How hard is it to keep track of a child's clothing at daycare? All of Noelle's clothing are labeled with her name (as requested by her daycare) yet she is still missing at least 2 onesies (one of which is one of my favorites. Of course they aren't going to lose something I'm not crazy about. Grrr.). I know it sounds petty as it's just 2 onesies (at least that I'm aware of) but still. How hard is it to stuff said child's soiled clothes into her bag? I'm guessing they gave it to the one other baby girl by mistake but I'm annoyed that her mom hasn't sent it back in yet. I've received the wrong clothes twice but I always promptly returned it to the daycare the next day and explained that it must be the other baby's. Grrrr.
I'm going to have to start being quiet in the evenings when Noelle is asleep. Twice this week she heard me talking (not any louder than I've talked before though) and she woke up crying to be held. She has a truly heart piercing wail at times. The indignant shriek she belts out when she's angry about not being held is bad enough (and sorta funny) but the lower toned, sad, "woe is me" wail is much worse about making me feel bad.
We fed her apple baby food for the first time this weekend and her reaction was unexpected. I had held off on giving her fruits for the past 2 months as everyone told me that introducing it too early would make her reject the not-as-sweet baby foods. So I dutifully gave her only peas and green beans at first and then reluctantly the carrots and sweet potatoes. She eats all of these relatively well. Her reaction to apples? Bleah. I forgot that in addition to sweet, apples are often a bit tart. Noelle is getting better at accepting apples but still flinches a bit from the tartness every now and then. Heh.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Argh!!!!
I'm still torn between feeding Noelle solids first and then bottle an hour later or vice versa. Feeding her solids first will get her more used to eating solids but on the other hand, she should take in as much milk as possible since milk is richer in calories and better at meeting her nutritional needs. Gah! Why isn't there one solution????? For someone like me, having a constant barrage of scenarios where there are a million possible solutions is driving me nuts!
Good and bad at the same time
Noelle has started crying/whimpering whenever I leave her, even if she is being held by someone else. Before, she would stare at me as I left but generally be okay as long as someone, ANYONE, was holding her. Now, she's actually protesting my leaving. This makes me feel good and bad...while it's heartwarming and makes me feel "awwww!" that she prefers me so much, this also makes me feel guilty since I do have to leave her some of the time. She's reallllllly good at making one feel guilty. She's perfected the "woe is me" expression.
By the way, Noelle has mastered rolling between her stomach and back in either direction. She actually uses it to purposefully get closer to things she wants. Last week, she also sat by herself (no cushions or anything supporting her!) while propping her hands in front of her for the first time! Whoohoo!
Noelle has also now tried both peas and sweet potatoes baby food. She seems to like variety...whenever we gave her something new for the first time (i.e. rice cereal, oatmeal cereal, peas, sweet potatoes), she gobbled it up. The next few times...not so much. Hmmm...the little queen apparently gets bored easily. This does not bode well...
By the way, Noelle has mastered rolling between her stomach and back in either direction. She actually uses it to purposefully get closer to things she wants. Last week, she also sat by herself (no cushions or anything supporting her!) while propping her hands in front of her for the first time! Whoohoo!
Noelle has also now tried both peas and sweet potatoes baby food. She seems to like variety...whenever we gave her something new for the first time (i.e. rice cereal, oatmeal cereal, peas, sweet potatoes), she gobbled it up. The next few times...not so much. Hmmm...the little queen apparently gets bored easily. This does not bode well...
Friday, August 7, 2009
Cause and effect
Noelle has a new bloodcurdling shriek now. When you hear it, you swear that something must be wrong but she stops as soon as you pick her up. She's taken to using it when we put her to bed at night. For the past few nights, she screamed like that for about an hour before she fell asleep while we tried to calm her with shushing noises/music. Last night, we decided to try just letting her be and leaving the room. I felt horrible about letting her cry like that but hey, what we were doing wasn't working. The irony? She stopped within 5 minutes and slept with only a few sniffles now and then. That kid learned to shriek like that to get us to pick her up. Little stinker.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Thoughts of a crazy, OCD mom...
When Noelle starts her jars of baby food (which she started with today), should I be feeding her a bottle of milk then, too, or wait an hour? Should I give her the same amounts of milk as before for a feeding or less since she's eating solids?
Should I only keep her in onesies at daycare so her tummy won't get cold when she inevitably drags up her shirt ("Yoohoo, world! Check out my belly button and nipples!")?
Why did she develop this disturbing habit of either repeatedly bapping herself in the head or scratching the hell out of her ear during bottle feeds? If we stop her, she stops drinking. Rhythmic self-injurious behaviors is NOT making mommy happy...
Should I bother putting sunscreen on her? She's in the shade most of the time anyways but all those books keep saying baby skin is sensitive...
If I worry enough, will it count?
Did I mention that the peas baby food she ate today looked almost exactly like the contents of her diaper? Ewwwwwww...
Should I only keep her in onesies at daycare so her tummy won't get cold when she inevitably drags up her shirt ("Yoohoo, world! Check out my belly button and nipples!")?
Why did she develop this disturbing habit of either repeatedly bapping herself in the head or scratching the hell out of her ear during bottle feeds? If we stop her, she stops drinking. Rhythmic self-injurious behaviors is NOT making mommy happy...
Should I bother putting sunscreen on her? She's in the shade most of the time anyways but all those books keep saying baby skin is sensitive...
If I worry enough, will it count?
Did I mention that the peas baby food she ate today looked almost exactly like the contents of her diaper? Ewwwwwww...
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Sunday, July 26, 2009
New problems
We had been pretty lucky with regards to Noelle's sleep in recent months. Ever since around her 3rd month, she's been conking out around 8pm or so and sleeping till pretty much 5:30 or 6:oo the next morning. Sure she woke up a bit sometimes at night but she would just go back to sleep. Even more of a miracle, she pretty much fell asleep by herself. (Yay, the sleep books had been right! The stuff we did/had to do during the first 3 months to get her to sleep like pacifier use/swaddling/making shushing noises didn't set up bad habits!)
However, the past few days, she has been waking up at 4:30 and definitely NOT going back to sleep. The problem started with what I KNEW was going to cause trouble. As I've previously mentioned, she tends to fall asleep for a nap at 6PM every day. I initially wanted to keep her up since a nap so close to her bedtime made me nervous that she wouldn't sleep through the night but up until recently, she would wake up from this "nap" after half an hour or hour or so and still go to bed fine for her actual bedtime and sleep through the night as usual. Once in a while she'd stay asleep from the 6:00pm nap and just wake up normal time in the morning. I'd chalk that up to her being extra tired...maybe she didn't nap as well during daycare that day?
Starting Tuesday night however, she was waking up earlier (she'd be wide awake by the time I woke up for my alarm at 5:30 whereas before she'd generally be either asleep still or just starting to stir). Then starting Thursday night, I would be woken up by her crying at 4:30. The last 2 nights I waited to see if she'd go back to sleep. Nope. Just steadily increasing crying. So I got her and fed and changed her. She then fell back to sleep. Grrrrr...great for you but too late for Mommy to fall back asleep before her own alarm. To try to prevent this early waking, since Thursday we have not let her sleep her 6pm nap or woken her up from it after 20 minutes or so. She went to bed last night after 8pm and she STILL woke up at 4:30 this morning. I left her alone for 10 minutes and fervently prayed she'd fall asleep again but no. She just started crying harder.
Generally, everytime she cries, I go through a panicked inventory of what can be wrong. Maybe her diaper rash is bothering her? (More on that later). Does she have a fever? Is she starving? As soon as I picked her up though, she stopped crying so I knew it was only her wanting to be picked up. So even though it broke my heart to let her cry, I put her back in the crib while I patted her back and made calming shushing sounds while keeping the room dark, in the hopes that she would learn to go back to sleep. I figured that since she fell asleep so soon again the previous mornings after I fed and changed her, she is still needing sleep.
She cried in such a heartbreaking way for 20 minutes. I actually started crying a bit cuz I felt so bad but she needs to learn to sleep until at least the sun is up! She finally quieted down when I started singing that "Good morning" song I always sang to her ever since she was a newborn. 99% of the time, it calms her down. (I know, I know- the irony of singing "Good morning" when I'm trying to get her to sleep. Myeh. She doesn't know what I'm saying). She calmed down and FELL ASLEEP after 10 minutes of soft singing. Of course, it was 5 minutes to my alarm going off by then. So here I am, writing about it. Boohoo...I need to go to bed even earlier now to deal with this.
On to the diaper rash problem:
Noelle doesn't usually get diaper rash. However, she pooped non stop all day since roughly Friday night. I guess the constant pooping is irritating cuz now her "down there" is all red. We can't figure out why she's pooping so much. I can't even say if it's diarrhea or constipation. You might ask how the hell can I not tell the difference. Well, her poop looks dry (hence constipated looking) but she's going so much (isn't that diarrhea?). Semantics aside, she's doing something unsavory in her diaper very frequently. I stopped her rice cereal for now (again) to see if that will help. I figure, myeh, she doesn't like it so much recently anyway. (Her latest thing is to do raspberries with her mouth while I feed her cereal. You can imagine how much "fun" that is). I really hope the pooping isn't cuz of something I ate. That's always maddening to me- not knowing what the heck is causing her weird poops. Is it something I ate? The new facial cleanser I'm using getting into her milk? The rice cereal? The universe out to get me? =P
Huh...it's now 1/2 an hour past when she fell asleep and she's still asleep. We're getting ready to go to Rob's mom's today so we were planning on doing the same morning routine as if it's a workday so that we can get out of the house early. Hmmmm...I think I will just let her sleep in. I'm not messing with this hard-won sleep.
However, the past few days, she has been waking up at 4:30 and definitely NOT going back to sleep. The problem started with what I KNEW was going to cause trouble. As I've previously mentioned, she tends to fall asleep for a nap at 6PM every day. I initially wanted to keep her up since a nap so close to her bedtime made me nervous that she wouldn't sleep through the night but up until recently, she would wake up from this "nap" after half an hour or hour or so and still go to bed fine for her actual bedtime and sleep through the night as usual. Once in a while she'd stay asleep from the 6:00pm nap and just wake up normal time in the morning. I'd chalk that up to her being extra tired...maybe she didn't nap as well during daycare that day?
Starting Tuesday night however, she was waking up earlier (she'd be wide awake by the time I woke up for my alarm at 5:30 whereas before she'd generally be either asleep still or just starting to stir). Then starting Thursday night, I would be woken up by her crying at 4:30. The last 2 nights I waited to see if she'd go back to sleep. Nope. Just steadily increasing crying. So I got her and fed and changed her. She then fell back to sleep. Grrrrr...great for you but too late for Mommy to fall back asleep before her own alarm. To try to prevent this early waking, since Thursday we have not let her sleep her 6pm nap or woken her up from it after 20 minutes or so. She went to bed last night after 8pm and she STILL woke up at 4:30 this morning. I left her alone for 10 minutes and fervently prayed she'd fall asleep again but no. She just started crying harder.
Generally, everytime she cries, I go through a panicked inventory of what can be wrong. Maybe her diaper rash is bothering her? (More on that later). Does she have a fever? Is she starving? As soon as I picked her up though, she stopped crying so I knew it was only her wanting to be picked up. So even though it broke my heart to let her cry, I put her back in the crib while I patted her back and made calming shushing sounds while keeping the room dark, in the hopes that she would learn to go back to sleep. I figured that since she fell asleep so soon again the previous mornings after I fed and changed her, she is still needing sleep.
She cried in such a heartbreaking way for 20 minutes. I actually started crying a bit cuz I felt so bad but she needs to learn to sleep until at least the sun is up! She finally quieted down when I started singing that "Good morning" song I always sang to her ever since she was a newborn. 99% of the time, it calms her down. (I know, I know- the irony of singing "Good morning" when I'm trying to get her to sleep. Myeh. She doesn't know what I'm saying). She calmed down and FELL ASLEEP after 10 minutes of soft singing. Of course, it was 5 minutes to my alarm going off by then. So here I am, writing about it. Boohoo...I need to go to bed even earlier now to deal with this.
On to the diaper rash problem:
Noelle doesn't usually get diaper rash. However, she pooped non stop all day since roughly Friday night. I guess the constant pooping is irritating cuz now her "down there" is all red. We can't figure out why she's pooping so much. I can't even say if it's diarrhea or constipation. You might ask how the hell can I not tell the difference. Well, her poop looks dry (hence constipated looking) but she's going so much (isn't that diarrhea?). Semantics aside, she's doing something unsavory in her diaper very frequently. I stopped her rice cereal for now (again) to see if that will help. I figure, myeh, she doesn't like it so much recently anyway. (Her latest thing is to do raspberries with her mouth while I feed her cereal. You can imagine how much "fun" that is). I really hope the pooping isn't cuz of something I ate. That's always maddening to me- not knowing what the heck is causing her weird poops. Is it something I ate? The new facial cleanser I'm using getting into her milk? The rice cereal? The universe out to get me? =P
Huh...it's now 1/2 an hour past when she fell asleep and she's still asleep. We're getting ready to go to Rob's mom's today so we were planning on doing the same morning routine as if it's a workday so that we can get out of the house early. Hmmmm...I think I will just let her sleep in. I'm not messing with this hard-won sleep.
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