Lydia’s not 100% over her cold–she still has a bit of a stuffy nose–but it was a mild one to begin with, and it’s been a pretty calm week. She was fussier than usual at the beginning of her cold, but that basically meant wanting to be held more. I made a list of things to get done while wearing Lydia in the wrap, and that worked fine.
And now, she’s happy again. It’s been a while since she’s learned anything big, and she’s not on the verge of learning anything big. No wonder weeks, no major motor skills. As far as I know, she’s still not teething. Things have been peaceful.
It’s a good time for things to be in balance with Lydia, because Will just started a new job. Everything’s going great there too, but there’s something nice about having a manageable amount of change all at once.
Sleep
It’s funny to see the note from last week about Lydia going to sleep at 7:30 one night. That didn’t become a pattern. This past Monday, she was up past 11:30, I think, but she mostly back to the usual 9-10:30 or so bedtime. It’s possible that she stayed up so late that day because I gave her some bits of the dark chocolate cake I was eating. If so, that seems like a good thing to be aware of.
Morning wakeup has been around 8:30, and I think something in that neighborhood may stick, since Will’s getting up for work at around the same time five days a week now. Today, she would have slept later if his alarm went off. She was happy to get up, but it probably would have been at least another half an hour otherwise.
If I had to guess, I’d say it’s been a period of not much night nursing. She’ll do it to get back to sleep if she gets up at night, but I don’t get the sense she’s actually been hungry during the nighttime hours much.
Lydia also very distinctly put herself to sleep without nursing last night. It’s happened before that she’s sort of snuggled into my armpit after nursing still awake and drifted off that way, but this was different. She pulled off and squirmed around for a while on her own. There was some grunting and lots of repositioning and squirming, but she didn’t want to nurse. I do think there’s something to the theory of “sleep associations”, but I like seeing concrete evidence that she’s are learning new skills and habits all the time, including around sleep, regardless of what my agenda for her is.
Naps depend on the day. Monday was an easy day where she had two long naps on the bed and I could get work and rest done. She still typically requires soothing during the transitions to stay asleep, and I’m happy to offer it. My sense of whether she’s slept “long enough” is whether she’s waking up happy. If she stirs and cries, then I try harder to get her back to sleep than if she opens her eyes and smiles at me.
It continues to be true that Lydia is more sensitive to external stimulation when she’s sleeping these days. I make it a point to keep it as dark and quiet as possible, which I didn’t before (since it didn’t seem to matter).
Nursing
A few not so fun updates this week. Nursing is still going fine for Lydia. But I do have a big hickey just to the side of my right nipple :-(. It took me a minute or so before I realized that Lydia was happily sucking away in the wrong spot. Now that Lydia is latching herself on more than I’ve been doing it for her, the process has been a bit more error-prone in exactly this way. I’ve had to be vigilant to avoid more hickeys.
I also think she may have bit me a few times. She still has no teeth, which is why I’m not actually sure. Obviously it didn’t hurt much, but I definitely won’t want her doing this when she does have teeth, assuming she was in fact biting.
On the other hand, this is a good time as any to mention that I actually enjoy nursing. It’s convenient, easy, creates feel-good chemicals, and is a nice excuse to snuggle with Lydia.
Solids
The purposeful eating seems to be here to stay! Though the whole bib and highchair setup is hit or miss at best. She doesn’t usually love being in there for long, and lately she’s seemed to dislike it even more than she used to. Today though, I did notice that the strap was a bit tight. Not that it was squeezing her or anything, but I think it was preventing her from sitting far enough forward to actually rest her feet on the foot rest. Loosening it seemed to help. I’ll keep debugging.
Other times, I feed her while she’s in the wrap, let her eat off the floor while I sit next to her, or hold her on my lap while we both try to eat. The lap thing is the iffiest.
I had mentioned before that Lydia loved butter. I hadn’t prioritized giving it to her recently, since she’d gotten so good at manipulating all shapes and sizes of food, but I offered it again yesterday. It was a big hit. She hadn’t been interested in the ground beef and cauliflower already in front of her, but she gobbled up a bunch of pieces of butter all in a row. This morning she wasn’t that excited about it and seemed to be going for the peas, but I’m definitely reminded to keep butter in the rotation of things I offer.
As Lydia is more and more skilled at putting things in her mouth, and more inclined to swallow right away, she’s also more likely to get more stressed out about having too much food in her mouth. When she’s upset, she likes me to hold her and carry her around, which is understandable.
Elimination Communication
Things are going pretty smoothly on the EC front. Her poop is very adult-like now, which means I’ve been more consistent about actually doing laundry every few days, even if we have plenty of diapers left (which we almost always do). We very rarely have poopy diapers, but we’ll typically have at least some poopy wipes. Actually thinking about this, I wonder whether I should just use toilet paper on her when I catch her poops… That’s seeming like a good idea, so I may switch.
I think we’re over what I was calling a potty pause. Or at least, there’s a new normal. She often won’t pee on the potty unless she actually has to go, but she’s pretty chill about going in there when I’m not prompting too much. And she prefers the little potty to the sink.
Her morning poop is mostly regular, so that’s easy.
I’ve been doing more and more time in underwear, mostly for the information value. Today though, I didn’t put her diaper on after I pottied her in the morning, and she peed pretty soon after. It wasn’t really intentional diaper free time, I was mostly just being lazy about rediapering. I think she wouldn’t have peed that soon if she’d had a diaper or underwear on. That experience made me disinclined to do much naked time, since I think she thinks it’s okay to just pee wherever when she’s naked. We’ve somewhat trained her to do that, since we let her crawl around naked outside and actually don’t care whether she pees. So yeah, underwear time seems to be the thing over naked time.
We still haven’t figured out the peeing in the high chair thing. I try to wait until she’s just peed to feed her, but the timing doesn’t always work out.
I will also note that I think baby underwear is adorable, which is one reason I’ve been using it as much as I have.
Babywearing
Babywearing is going well. I’ve been better late/y about just accepting it when I suspect that wearing Lydia around is what would make her the most happy. I’ve made lists of things to do while wearing her, which mostly include cleaning, cooking, talking on the phone, and walking from one place to another. Depending on her mood and the context, we’ll either do a front carry or a back carry.
Motor Skills
Not much new to report this week. She’s a tiny bit better at standing, but it’s mostly the same. The longer stretches of stranding are a bit more common. She looks a bit more stable. I can see her using her leg muscles more to lower herself to the ground more smoothly, and I can tell she’s standing up more easily too. She’s a bit stronger and better balanced, I’d say. But it’s subtle.
She probably cruises a bit more than she did last week.
She’s still capable of eating pretty much anything. She can handle peas just fine, even without the pincer grip. She can do mashed potatoes decently. I don’t think she’s ever eaten grains of rice on purpose (just when stuck to other food), so maybe not that. I think her motivation to eat rice has been pretty low though.
Lydia did seem a bit more interested in the stairs than usually though. One time this week it looked like she wanted to climb them. The bottom step is higher than all the subsequent ones, so I lifted her up one step and let her try from there. I think she’s physically capable in the sense that she’s strong and tall enough to ascend from that point, but she didn’t figure out how. She can easily go up one step of that size, assuming there’s a flat surface on the other side. I guess I could take her to the top step of the stair and let her try that one. But yeah, she can’t go up stairs yet. It’s somewhat convenient that the initial step is going to be the hardest for her to figure out. There may be a period, at least, where she’ll be able to practice using almost the whole staircase, but won’t be able to initiate without help.
Communication
The increased babbling from last week continued! Lots of consonant vowel pairs, lots of “ma” and “ba”, some “da” (I think?). I love listen to her figure out how her voice works.
She still likes to grab my arm when she wants me in the high chair.
Still no luck getting her to sign though. I do the signs all the time, but I think she’s just not ready. I’m sure it’ll come eventually.
Personality/Other
Lydia got a huge kick out of the dogs at the park yesterday. She was fussy and tired, so I started walking around with her to calm her down, and she just lit up when she saw some nearby dogs! She just laughed and laughed at them.
Today, she had fun at the park eating sand.
Oh, and the grocery store this week was a new experience. She was very much registering the food as food, and she wanted it! She was reaching out for the apples. It’s a whole new ballgame. Pretty cool to see her being more aware of her environment.
Me
So far so good as far as me functioning without Will. I definitely have to be more mindful about getting everything set up before Lydia’s about to go to sleep on me, since I can’t ask Will to just grab me my computer or a cup of water. In fact, right now I hear my phone vibrating and know that Will probably sent me a text message. But I’m afraid to move and get it because I might wake her up.
As I mentioned above, I think I’m getting more into the groove of just accepting sooner that when Lydia wants something, I should just give it to her. I’ve been reading some Taking Children Seriously philosophy, and I think part of the benefit is from that sinking in.
With Will taking the car to work, I’ve also been walking a bunch more, which I think is good for me.
