Milestones!

Dear Lenaboo,

You've hit too many milestones all at once, it's hard to keep up! In the past two weeks you have done some really amazing work, the biggest and most important leap forward being that you've developed the ability to put yourself to sleep and stay asleep through the night. Sure we had to help you out with this a bit, but you learned fast, and it only took you one night/40 minutes of crying to learn this new skill. My dear Lenabel, this is called tough love.

Did we mention you're also putting yourself to sleep unswaddled and without a pacifier? We used to swaddle you up, give you your pacifier, sing to you, rock you, and put you

in your crib, sometimes asleep, sometimes just almost asleep. Exactly 45 minutes later you would wake up, and we'd have to run back into the nursery to help you get back to sleep. We'd find you out of the swaddle and without your nuk, and so we'd re-swaddle you and pop the nuk back in your mouth. Then we'd soothe you, and walk out the door, praying that you'd stay asleep this time. 2 minutes later you'd be whining again, waiting for us to come back in, and as dutiful loving parents we'd return, only to find you unswaddled again, and having spit out your nuk. This would continue through out the night, generally 3 to 4 times. So we decided it was time to teach you to sleep with out the swaddle and nuk.

Our new sleeping routine looks like this: Mama nurses you around 5:30 and we give you a bath at around 5:45. Then you get ready for bed and we sing you some lullabies. At around 6:00 we put you in your crib, awake, and after 5 or 10 minutes of babbling to yourself you're asleep, unswaddled and without a nuk. It is amazing. And as I mentioned earlier, you're staying asleep through the whole night too. This kind or sleeping has really helped everybody to feel better and more rested during the day. We can tell in the morning that you feel better, that you've gotten better sleep, and at night it's almost as if you can't wait to get into your crib to go to bed. We give you a bath, sing to you, hold you for a few minutes, and put you in your crib, always awake. Sometime we can't even get through 2 of the 3 songs because you want to be in your crib so badly. So we skip the last two and park you in the crib for the night.

You've become a champion sleeper my dear, going to bed on your own at 6:30 at night and sleeping straight through till 6:30 in the morning. Mama is still feeding you at 10 every night, just to make sure you're tummy's full and you can make it till the morning, but you sleep through this feeding and we're even contemplating getting rid of it all together, since you don't seem to eat much from it anyway.

In addition to the huge improvement in your sleeping abilities you've also learned how to roll over from your back to your tummy and from your tummy to your back. You are constantly turning onto your side and reaching for things. It's so fun to see you look at something that you want, turn on your side, reach and grab it. Then of course it goes in your mouth. Everything goes in your mouth.

Speaking of which, we fed you solid food for the first time this week. To be safe we started you with a very small portion of rice cereal mixed with breast milk. You were funny tasting your first bite of food. We've got it on video so when you're older you can look back. In a couple of days we're going to try giving you sweet potato. We'll steam it and mash it up and we hope you'll like it. It's crazy to think that you haven't had anything but breast milk for 6 months, and now this whole new world is going to open up for you!