Carolyn

Uh-Oh

Sarah Carolyn

As I was getting things ready to take Carolyn out for a walk today, I put her down on her play mat to occupy herself for a bit. Unfortunately, I had to take the criss-cross bars off it recently since she tends to roll into them and get stuck, so it was just her and a couple of soft blocks. I took the dogs out, then checked on her – still on the mat, but now on her tummy. OK. Got the stroller out of the car, put the diaper bag in it, checked on the baby…

She was halfway across the living room floor, playing with a toy that had been left out when her cousins came to visit on Saturday. When she realized I was standing in the doorway, she looked up at me with a big grin like she was saying, “look what I can do, Mom!”

Heaven help me. I now have a mobile baby.

All Through The Night

Sarah Firsts

Carrie went to bed at 9:30 last night…and woke up at 6:00 this morning. She fussed a little around 11, but settled herself back down. This is the first time she’s slept through the night in her crib! When she woke up, she started fussing, but she wasn’t screaming or sobbing. And when I walked in she was playing with snuggle puppy – well, if you can call stuffing as much of snuggle puppy in her mouth as possible “playing”. Now I just need to remember how to sleep through the night, and hope for a repeat performance.

Five Months Old!

Sarah Monthly Updates

Dear Carolyn,

Time is certainly flying by – you’re already nearly half a year old! You’ve accomplished so much this month I hardly know where to begin…

You’ve learned how to roll over both ways, although you haven’t quite put it together enough to get very far. You can sort of creep along on your stomach – not anything approaching crawling yet, but you can move an inch or two at a time. You’re even better at creeping along on your back – you use your feet to push off the floor and scoot backwards. And about those feet? You’ve figured out how to get those tasty little toes in your mouth so you can suck on them. Apparently big toes are even more satisfying than thumbs – even when they’re covered with socks.

You absolutely love it when I blow air at you so your hair flies around – you giggle and giggle whenever I do it. You also giggle if I shake my head so my curls bounce. Apparently, it’s also quite amusing to pull Daddy’s beard. We’ve started sitting you up on our shoulders, and you bury your hands in our hair and try to eat great fistfuls of it – and then make a funny face since hair tastes awful.

Actually, pretty much everything ends up in your mouth now. Your hand-eye coordination has improved greatly, and anything within your reach is fair game. You’ve even managed to figure out how to hold a bottle and feed yourself, and you’re starting to get the hang of sippy cups too. It’s a good thing we’re starting solids in the next couple of weeks, because you’re intensely interested in the whole idea of eating, and watch every move we make when we eat. If I hold you while I’m eating, you even reach for my food.

At the moment your favorite toys are a busy block that has wonderful things hanging off it to chew on, red doggie, who also has wonderful things (especially ears) to chew on, baby tizoo, who, well, also has dangly bits to chew on…and pretty much anything I give you that you can chew on. There’s a Step & Play Piano in your room which you could spend hours in if I let you – aside from the fact that it has things you can chew on, it makes lots of music when you step on the keys. The piano in the living room fascinates you too, and you don’t even try to chew on it. Molly and Murphy are an endless source of amusement. I think you especially like their wagging tails.

You’re getting better at sleeping – I think it has a lot to do with the fact that you almost always roll onto your tummy after I put you down. You seem to sleep a lot better that way. Generally naps are sort of a random thing, but bedtime has become fairly consistent, and you consistently sleep 4-6 hours in your crib before you wake up the first time.

I can’t believe how fast you’re growing, and how much you’ve learned so far. It seems like you’ve been a part of our lives forever, but then I realize that you’ve only been here for five months. That’s such a short amount of time to have accomplished everything you have already. In five more months you’ll probably be starting to walk, and talk – and since the last five months have gone so quickly, I’m afraid these next five will too. I’m starting to forget exactly what you were like when we first brought you home, and that makes me a little sad. But I have to admit, I’m excited too. I can’t wait to see what the next months and years bring, and I can’t wait to see who you become.

Love, Mommy

We Have A Winner!

Sarah Firsts

I have quite the collection of Avent feeding supplies – both bottles and disposable nursers, plus a couple of sippy cups – because I have an Avent Isis pump. (Is this too much information?) We’ve given Carrie a couple of bottles, but the last one was two months ago. Silly me, I didn’t think there would be any issues, but she absolutely refused to take a bottle while my parents watched her during my rehearsal Monday night. I tried giving her another bottle yesterday, and it looked as though her real gripe with the whole thing was that she needs to be laying down to take a bottle. (We won’t go into the fact that she lays down to nurse – apparently that’s ok.)

I ended up going to Target yesterday to find a different type of bottle and came home with the Playtex VentAire bottle, figuring that because it’s angled, she’d be able to sit up more and might raise fewer objections to the whole experience. I gave her about an ounce in it this morning, and she took it with no complaints. I left her and the new bottle with my parents this evening while I went off to yet another rehearsal. When I called my mom during a break to make sure that Carrie had managed to have her dinner, guess what? She was feeding herself. Sitting in her little rocking chair, kicking her feet, and holding her own bottle!

Apparently, I’m out of a job. Well, not really, but I do feel much better about the fact that Carrie won’t starve while I’m a little busier than usual for these next couple of weeks. The show starts two weeks from tomorrow!

A Day In The Life

Sarah Carolyn

A few people (hopefully nobody who reads this blog) have suggested that as a stay-at-home mom, having all sorts of “free time”, I ought to be doing ______ (fill in the blank). I think they assume that I sit in front of the television and eat bon-bons all day. (Oh, wait, that’s what I’m supposed to be doing?) Anyway, after one such conversation, my self esteem plummeted, and I ate several Dove dark chocolate eggs while awaiting notification that I’d won the “World’s Worst Wife and Mother” award.

So, I decided to track a day in my life to see what I actually do. After seeing it all written down, I can’t imagine why I don’t have time to do the things various people think I ought to be doing. All sarcasm aside, if my parents didn’t live next door I’d be in very sorry shape right now.

If you want to see all the stuff I did today, read on…

Read more

Sleeping Beauty

Sarah Carolyn

Last night Carolyn went to bed a little later than usual, a little before 10 PM. Normally she wakes up an hour after we put her down, and then every 45 minutes to an hour and a half after that. By 1:30, we usually give up and bring her to bed with us.

At 3 AM I woke up and thought “um, why isn’t the baby in bed?” This was followed closely by the thought “oh my God, I haven’t gotten up with Carrie at all yet!” That thought was accompanied by the sinking feeling of dread every parent probably gets the first time their baby sleeps for a significant stretch of time. I tiptoed quickly down the hall, heart in my throat…and there was my beautiful little girl sleeping on her tummy (I put her down on her back) with snuggle puppy tucked under one tiny arm.

She woke up at 3:30 and I brought her to bed with me, but she slept for close to 6 hours in her crib, on her own. Dare I hope for a repeat tonight? I think if I hadn’t rushed in there at 3 she might have slept longer – I have to confess, I laid my hand on her back just to make sure she was still breathing (I’m so paranoid!) and she was restless for that next half hour, while I lay in bed listening to the monitor.

I’m going to go to bed now and see how much sleep I can get before Carolyn wakes up – or before I wake up wondering where she is!

Car Wash

Sarah Carolyn

Today I took Carolyn to the car wash. Instead of upsetting her, it put her right to sleep. An hour and a half later, she’s still sleeping.

Do you think the car wash is open at 1:00 AM?

Rollin’, Rollin’, Rollin’

Sarah Carolyn

Dear Carolyn,

Today we went to visit Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa. Kathy and Benjamin were there, and as I put you down on your blanket on your tummy, I said to Kathy, “she still hasn’t figured out how to roll from front to back.” You gave me a Look, and in one smooth move you were on your back. Sorry!

(So if I tell people you still haven’t figured out how to sleep through the night, would you be willing to prove me wrong about that too?)

Love, Mommy

Carolyn’s Library

Sarah Carolyn

Yesterday I received an order from Amazon with three more books for Carrie. Two of them are, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, about puppies.

Here’s a list of the books she currently owns – the bolded ones are the ones we read to her nearly daily:

Alphabet Foil Fun
Baby Faces
Baby’s First Bible Songs
Catholic Book of Bible Stories
Counting Kisses
Doggies
Find the Puppy
Friends of All Sizes (cloth)
Good Night, Baby
Good Night, Sweet Butterflies
Guess How Much I Love You 		  How To Count (cloth)
I Love You (cloth taggies)
Julie’s Jungle
Language Nursery
Little Windows: In the Park
Mirror Me!
My Many Colored Days
My Puppy (cloth)
Noah’s Ark (cloth)
Peekaboo, Puppy!
Puppies 		  Richard Scarry’s Best Storybook Ever
Snow What Fun!
Snuggle Puppy
Some Dogs Do
Spot’s First Easter
That’s Not My Bunny
That’s Not My Dinosaur
That’s Not My Puppy
Where Is Baby’s Belly Button?
Where Is The Green Sheep?
Where’s Spot?

Her favorites really seem to be the Usborne books (Puppies, That’s Not My Bunny/Dinosaur/Puppy) – I think because the illustrations are simpler and more contrast-y than most of the others, and the pages are thicker and easier to grab. Out of 33 books, a whopping 11 are about – or have as main characters – puppies! Ah, well, I suppose she’ll eventually learn that there are other animals besides puppies, right? Besides, she gets so excited about her puppies, and the ones on the Baby Einstein Neighborhood Animals DVD we Netflix’d. (For the record, she also giggles at the bunnies and mice on that DVD.)

Oh, and before anyone gets on my case about buying so many books for a baby who can’t appreciate them yet, several of them were gifts. And she loves “reading” books. She looks at them, tries to turn the pages, pats at the touchy-feely bits, and tries very hard to eat them. (We’re working on the “no books in the mouth” rule. Now if we could just get Murphy to follow that rule – apparently, board books are quite tasty…)

It was a dark and stormy night…

Sarah Carolyn

…and Carolyn actually slept for four straight hours in her crib! I don’t know what was different about last night, or how to make it happen again. At least it proves that there are not, in fact, scorpions in her bed, and she is capable of sleeping more than 45 minutes in there. I would have thought that the wind howling past her windows would have woken her up, but maybe she needs one of those white noise machines to sleep?