Grabbing, music & smiles

6/25

Dear Eliana,

You’re in the process of learning how to grab things lately! Your dad told me that you grabbed and held a bottle a few days ago, but I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, so it was hard to believe…but I saw you grab a pacifier today, so I believe it!

You’re napping now…I try to do stuff while you nap, not too infrequently you wake up right when I get in the middle of it, which is why progress is slow around here…

I should mention that you’ve also grown out of some clothes recently…you’re eleven weeks old today, and I have a pile of 0-3 month clothes that don’t fit you anymore. You’re a small baby, relatively (currently in 23% percentile for weight), but you’re definitely growing. Must be the milk!

Two days ago we got a bedding set for your crib. I was trying to not buy unnecessary stuff, but I saw this really cute one, a bit of a splurge but a lot of fun with letters and animals, and I thought it would make your room a little special. Plus it wasn’t pink and too girly, but more contemporary, with red, brown, orange and yellow. So we got it..it definitely makes me smile, I hope you like it! I’m going to take the blanket and have someone sew on ties so that we can hang it on the wall.

I pulled out my guitar and sang you a song or two this morning…I got kind of excited about that. I’m going to tune the guitar, and look into children’s music that I could play. We have to find out what kind of music excites you.

You’ve really come out of your shell in the past few weeks, and are a little more “in the world” every day. At six weeks, you started smiling a little. Now you smile a lot, to me and to others. You also coo sometimes..I always coo back, to encourage you.

Sleep Training

6/24/07

Dear Eliana,

We started to sleep train you last night, and you did great! We fed you, gave you a bath, fed you again, made sure you had a clean diaper, rocked you for 10 minutes..then put you in your crib and let you put yourself to sleep. We thought that you might cry for hours..in fact, you cried for about 10 minutes, I went in to change your diaper, your cried for a few more, and then went right off to sleep. Wow! It was about 17 minutes total, way less difficult than we had thought.

Pretty much the same in the middle of the night. You woke up at 12:30 and went right back to sleep after some milk. At 2:15, you woke up again, cried a bit, and put yourself back to sleep. Good work girl!