Charting

Last night Katie fell asleep on her own at 11 PM, which happened to be during when I was running around preparing her bath. (I thought a good sleep routine would be to give her a bath, read her a book, then pop her into bed for a nurse and her seahorse.) I had her clothing laid out, her towels and wash cloth prepared, her bath filled up and ready, and then I go to fetch her and she's asleep. Since I wanted to give her a bath, I sat on the bed and called her name a few times. Nothing. I put laundry away in a noisy fashion. Still she didn't wake. So I figured she was in a pretty sound sleep. The idea popped into my head - if she was going to sleep through noise and me bouncing things on the bed, then maybe she was in a deep enough sleep to sleep in her bassinette! So I gave her the choice - sleep in the bassinette or take a bath. Deep sleep and all, she chose the bath. WRONG CHOICE, WRONG CHOICE!

Of course it wasn't her fault, she hates sleeping on a flat, hard surface, be it the bassinette, crib or on a blanket on the floor. She does, however, love attention, being awake, and taking baths, so I accepted her decision, stripped her down and put her in the bathtub.

I spent a good three hours afterwards kicking myself.

She did NOT want to go back to sleep in fear of being put back into the bassinette to sleep an entire two feet away from me. Well, I can't blame it all on that, as her teeth were also hurting quite a bit. But I was up past 2 AM when I shouldn't have had to be. Even Bill couldn't get her to calm down, and usually he's pretty good at making her happy. But even when she tried to smile, she'd cry in pain. Playing her seahorse music and laying it beside her calmed her down a lot, and made her blinks turn into quite a few seconds long where she could barely keep her eyes open. But then she'd start crying in pain. Her teething pills didn't help, her teething toys didn't help, she refused to nurse and she was upset at feeling so tired but so awake at the same time.

Why did I wake her up at 11? I know what I was thinking, that maybe for once I could win this sleep battle, but no, I still lost. When I'm determined to do something, I become very stubborn - and then kick myself over and over when it still doesn't work out. I'm very determined to train her, but doing this on my own isn't going well.

So today I started charting. It's the first step in getting her on a schedule and figuring out how much sleep she herself needs. I chart when she falls asleep, how she falls asleep, where she sleeps, and how long. So far she fell asleep at 1:20, slept until 1:50, woke up to nurse (her teeth are also still hurting her today) and went to sleep again at around 2:20. She's still asleep, by herself, in the middle of the bed.

Outside of baby land, Bill's father came over yesterday to pick some stuff up, and he and Bill came up with the great idea of taking all of our coupons we had for Arby's and splitting the cost of food for all of us, and for a large amount of food, it cost them only what two or three normal meals would have. Except when they came back, they barely ate anything - AND LEFT THE REST WITH ME. I'm talking like 6 sandwiches, mozzerella sticks, fries, chicken nuggets, sodas, etc. It's like they want me to get fat! Since i only ever get the same thing at Arby's out of fear of disappointment if I try something new, this was so much fun. I tried chicken sandwiches with fresh tomato and lettuce (nothing wilted or gross), a french onion roast sandwich that tasted amazing with melted cheese, and the angus cheesesteak with peppers that was really yummy. For breakfast today I had curly fries with Arby's sauce. Don't worry, I'm still eating salads in between these things, taking lots of vitamins and eating yogurt and drinking milk to stay healthy. But I am enjoying this extremely rare treat of a fast food feast.

Oh, Katie seems to know her name now. I can sit there and babble on about anything and she'll just look around the room and be in a daze, and then I'll slip her name into the sentence and she immediately looks over at me. I was testing her yesterday and every time I said "Katie" she'd look up at me, even in midsentences or while I was talking a lot to confuse her with other words.

I don't understand though why she won't grab or hold her toys. She grabs everythign else - she loves to ball up my shirt in her fist, grab her burp cloth, hold blankets, pull my hair, etc. But when I give her her toys, she doesn't have much interest in holding them, only if I hold them for her. The only exception is a little bear I put in the sling with her while we go for walks. She likes to hold his paw and try to eat his head. But all of her teething toys she refuses to hold (and if I put them in her hands for her, she whips them back at me!)

Looks like baby girl is waking up. For the record, this nap was 40 minutes long.

EDIT: I got Katie's book today!

I think I wrote about this before, Shutterfly makes great books and for her birth Shutterfly gave me a free book offer, just pay shipping. It's originally like $25, and I had made one before half way through my pregnancy for Katie about how we were preparing for her. This one is all about her from 0-3 months. It came out really cute! I took pictures of some the pages, there's about 22 pages all together:

The cover:

The spine and back:

First page: