is this for real?

Ok, Paige just sleeps through the night now for the most part. The whole family is sleeping, and everyone is happy. ahhh bumper pads...why didn't we have you for the past, oh, 4 months (!!!!!!!)..I think part of this is that her soothers can't fall out of the crib, so she can find them in the middle of the night. She can pop those suckers in like nobody's business.

Paige woke up early and then decided she was tired again so I put her back in bed. I feel like lying on the couch with my coffee. I better do that before she wakes up, so I have no time to say anything else. Oh..we had professional photos done in our house yesterday. Hopefully later today I can post some.

um, hello.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Paige's sleeping has been so bad that I had a thought. All she does all night long is bash herself into the one corner of the crib. I thought what if we put the bumper pads in just to see! You may recall that I thought about doing this, oh, about 6 months ago??!

All we have ever been told at prenatal class, the hospital, from the public health nurse, and in every Canadian book, and SIDS article is that bumper pads should not be used. I have been looking just now and it even says that if you do choose to put bumper pads in the crib that they must be removed once the child can sit up. They make them sound so dangerous and scary and unsafe that no one in their right mind would endanger their child that way.

Well, I did. AND IT WORKED!! OMG, I put the bumper pads in last night just to see what happened. Trust me, I was nervous and went into her room twice to check on her. She only woke up ONCE...not 5, 6, 7 times, but once. When I went in there last night she was still in the center of the crib, ok fine. Went in there at 6:30, and no joke she was up against the usual corner, but WITH HER BLANKETS COMPLETELY OVER HER HEAD!!! Woops! Hmm, that could be a bit dangerous. I moved the blankets away and was happy to see that her nose or mouth wasn't squashed up against the side as they warn about. She woke up about 5 minutes after that probably because i woke her up, but she is sound asleep now.

I am a bit worried though about what she will do when she wakes up for the day. Normally she wakes up slowly then crawls around the crib or stands up. Last night when we showed her the bumpers it was obvious she thought it was something she could climb on. I am sort of worried that she will try to climb on it and slip--she won't fall out of the crib, there is no way..the mattress is down too low--but she could slip her legs through the bars or something, I don't know.

Anyway, in researching this, I talked to a couple of people and posted my dilemma on a message board. Right away about 3 people wrote back saying they had the same exact problem and that they had put the bumper pads "back" in. I assume from this that they are from the US and had the bumpers in to begin with but took them out at the suggested time, and they reinstalled them later when this problem started. I suppose last night could be an isolated night, and tonight she could wake up a million times. I somehow doubt it though when I actually saw the top of her head squished up against the side and she was sound asleep (and breathing). Hmm, I wish I didn't have to worry about this because I definitely don't like doing things that are not recommended. What would you do?? On all counts the bumper pads are supposed to be out no matter what at this age and stage.

Unrelated note: I waited till yesterday to try to feed Paige the "8 month +" food (still pureed but with slight chunks of vegetables or fruits in them). I was trying to feed her some beef somethingorother when she started choking! Anyway, long story short, she projectile vomited all over herself and the kitchen. I felt AWFUL! So she is going to stick to the 6 month food. Her little body has been concentrating on crawling and climbing, and is not ready for these foods yet, thank you very much.

After this post I'll probably be arrested.

Fast-Crawl baby complete with bobble head action and clapping motion

The Grandma came and went. It was a quick visit, but fun for all! Poor Grandma Val came right in the middle of a snow storm. We have raved for years about how great Ontario winters are compared to Alberta ones, so we had it coming. Luckily we were still able to get out to Paige's last swimming lesson (where she got her first certificate)--but barely, since the roads were not ploughed and it was a bit chaotic on the roads. It made for a nice and pleasant swimming pool though.



Paige has just started to do a few things. It seems she has replaced "the face" with the bobble head. I wasn't sure before, so I didn't say anything, but when Paige hears music she likes to bobble her head back and forth. Not sure where she got this one from. Sometimes it is in corelation to nothing though, and she will just be crawling along and will bobble her head. I only thought this morning how she barely did "the face" all weekend, but constantly had her little head moving. She has also started to understand waving, and puts her hand up sometimes.


We also witnessed super fast cruising this weekend. Her cruising has been pretty timid and slow up until this point, but one time she just got up and inch, inch, inch, she was moving along quite a bit quicker than usual to get something on the couch. I think it is because it was in all one motion--hands up, onto knees, standing, inch, inch, inch. Like when you sit down at the piano and can just start playing a song without the music--if you look at the music, it screws you up.

Boy am I clever. I have a theory about Paige's sleeping. The first night that Grandma Val was here, unfortunately Paige had the worst sleep since...ever. To be honest, her sleeps have been pretty brutal. But yesterday, I weighed her and she was 21.5 lbs. That means she had gained a pound and a half in about 3 weeks. I think she has gone through a growth spurt! That might account for her generally fussy nature as well. She has also grown out of most of her sleepers. I am wondering if she will grow a little in height too. If she is going to walk at 9 months like her mommy, I think she needs to be a bit taller. I have never seen a baby walking that is as short as Paige.

Grandma's on her way!

On Monday, Mike's mom (Grandma Val) told us that she would be in town on the weekend! She is here right now for some meetings, but will be staying with us on the weekend. Paige should be getting excited!

Today I managed to capture the face that I was talking about:

Last night we bundled Paige up and attempted to take her out in my old baby sled. We thought it would be perfect since we were snowed in all day, and the streets still hadn't been ploughed. Well, as soon as we stuffed her in the sled out on the street, she was terrified!

Poor little girl. We were thinking that she was probably pretty confused being pulled along so low to the ground. We ended up walking around the block carrying her and dragging an empty sled. People were shovelling their driveways and probably thought that we were nuts.

I have had to do a bit more rearranging and putting away of things. Paige is constantly bonking her head on things. She went through a few days where she barely hurt herself at all, which can be attributed to her increasingly better climbing skills. But now she is trying to climb up straight objects, like the corner of the wall, or the leg of a table, rather than grabbing the edge of a shelf or something. So now she slips sometimes while she is attempting these little maneuvers. She hit her head really bad today, and I feel really bad. It's not that I don't watch her, but sometimes you just have to let her try new things otherwise she gets really fussy and bored. I take it that we need to get her a couple of big toys that she can pull herself up on...like one of those activity tables, or the little walker thing I was talking about getting...anything that is safer. Now I can think like a baby and predict what she is thinking of climbing up on, like her friend Amy, for instance.

A new game for Paige to play is to take out all of the DVD's from the second shelf and then play with them. I figure we will let her do this until she becomes bored of it, rather than constantly pull her away. Realistically we will have to move this bookshelf before she gets big enough to tip it over.

I am finding myself having less and less time to myself now. I can't go on the computer anymore unless Paige is sleeping. She used to like her playpen, but now she gets mad in it if she is in it for more than 2 minutes. It works wonders when I need to go grab her bottle or a coffee or something though (oh right--that no coffee thing lasted for 24 hours). Because I realized I can't leave her alone for even 30 seconds if I run really, really fast down the stairs to get a bottle because she will make her way over and stand against the baby gate! What a little scammer! I mean, if I tried to sneak down quietly while she was occupied I am sure she would be ok, but still. Basically, I can't do very much unless she is sleeping anymore. Luckily she has a couple of decent naps during the day...making up for the less than decent nighttime...but I digress...

2 more things!

If I had only waited a few hours before posting this morning, I realized 2 more things Paige can do.

1. Backwards crawling (to get away from something--in this case--the vacuum)
2. Can climb onto low objects (I had her mattress on the floor as I was changing her crib height, and she climbed on top of the mattress crawled across it and then fell off at the other end since she wasn't sure how to get off--cried at this--woops)

New things she loves/is fascinated by:

1. bathrooms
2. the new baby gate/looking through the railing to the foyer
3. extension cords
4. vents (especially if they are in the bathroom)
5. books
6. diapers

Paige is hilarious

I think if you click on this picture and view it in extra large you will be able to see her bottom 2 teeth. I have been unable to get a picture of them.

Paige is making us laugh so much lately. You can just tell that she is so proud of herself for being able to stand up. She has been making this face lately that I have been unable to photograph either. She scrunches up her nose and opens her mouth to show her little teeth and breaths heavily out of her nose. (if you scrunch up your nose and breath out your nose you will see what I mean) She does the face a lot when she has pulled herself up. It seems to be her face she makes when she is really happy.

We have yet to move the crib down to the next level, but I am going to do it when I am done with this. This morning I was trying to get her to nap and just as I thought she might be close to sleeping, I went to check on her and there she was standing there with the scrunched up face. I took a picture of her:

So then I made her lay down and I repositioned the blankets. From underneath my hand she squirmed her way out and started creeping towards the side of the crib and stood up again! We finally had to go to the grocery store so that she would be able to sleep in her car seat. Her sleeping was bad again last night, and I think she is thinking about her new moves in the nighttime. Also, her voice sounds raspy, so she could also have a sore throat?

Paige also started "cruising" yesterday. She got up to hold onto the couch and she moved her way along to grab a newspaper a bunch of times. Then at night, she moved her way along to get her teddy bear and was even able to cruise from the couch onto a little table when I moved the bear over there. She is pretty slow and has a few accidents, but I bet in a few weeks she will be motoring!

Practice makes perfect!

Paige has been very interested, lately, in practising her walking skills. She is still so wobble-y but I think she sees it as entertainment. The crawling is becoming passe already. She is very clever and I can see her watching my legs if I do silly jumps in front of her to get her to laugh. She is trying to figure the whole thing out. Something she can do, (although I'm not sure if it is impressive or not--what do I know?), is walk forward when she is holding onto something. When she pulls herself to standing while holding onto something, obviously her legs are still far away from the object and her back is still arched as she is holding onto the object. She can then take a few steps forward on her own to be standing up straight. I thought that was pretty good, but like I said, what do I know? I think I need to get her one of those walkers. I was under the impression that all walkers were illegal, but it is just those death trap ones that the kid is confined in a seat where they can make their way over to the stairs when you're not looking. I guess they assume that if your kid is walking behind something you have already taken the neccessary precautions with the baby gate. You can bet I wouldn't let her out of my sight with one of those..I am always afraid of her falling when she is standing against anything. Oh--so basically, i mean one of those little push car things, or some sort of push animal or something for babies rather than toddlers.



I put her in her bouncy chair yesterday for the first time since, probably, Christmas? She was basically horizontal in it since she weighs so much. Also, on the back of the seat it says that once the baby can sit up unnassisted that they should not be in the seat anymore. I wasn't sure if that meant they could just sit on their own unnassisted, or if they could sit up (bring themselves to sitting) unnassisted? It was quite unclear, but I take it to mean that she should not be in it anymore since she can sit on her own, and if she is in the chair she can use the sides to pull herself up. If the toy bar is on though, there is no way she can get out, but oh well. It was not as fun for her as it used to be. But it was very interesting to watch how she interactred with the moving toys on the toy bar now. She used to just hit randomly at these toys that would make noise, and she would just watch these other 2 tiny animals that moved. Now she seems to understand cause and effect more and she would know how to make noise. She was also touching the smaller toys with her index finger, and playing with the toucan attached to a spring which she had never done. It is too bad that babies outgrow toys before they obviously get the full use out of them.


Today is day 1 of no coffee. We'll see if I make it till tomorrow. There are just so many days that it has made me feel gross, so I have subsituted it this morning with herbal tea. HA! We'll see what happens. I was hoping that just having a warm drink would help. We're going to Gymboree today, so we'll see how I feel there. I know I need to drink more water too, so if I do both of these things I should feel spectacular.

I just love this little pink sweater and jeans. She felt so grown up in it that she thought she would stay up till 10:00 last night.

Paige's crawling skills thus far...

Here is Paige crawling down the hall to go see the vacuum cleaner...

Another high chair sleep

Gnawing

Paige slept through the night last night! I have a feeling the sleeps are going to get a lot better now...knock on wood.

Speaking of wood, since Paige figured out how to stand at the bookshelf, she will crawl over to it, start to get up, but then stop short once she gets on her knees because the second shelf is at the same height as her mouth and she will start to gnaw on it and scrape her little teeth on it!!

I have to keep pulling her away and I say NO (what if she ingests some lead based paint or something??)

Today we are off to Gymboree. Should be good for her to get out to play somewhere different than our family room. She is going stir crazy.