many nights and just start going to bed like a "big girl".

Here's to hoping!

Reagan's growing up

She is cracking me and Jim up on a regular basis. Her language skills have changed so much in the last month or so. She will pop out with a "I don't think so..." or "You know better than that" in a conversation. She doesn't just say it, she does it at the right time. We're guessing she understands what she's saying. She's probably heard it enough in the right context that she can put it together.

Not only is she able to put some more slang type things together, she's also singing more of her songs from beginning to end. Before she would just sing part of it, now she's able to memorize a whole verse of a larger song or a full smaller song. So cool.

One month visit today

We had her one month visit today with her doctor. She's gone from a 50% baby to an 80% baby. She's grown 35% in the last four weeks. Amazing. She weighed 9 lbs. 8.5 ounces and was 22.5 inches long. Her head is "smaller" like Reagan's was - not surprising.

I had questions about two things - her head and her breathing pattern. I have noticed in the last few weeks that she likes to look over her right shoulder predominately. I asked and she said it seemed that her neck muscles were tighter on one side and to start doing some simple stretching exercises to work on that - turn her head to the left and touch her ear to her shoulder every diaper change. She did mention that her head was slightly flattened on that side already and that we would watch it. If it's not better by the two month visit, we'd have to do some therapy for her. sigh... no biggie though.

When the doctor was showing us the exercises, she cried the whole time. Now tonight, she seems to only want to look to the left side. Odd.

She said the shallow to deep to non-breathing was normal. Thank goodness. It made me feel better.

No shots this time either. All in all the visit went well. She said she was beautiful and strong. Go Maddy!

Eating all the time

I guess Maddy is on a growth spurt because she is eating all the time. The book I've been reading to help me understand how to get her on a schedule calls her eating schedule a problem... you tell a baby that. She will "eat on schedule" which is every three hours. Then she'll add another meal in after one hour. So she's eating twice in three hours. She only does that a few times a day, but it's tiring sometimes.

Crib tonight

Tonight is the night for the crib again. I have been catching up on my "Babywise" reading and discovered that my scheduling for Maddy is a bit off. I have her eat and play cycles reversed. I hope to straighten that out starting today. I also need to let her start learning how to sleep in her bed sooner than I did with Reagan since I'll be going back to work much sooner this time. I need to her to sleep better.

Wish me luck!