Sleep Training Update

flinging her "I Can Do Anything" doll

The bathtub is just the right height for standing up and holding on

Clay class with the nanny (the description says that the clay is non-toxic at that all babies
taste it and realize it's not food and stop mouthing it... doesn't look like it to me!)

what's more fun than the swings???

Very tolerant of birthday party hubub and being passed from person to person

Sleep training continues.

I start the night in my bed, in the same room with Calliope. When she wakes up crying, I wait a couple of minutes, then get up, pat her back dutifully, and observe her becoming enraged.

Then I move to the living room.

I don't have a clock in the living room, and I'm sleepy, so it's hard to tell (and to remember)... but I think the periods of crying are getting substantially shorter. (Unless I go to "comfort" her again.)

Unfortunately, last night, she woke up at 4 am and at 5 am.

So Mama is awfully tired.

I'm thinking that maybe tonight, I should just stay in the living room the whole night. But it makes me nervous not to be there in the room with her.

So I don't know. I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing. But perusing Ferber (which I hurriedly downloaded last night, worried I was doing something wrong) makes me think I'm taking a rather hard line approach. "Ferberizing" always sounds so horrible but it actually sounds pretty humane.

Except if returning to your child makes her far more upset. Which it does to mine.

It also makes me more tired.

So I think I'm going to drop that part.

Tiara's comment about co-sleeping without nursing sounds awfully nice... I think I would like to sleep with her. But I don't want to go to bed when she does. And putting her in bed with me without letting her nurse similarly enrages her.

Someone on a local parent listserve informed me that she doesn't believe in Crying It Out (when I specifically asked about CIO techniques) and then followed that up with the helpful tidbit that she just sent her husband in to comfort the baby. Oh, so you get to feel self righteous and stay in bed! How lovely for you. And obviously not possible for me.

At the end of the day, my beloved baby is securely attached. I truly believe that this is the best way to optimize both of our health and happiness. Even though I feel like talking about CIO makes me sound like a heartless bitch.

But we've otherwise had a lovely weekend together. I'm really enjoying her again after my week or two back at work. I feel like we both laughed a lot. Tonight, we were both in hysterics because of her face of horror and vehement head shaking after being given a bite of egg (well, I was laughing because of that, and she was laughing because I was laughing), and it was like we were sharing a joke. Not her imitating me, but us, two humans, having a shared funny moment. It was amazing. We both couldn't stop laughing. I loved it.

She is scooting backwards, which cracks both of us. She had been drooling a lot the last few days, enough for me to put the amber necklace on her (supposed to help with the pain of teething), even though she hasn't been complaining. Sure enough, a top tooth poked through this morning. She has rejected the new sippy cup I bought her (I bought three to try, but have only attempted one so far), but loves to drink from a glass (the result is predictably messy, but at least it's a quick way to get kefir, one of the few foods she likes, into her gullet). She's all about "dada" and "ida."

We went to a sign language class on Saturday, which was great. The teacher suggested starting with just "more" and "all done" until the baby gets the hang of it, and trying to sign every hour that the baby is awake. So I will teach Nastya the signs tomorrow. And every few bites, I would ask Calliope, "more? more yogurt?". She was definitely watching my hands. Apparently it takes a few weeks for her to try to sign herself. But I swear she was already trying to sign before the class -- she moves her hands purposefully and looks at me intently... I just don't know what she's trying to tell me. But the teacher said that "more" and "all done" cover an awful lot of ground, so we will see how it goes. I've also been doing the sign for "milk" because it makes me laugh, mimicking milking a cow. But she said that we breastfeeding moms can just do the signal one handed so that it's not quite so obvious to the rest of the world. It seems handy to me to have a signal for "want to breastfeed" though of course I may find out that she wants to breastfeed all the time!

Next week we start baby swim class. I'm looking forward to that. I bought a new swimsuit, with a skirt, and have resigned myself to just avoiding looking in any mirrors. My friend Emily and I went to a Russian banya (bathhouse) two weeks ago and I employed this strategy and it worked amazingly well. We are planning to go again next month. It was wonderful to do something so luxurious for the first time in a very long time, and it's quite affordable, especially with a shared babysitter.

I had my eyebrows threaded for the first time this weekend and I now feel resolutely positive about one aspect of my body.

And here's a video for no apparent reason. Like you need an excuse to show off your cute baby?