Beach Day

This was not your first time at the beach, but this is the first time you knew you were there! You loved every second of it and are now taking a LONG nap :)

6 months

Elaina you are 6 months! Time is flying by...At your Dr apt you weighed 16 pounds and 11 ounces (just under the 75%) and you were 26 1/2 inches long (in the 75%). You cannot sit up by yourself yet but if we sit up you can sit and play forever! You have just started to get up on your knees and rock back and forth, it is the cutest! You can scoot around on your belly, but you only go backwards, that does not stop you from getting whatever it is that you wanted though. You are a very determined little girl. I think you may have some of your daddy's personality haha. At 5 months we would sit you in your bumbo seat and you could get out of it no problem. We would find you on the floor playing next to it! As far as sleeping goes, you are still fussing it out to an extent. We put you down for naps and bedtime and you don't cry anymore but you aren't happy about it. You usually fuss for 5-10 minutes and then cuddle up with your blanket and pacey and fall asleep. The last few nights you have sleep ALL night, but I'm not expecting that to last forever, but as long as we aren't going back the every 3 hour thing I'm good. I will admit though, IF you let me or dad rock you, we always take advantage of it! :) We are suckers for some cuddle time with you! On the weekends your daddy and I like to sleep in...and so far you still let us. You get up early and I feed you and put you in bed with us and you fall back asleep for a little while and then you wake up and play between us. You pull our hair and touch our faces and we push you over to the other one and you do the same to them and they push you back. It keeps you happy and we get a few extra minutes of sleep!! You are eating 2 meals a day. Fruit and cereal in the morning and rice and veggie or meat and veggie for dinner. You LOVE to eat and there is nothing that you will turn away. Your least favorite is chicken if it is in a jar by itself, even though we mix it with something sweet like apples or carrots, you still eat it but we can tell you don't like it! Other than that you like everything!! I think you like to eat food better than nurse!

Battle for Sleep!!

So my sweet little girl who I LOVE to rock to sleep is too big for her britches. Well, maybe not, but we are battling it out with the sleep issues. The first issue is regressing back to newborn stage and waking up every three hours to eat. She has had her bad nights but for the most part is a good sleeper, and now all of a sudden she is hungry. Dad has been unsuccessful in getting her back to sleep without my having to get up as well. This makes for one tired momma and some nights a tired daddy too. I am hoping that this whole waking up to eat thing is because she is going though a growth spurt, but we will see. The last 2 nights she has slept for 6 hours so maybe I am right and we can get back to full nights of sleep quickly haha.

The second issue is how to get her to go to sleep in the first place! Now, it has been our habit to rock Elaina to sleep since she has been born. I know this is controversial as to whether you should rock a baby to sleep or not but, we have loved it. My theory was and is so far that she is only a little baby for so long and I wanted to eat up every second with her. I may live to regret that theory but so far I have not. She had never taken long to rock to sleep, before 2 weeks ago I could sit for 5 min or less and she was out. I loved it, perfect little snuggle time for us, but all of a sudden she is not wanting to go to sleep at all. When we sit down to rock her she fights it. She cries and arches back and one of us ends up holding her tightly and she eventually gives up and goes to sleep. So, rocking has ended up being an unpleasant experience for all of us and we were in search of a change. While I was at work Silas decided he had enough and if she was going to cry it out in his arms, she could just as easily cry it out in her bed. I agree with this fact, but we are both a bit wimpy when it comes to her crying alone in her room. We decided one other time to try this and we only made it 10 minutes before we scooped her up and continued with our rocking routine. At that time neither one of us knows why we even tried it because we both still loved to rock her, but fast forward to now and we are trying to be strong. As I am blogging this it is day 3 and we have remained strong. She still takes 10 to 20 minutes of fussing but at least today she hasn't even really cried. Hoping and praying that this works and she happily goes to bed for us. Otherwise, I don't know what we will do. She doesn't know this but I am sure this hurts her dad and I as much or more than it hurts her. I secretly am amused that it hurts her dad because he is full of tough guy talk, but that little girl lets out one whimper and he folds, almost every time :) For example only night # 2 of trying this and since she had done so good he thought maybe we should just rock her....um...no! then we have to start all over, right??? Oh well, it is getting better and I hope we are doing the right thing. Her 6 month well check up is coming up in July and I hope to have a great update on her sleeping status...until then we will continue to battle and see who has the stronger will :) Love my baby girl, even when she doesn't sleep!!