Back to Work and Learning New Things

We survived! My first week back to work, that is :) Was it fun? No. Did I cry every night? Maybe. But we did it, and I am sure we can do the next 10 weeks too! Lucy actually fared far better than I did. Our nanny is wonderful and so good with her, and I feel so comfortable knowing that Lucy is at home. We are super lucky too because Andrew is able to check in at lunch every day. Our nanny also sends me texts and pictures throughout the day so I feel very in the loop. I love to see how she dresses Lucy every day!

Our new schedule is EXHAUSTING! I get up at 5, pump, shower and get dressed, feed Lucy and am at the door by 6:30. I get to school by 7 and have half an hour to get set up for the day. Then, I teach from 7:30-2:30, pumping three times in there. There is NO time to do anything and I think my stress level is impacting how much milk I get when I pump. Hopefully I will settle in and be able to produce more this week. I see my kiddos off at by 3:00, leave school by 3:15, home by 3:45. I feed and play with Lucy until between 6:30 and 7 (boo for not a whole lot of time with her!), then we do her bath and bedtime routine. She still is not sleeping well at all, so on a good night it takes until 8 to get her to bed (don't even ask about a bad night!). At 8, I eat dinner, wash bottles and pump parts, prepare bottles for the next day, and pack my lunch for school. THEN, I finally get to prepare my lessons and activities for the next day. I try to be in bed by 10. In theory, I would get 7 hours of sleep, but Lucy is still waking every hour. I am one tired mama! :)

We are actually going to see her pediatrician on Monday to see if we can get to the bottom of this sleep thing. She does well in her swing - it is just when we lay her flat on her back. She screams and screams like she is in pain. She wakes up from a deep sleep screaming. It is almost like she can't transition from one sleep cycle to the next. My poor baby :( Hopefully we can get to the bottom of this soon!

In other news, Lucy has hit this amazing developmental growth spurt! She is learning all kinds of new things and gets so proud of herself! She has been rolling from belly to back for awhile now, but it always required this great production. Now, as soon as she is put on her tummy, she flops right over, and then gets this HUGE grin on her face! She has also learned how to splash in the bath tub! It is the funniest thing. She will wait until the cup of water is being poured over her and then just flail her arms and legs as fast as she can! Silly girl! She entered the phase of "I must taste everything" and now puts everything in her mouth. If we hold a toy up to her face, she grabs it and pulls it in close to "kiss" it! On Friday, she even tried tasting her toes! I don't thinks she liked them too much!

Another big new thing for Lucy is her new carseat! She has hated hated hated her infant seat since day 1, so we finally just bought a convertible to see if she would like it more. We figured we were going to need one anyone, and if it makes riding more pleasant for her, why not? We got the Graco MyRide65, and we love it! Lucy did great her first trip out in it, and although she wasn't a huge fan yesterday, we are hopeful that the angle of this seat makes her much more comfortable.

I need to download newest pictures... stay tuned for those!

Who Needs Sleep?

Well... I do. :) And Daddy and the dogs wouldn't mind it either. So why oh why are we up all night?

Lucy, the love and light of my life, has many good qualities. Her little personality is developing so much. She is so smart and strong and wonderful. However, sleep is not her thing. She is a

terrible sleeper. Pretty much from the beginning, she has had sleep issues. She hated to be on

her back for the first 6 weeks of her life. So she slept in her swing. Then, we tried to get her to sleep in her bassinet. No dice. We tried to get her to sleep in her crib. No dice. Bassinet again. Nope. Finally, we ended up letting her sleep in our bed. Not ideal and none of us were happy with it, but at least she was sleeping. A few weeks ago, we decided we needed to move her back to her crib. In preparing to go back to work, I needed her to be in her crib or else I was afraid she would be 6 months old before we could make the move!

We used to put Lucy down between 9 and 10 - basically around the time we were winding down for the night. Even when sleeping in our bed, she would scream throughout her last nursing session of the night - pulling on and off, fussing, grunting, crying. It really wasn't pleasant for anyone and I felt so bad that the end of my poor baby's day was so traumatic. After doing some reading and internet searching, I decided that we were letting her get overtired. She always always always want(ed) to take a nap between 630 and 7 - and we would wake her up so she would "go to bed." Then the fussing and crankiness would ensue. Light bulb moment - she was ready for bed, not a nap! We started doing her bedtime routine at the first signs of tiredness and she is so much more fun to put to sleep now! No more screaming - just eating and rocking! Love it!

One hurdle crossed - but we still have major problems. Lucy will sleep from 7-10 (actually the past two nights she was woken up half an hour after going down and then we had to do the whole rock/nurse thing again!) but after 10 she has been waking up every.single.hour. Seriously - every hour between 10 and 6. Holy exhausting! Everyone at the T household is running on fumes. We swaddle her, we play white noise, she has a velour crib sheet, her mattress is inclined - what more can we do? It is frustrating, to say the least. She isn't waking up hungry

(she eats maybe two or three of those EIGHT wakings) but she is definitely waking up crying. We try just rubbing her tummy or quietly letting her know we are there, but if we don't pick her up, her cries escalate to all out wails - which increases the amount of time we are all awake.

Poor Lucy :( Last night, Andrew put our sleep position wedge thing in her crib around 130, and that bought us a 3 hour stretch! We will definitely be trying that again tonight in hopes that we can all get more sleep!

Even though our nights are long, our days with Lucy are so much fun. She is smiling at everything and learning new things every day. She still hates her carseat and stroller, so there's a good chance that Lucy is going to get her "big girl" carseat this weekend! We think she might like it better because it sits a little more upright, and our monkey is always trying to sit up! It can be rear facing for up to 40 pounds, too, so I think she will still be perfectly safe!

We are sadly getting ready for the end of my maternity leave, but we still feel very lucky to have found such a great nanny! Do you think she will have fun with this little girl or what? :)