Journey to and Through Motherhood: Lily: 1 Year and 26 Weeks (8/23/10

Lily slept through the night again on Monday night until 4:45am, cried because she couldn't find her binkie, and then settled right back down to sleep until 7am. On Tuesday, she slept until 6am. I had to go in and check that she was still alive when my alarm went off! I prayed that she was finally turning the corner and becoming a good sleeper but we had many setbacks later in the week. She is so much better about going to sleep and settling back down after waking but our major issue has always been her frequent wakings. She woke up many times on Wednesday night but I stuck to my guns and refused to take her out of the crib. It never works for us to let her cry it out as she can cry for hours on end and never wind down. If she is unable to settle herself down, going in and patting her on the back and giving her binkie to her tends to help. On Thursday, night she had another one of her awful nights where she cried for about 5 minutes every hour. It would be soooo nice if her frequent wakings would stop. After nearly 18 months of this, I am more than ready for a good night's sleep myself! Lily has only slept through the night a handful of times in her entire life. I read a study that said that by the time a child is two, their parents have lost an average of six months of sleep. Although that seems like a lot, I feel like we've about doubled that with Lily. Instead of a good eight hours of sleep per night, I usually get a disjointed four which means that I have lost about 9 months of sleep already. ZZZZ....

I got out the Flow 'N' Fill Spout toy that I bought on Sunday for Lily's Monday night bath. She absolutely loved it and took nearly a half hour bath playing with it. She wanted to take a bath every night to play with her new toy. She discovered that her fingers pruned with the long baths and seemed very concerned. She didn't know what to think of the odd appearance of her fingers! Washing her hair has always been a battle because Lily refused to tilt her head back for rinsing and refused to let me use a cup to rinse her hair. I had to slowly rinse out the shampoo with a wet washcloth which took forever. Invariably, the soap would get in her eyes since she always fought me and tried to look down instead of up. Suddenly this week, Lily became very cooperative with hair rinsing and started letting me use a cup to rinse her hair while willingly tilting her head back. Yay! It goes so much faster now.

Thursday was a beautiful day so we took Lily to Kensington Metropark after work. We walked on the boardwalk by Wildwing Lake and explored the nature trails. Lily loved to run the trails and pick up leaves and sticks along the way. When we were on a slope close to a small pond, Lily was walking along and put a stick in her mouth so Paul let go of the empty stroller to get it from her. This caused the stroller to quickly roll down the hill toward the pond. Luckily I was fast on my feet and was able to catch it right before it went in the water!

Lily has been really good for her morning naps on the weekend but has been fighting her afternoon naps for us. She usually takes her morning nap around 9:30am but if she sleeps in for us, she ends up taking the nap later in the morning. She may be slowly transitioning to only requiring one nap per day. However, she always takes two naps at daycare but that could be because she has to get up so early on weekdays. On Saturday, she only took one nap and even that one she fought tooth and nail. She was clearly tired so I put her down around 11am but over an hour later, she was still awake. Listening to her on the monitor was quite entertaining. There would be a long period of silence, then talking, then a long period of silence, then crying, then a long period of silence, then singing, and back again. Then she started throwing everything out of her crib then would cry about it. I waited for about 15 minutes then went in to give her stuff back to her and tell her to go to sleep. This happened a few times. Finally, Paul went in and told her that Grandma was coming over but she wouldn't come over until Lily took a nap. At that, Lily quickly laid right down and fell asleep! My parents came over around 3pm right as Lily was waking up (yes, it took four hours to get her to take a 2 hour nap). They babysat her while we went to German Park with some friends. That will be on a separate post. Lily was still up playing when we got home around 9:30pm. She was having too much fun with grandma and papi to sleep. We visited with my parents for a little bit after we got home then we all went to bed early.

We hung around the house on Sunday and I make two batches of salsa with our huge surplus of tomatoes and peppers. Yummy! There is still a ton left so I will hopefully find time to make more batches later in the week. It takes a long time to do but the end result is so tasty.

Lily has been really affectionate this week. She is really into kissing and hugging which I absolutely love. She gives me a kiss whenever I ask for one then gives me a hug right afterward. She says "awwww" when she hugs and uses one of her hands to pat you while hugging. It melts my heart. She is very into equality so if I ask for a kiss, she has to give Paul one right afterward. She also likes to kiss and hug her stuffed animals. She has her animals kiss each other and makes a cute smooching sound when they do it. She is such a sweetheart!

I am proud to say that I have lost 10 pounds so far with my diet and exercise program. I am counting my calories on http://caloriecount.about.com/ and exercising 45-60 minutes per day for at least 6 days per week. If I work at Brighton, I am able to use their physical therapy gym after work since Paul is in charge of picking up Lily from daycare in Ann Arbor. It is a great facility and I am so grateful that they let me use it for free since I am an employee. If I am working in Ann Arbor, I usually ride our exercise bike in the basement and use our weight set down there after Lily is asleep. We also have a treadmill that is currently buried in our garage so hopefully Paul will make that accessible to me soon. The only problem with exercising at night after Lily goes down is that by the time I clean up dinner, tidy the house, make our lunches for the next day, take care of other pending household chores, and then exercise, I can't seem to get in bed before midnight.

Here are some pictures from this week.

My happy girl getting messy with her oranges on Monday evening. The poor thing got a mosquito bite smack dab in the center of her forehead during her nap at daycare:

Hmmm, which shoes shall I wear?:

Lily eating a cookie in the kitchen and watching Paul and I make dinner:

She decided it would be more comfortable to sit in her chair so she dragged it into the kitchen from the living room to observe us:

Lily loves to play with her new Flow ‘N’ Fill Spout. Yes, she is getting way too big for her toddler tub but she freaks out every time I try to give her a bath in the regular tub. She wanted to take a ton of baths this week to play with her faucet and cups: