Journey to and Through Motherhood: Lily: 1 Year and 2 Weeks (3/8/10

I thought that perhaps Lily was transitioning into taking only one nap per day as that was what she did both Saturday and Sunday while waking up and going to bed at her normal times. But perhaps she was just off schedule due to the excitement of her birthday party because she was one sleepy little girl on Monday. She took two big naps- the first was four hours long! Kirsten actually had to wake her up because she was worried about her or Lily might have slept even longer. Unfortunately, all of that sleeping during the day threw her off that night. She got up at 3am on Tuesday morning wide awake and ready to play. She only cried because we kept laying her back down, trying to get her to go back to sleep. We were exhausted! Luckily, she napped normally at Kirsten’s that day and was back on her normal sleep/wake/nap cycle for the rest of the week. She’s back to taking two naps each day, although her morning nap does seem to be getting shorter and shorter.

Lily loves going shopping, although her tolerance for sitting in the cart is low so we end up having to carry her around. That’s fine except for when I am shopping alone with her. It is very hard to push a cart and carry a baby at the same time. Lily is captivated by all there is to see and especially loves grocery stores. On Monday we went to Kroger where she, of course, went nuts over the claw machine. On Wednesday, we went to Costco after picking Lily up. Pat was watching her because Kirsten had to leave shortly before we arrived to go to a physical therapy appointment for her shoulder. Hopefully her injury wasn’t caused by carrying my heavy baby around! While we were checking out at Costco, we ran into the Fredrick family. Lily loves them all so much. We will really miss not having Kirsten as her sitter when the month is over. She is so wonderful and her family is such a perfect fit for Lily.

I had Friday morning off of work to take Lily to her one year doctor visit. She measured 30.4 inches in length which is in the 84th percentile and was 21.3 pounds which is in the 51st percentile. She was in the 81st percentile for weight at her 6 month check-up but dropped to the 55th at her 9 month visit. Now she is even lower (although she did gain weight). Her pediatrician assured me again that this is completely normal for breastfed babies as they transition to solids and end up taking in less fat and calories while being more active. But I miss my little butterball! Her Michelin Man legs are almost completely gone and her arms are skinny now. She is ahead of the curve as far as her fine motor skills, gross motor skills, speech development, etc. and can do such things as pick up small items, place objects where they belong, push levers and buttons to get a toy to work, understand consequences and sequences, walk, talk (she says more than a dozen words now), and help when I dress her. I decided to put off the controversial MMR vaccine until she is a little older so they instead gave her the final round of Hib, Prevnar, and DTAP. We had the great medical assistant administer her shots again. Lily cried this time but it didn’t last long and she was happy immediately afterward. I gave her a preventive dose of Tylenol but Kirsten never gave her any more for the rest of the day because she never developed a fever or seemed ill. That was good. I also discussed with the pediatrician how to wean Lily from breastfeeding and transition her into her crib. Lily has pretty much weaned herself into mainly only breastfeeding at night but I know that the transition to her crib is one that I need to do soon as it is getting crowded in our bed.

Per Dr. Sachdev’s advice, I decided to try transitioning Lily to her crib during naptime first. She already sleeps in a pack-and-play at Kirsten’s during her weekday naps so this is not a new concept for her. Unfortunately, she is not used to it at our house so it was very difficult. For her morning nap on Saturday, it took her 45 minutes to fall asleep and she only slept for 20 minutes versus falling asleep immediately in my arms then sleeping her normal hour and a half. But hey, she did sleep in her crib for the first time ever so that part was a success! I started in the room with her, rubbing her back as she lay in the crib. Then I slowly moved back from the crib to her rocking chair then out of the room while she was still awake. She fussed every time I moved, especially when I left the room for good but never went into an all-out wail. Even though it took her forever to fall asleep, she continued to lie still the entire time. Her afternoon nap in her crib was entirely different. She refused to lay down and kept standing up and pacing the crib. I was exhausted and wanted to take a nap too so I ended up laying down on the floor next to her crib and fell asleep before she did. Later, I woke up and moved to the bed where Paul was napping. It felt so weird having the bed all to ourselves for the first time in over a year. Lily woke up crying really hard after about 30 minutes and couldn’t calm herself down so Paul brought her to bed with us where we all fell back to sleep for about an hour more. That nap in her crib was less successful than her morning nap but at least we tried. Once Lily is used to taking naps in her crib, we will start attempting nights in her crib. I don’t know how successful that will be since she still wakes up and nurses multiple times each night. Plus, I don’t know if I am ready for it as I still love that snuggle time with her, especially after a long workday apart. However, I am totally ready for her to learn to sleep through the night as I am chronically exhausted!

Between Lily’s naps in her crib on Saturday, we went to the Livingston Area Parents of Multiples Mom to Mom sale. My friend, Christina, is a member of the organization so we visited with her briefly while we were there. I wanted to get Lily some outdoor stuff like a pushable ride-on toy and a bucket swing but they didn’t have either item. It didn’t help that we got there pretty late due to Lily’s morning nap taking forever. However, I did get her two adorable dresses and a few toys that she wanted including a stuffed piglet and a poppy bee toy (she loves bees). After the sale, we had lunch at a new Mexican restaurant in Howell. Lily loved her cheese quesadilla.

Our house was still trashed from the birthday party and desperately needed to be cleaned and organized but I could never find the time. I wanted to clean the house on Sunday but I had a bad headache which hurt worse when I bent over so cleaning was out of the picture. Better luck next week!

Now that Lily is over a year old, we can introduce whole cow’s milk to her diet. I tried to do this back when she was 10 months old when my milk supply dropped but was told to hold off until she was 12 months old per her pediatrician. Back then, she loved it but now she is refusing it. Kirsten tried giving it to her all week with little success. She won’t take it alone, mixed with breastmilk, or even just straight breastmilk- she is basically refusing the bottle in general. It’s so weird. I am worried because she needs the extra fat and calories from milk. As previously mentioned, I don’t want her getting any thinner! I asked Dr. Sachdev about it on Friday. She said that it’s fine that Lily is transitioning off the bottle and suggested giving the milk to her in a sippy cup instead. The problem is that Lily only accepts water in her sippy cup. She won’t even take juice in it. Apparently in her mind bottle=milk and sippy cup=water. If she drinks anything else from it, she immediately spits it out, even if it is something that she likes. However, she does drink a variety of things through a cup with a straw as she always wants to sample what I am drinking. She knows to expect the unexpected when drinking through a straw so perhaps we will introduce milk to her that way. The only problem with that is the inconvenience factor of having to carefully hold everything for her so that she doesn’t spill it. She always tries to grab the cup from you or pull the straw out and she is so dang strong that it is hard to fight her!

Here are some pictures from this week.

Lily watching TV in her diaper and a big baggy sweatshirt that belongs to Kirsten’s 5 year old neighbor, Abby. Lily is finally an expert at getting in and out of her chair:

Scooting out of the chair:

And she’s out:

Lily playing with the mailbox toy that she got from us for her birthday. I love her “Too Cool 04 You” shirt and her crazy post-nap hair. We claim that the hair in the back of her head clearly came from Paul as it loves to stick straight up:

These are Paul’s favorite pajamas. We bought them years ago before I was pregnant so these Halloween themed “Monster in Training” pjs didn’t fit Lily in October. It's a little off-season now but we don't care: