A Rough Night

Last night started like any other night -- we put Adelaida to bed around 7:15 (our goal is 7:00, but she sometimes goes to bed as late as 7:30), then had a quiet evening to ourselves before going to bed around 10:30.

At 11:30, Adelaida woke us up crying. She sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night, but almost always goes right back to sleep. Last night, however, she kept crying, so I went in to her room to check on her. She stopped crying immediately when I went in, and I held her for a few minutes, then put her back in her bed. She laid down readily, clutching her sippy cup, and was quiet until I started to leave the room, when she started crying again. I stayed with her for a few minutes, rubbing her back, and she seemed ready to sleep -- until I left the room, when the crying started again. I left anyway, thinking that she'd quiet down soon, but she didn't. This was repeated several times over the next hour -- Adelaida crying whenever we weren't in the room with her, then quieting down and going to sleep when we were there.

About an hour into this process, Dale and I decided to give her some pain reliever (she is teething, so maybe her mouth hurts?) and change her diaper (not dirty, but wet, which could be bothering her?). This was apparently Adelaida's cue that it was play time. I went back to bed at this point, while Dale laid down on the floor in her room to try to sleep while she played around (and on top of) him.


After an hour, Dale decided he needed sleep, so we switched roles -- Dale slept, while I laid down in the bonus room and let Adelaida play in that room. I rarely see her as happy as she was in the middle of the night -- she was dancing, and playing with her puzzles, and putting plastic rings on her arms, and laughing so much! It's unfortunate that this was all happening between 12:30am and 2:30am! I laid down on the sofa and tried to sleep, but it is hard to sleep when you are laying down and a toddler runs up to you, pokes you in the eye, and loudly declares "ee-ye." She also found my nose ("noooo") and mouth (she open her mouth and says "aah" to mean mouth) and hair ("ha-eyre," accompanied by Adelaida pulling my hair). After a very long hour, I tried to put Adelaida down to bed again. She cried for about a minute when I left the room, but ended up sleeping the rest of the night, and well into the morning (we finally woke her up at 8:00, to help prevent another occurrence of last night's lack of sleep).

We had planned to take Adelaida swimming today, but last night's lack of sleep coupled with a late nap today (she again didn't want to sleep and kept climbing out of bed!) prompted us to change our plans for the day, and we all three napped this afternoon!

Tonight has been normal so far -- bed at 7:10, and she went right to sleep without fussing at all. We're getting ready to go to bed now, looking forward to an uninterrupted night of sleep!

A Visit to Colorado: Jumping, Eating, (not) Sleeping

I had a few more pictures from our trip to Colorado that I'd like to share with you.

On Friday, Dale, Adelaida, and I were walking through a shopping area and saw something that caught our eyes: a store front with the name "Jumpin" and what appeared to be several giant blow-up bouncy castles inside. We were intrigued and walked in, and sure enough it was a store filled with giant blow-up bouncy castles! It was relatively empty (three or four other kids there), and their pricing scheme was so tempting (parents get in free; kids under 2 only $4) that we paid our $4, removed our shoes, and evaluated the different bouncy castles to see which one we wanted to try first.

There were traditional bouncy castles...


...and giant slides...


...and obstacle-course-style bouncy castles (complete with two kids who wanted so badly for Dale to play with them!)...


...and even a toddler play area with a small plastic playset and teeter-totter.


We had fun, Adelaida had fun, and it was well worth the $4 admission fee!

Another very notable part of this trip was Adelaida eating. We taught her the sign language for "eat" so that she can tell us when she's hungry. She's been using it for about two months, but while we were in Colorado she suddenly started using the sign all the time! We thought at first that she might just be testing the sign out -- using it frequently to confirm that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between her signing "eat" and us giving her food.

That theory was blown away when we saw how much she was eating each time she signed. She was really hungry! Our typical day would be: Adelaida wakes up and wants to eat, we feed her for about an hour, she plays for half an hour, Adelaida says she wants to eat, we feed her for an hour, she plays for half an hour, says she wants to eat, we feed her for an hour, and the whole process repeats. I really think she spent more time eating than she spent awake and not eating!

The fact that she was eating so much during the day made the night-times a little more understandable. Adelaida has always had a tendency to sleep poorly at night when we are traveling: she wakes up frequently, and since we are generally staying with friends or family, we are more likely to get her out of bed and nurse her rather than let her get back to sleep herself. This trip was no exception, and the first night we were on the road I nursed her three times in the middle of the night. The weird thing was that she was ravenously hungry all three times! Even after eating so much during the day, she still wanted to nurse for nutrition rather than just for comfort! The nights got progressively worse until the last night, when Adelaida woke up to nurse six times in the nine hours she slept. Dale and I were exhausted! The frequent night nursings continued after we came home, and we put up with them as long as Adelaida's day-time appetite was so large; for about a week now she's been back to a more normal appetite, so we've been weaning her back to one nursing at night, and last night she slept the entire night without nursing (she did wake up one time, but went back to sleep by herself). I'm really looking forward to regular uninterrupted sleep again!

A Schedule for Adelaida

Adelaida sleeping in her bouncy chair, one week old

After Adelaida was born, we made it a point to continue doing things we had done before she arrived: things like hiking, going out for dinner occasionally, shopping, and working around the house. We certainly weren't going to leave her behind for any of these events, so got into the habit of taking her with us, wherever we went. She has always been a happy, content baby and was able to sleep anywhere (in the hiking backpack, in the car, in our arms), so this worked out well for all of us.

one-month-old Adelaida sleeps on her Grandpa Steve's chest	sleeping on her Daddy's chest at eight months old

eleven months old, asleep in her crib, legs through the crib slats, with one sock on the floor!

In addition to sleeping well during the day, no matter where she was, Adelaida has also been very good about sleeping in her crib at night. She's been sleeping through the night (most nights) since she was about six weeks old. She'd wake up once during the night about two or three nights a week, want to be fed, then go right back to sleep -- all very reasonable for such a young infant! Because she slept so well from such a young age, Dale and I have always gotten up and taken care of her during the night, never thinking about "weaning" her from the middle-of-the-night feedings.

Adelaida sleeping in her crib, eight months old

All that changed about a month ago, when I started waking Adelaida up before I went to sleep (one to two hours after she had gone to sleep) for an extra nursing session. Within a week, she was waking up every night crying, wanting to be nursed in the middle of the night -- sometimes three or four times a night! I was really struggling with getting enough sleep and considered putting her back to bed without nursing her, but it was just so much easier to nurse her than listen to her cry! And so we found ourselves in a pattern of waking up several times a night with a baby who formerly slept through the night consistently.

asleep in the car, six months old

A month or so before her nighttime sleep patterns changed, we noticed that Adelaida didn't sleep very well (or very often, or very long) unless she was in her crib. She would still sleep in the car, but often for only five or ten minutes of the thirty-minute drive in to Albuquerque, and sleeping on Dale's or my chest during a walk was becoming a rarity. Of course she still needed a lot of daytime sleep, but kept herself awake whenever there were interesting things to see, and refused to sleep when she was over-tired.

All of this added up to a cranky baby, which is not like Adelaida!

before she was mobile, Adelaida often slept in the closet when we traveled! (seven months old)

Earlier this week, we decided to make some changes, starting with a more consistent routine that included frequent naptimes in her own bed. At the same time, I stopped feeding her before I went to bed and are increasing the amount of time between nursings at night. Our new routine goes something like this:

between 5:45 and 6:30: wake up (if she's still asleep at 6:30, we will wake her up)

6:30 - 8:00: nurse, get dressed, eat "first breakfast," play, nurse

8:00 - 9:00: naptime (if she's still asleep at 9:00, wake her up)

9:00 - 12:00: eat "second breakfast," nurse, play, eat lunch, nurse

12:00 - 2:15: naptime (if she's still asleep at 2:15, wake her up)

2:15 - 4:30: nurse, eat midafternoon snack, play, nurse

4:30 - 5:30: naptime (if she's still asleep at 5:30, wake her up)

5:30 - 7:00: play, eat dinner, nurse, play

7:00 - 8:00: bath, pajamas, nurse, quiet play, nurse

8:00 bedtime

A happy, well-rested eleven-month-old baby!

We've only be sticking to this routine for a few days, but it has worked wonderfully! She has been happier during the day, goes down for her naps without any protest, and is sleeping longer stretches at night (including ten hours last night!). This is the happy Adelaida we know and love :)

Becoming Mobile

Adelaida spends a lot of time in her crib. We generally place her in her crib on her back, in the center of the crib, with her body parallel to the sides of the crib.

We are amazed at all the different positions we find her in when we get her out of the crib.

She was two months old here, and we were still swaddling her at night. She somehow wriggled out of the yellow blanket we swaddled her in and rotated her body about 45 degrees in the crib.


Here's another picture from February; the first time we found her with her legs through the sides of the crib. She was sleeping through the night at this point. We woke up one morning and hadn't heard anything from her, so eventually went into her room to get her out of bed. She was just lying in the crib with her legs hanging out, perfectly happy!


In March, we started letting Adelaida sleep with a small blanket and her stuffed polar bear, Snuffles Junior. The blanket sometimes stays on her body, but more commonly ends up over her head. On this day, she also had her yellow duckie blanket with her, and ended up with the blanket on her body where it was supposed to be, the duckie above her head, and Snuffles Junior on her chest. She was determined to win the staring contest with Snuffles Junior!


This picture is from April. With the warm weather, Adelaida started wearing fewer onesies and more sundresses, which are much easier for her to pull up to her mouth and suck on. I'm pretty sure she had been sucking on her dress before she fell asleep in this picture.


We continue to be amazed at the positions Adelaida gets herself into in her crib. At least so far she has remained in her crib, lying down, on her back. I'm sure one day we will walk into her room and find her standing in her crib, or (even worse) sitting on the floor playing contentedly when we had put her to sleep in her crib!

Eight full hours of sleep!

Wow, this has been an absolutely wonderful week. For five of the past six nights, Adelaida has slept soundly through the night. She's slept long enough for us to put her to bed, get ready for bed ourselves, fall asleep, and wake up the next morning (either by Dale's alarm clock or just because we were no longer tired). She's been sleeping for at least eight hours each night, and slept for eleven hours last night, although she was wide awake and looking around her room when I went to get her this morning.


My sleeping-through-the-night theory is that Adelaida is suddenly sleeping through the night because she has learned to suck her thumb. Now, when she wakes up in the middle of the night, she can suck on her thumb to soothe herself and never starts crying. Adelaida spent last weekend learning how to connect her mouth with her hands and every activity we tried to get her interested in (tummy time, laying on her turtle mat and batting at her toys, sitting in her bouncy chair) quickly turned into practicing sucking her thumb. She got pretty good at it last weekend and has continued to improve over the past week, although her hand still misses her mouth pretty frequently and sometimes it takes a few minutes for her to get started. She generally sucks her left thumb, although she's not too picky and if her right thumb ends up in her mouth first, she sucks it instead.

I was hesitant to rejoice when she slept through the night the first time, but now it seems to have become the norm and Dale and I are once again getting plenty of sleep!