Jumper

Last week or so, Grammie Pat brought over a Johnny Jump-Up - a jumper that you clip onto the doorframe. She figured Audrey would love it, since she loves to "fly" and jump with us. Plus she's keen to crawl and/or walk and can't do either yet. She wasn't so excited about the jumper at first, but she's warming up to it - at least enough to pose for photos!

Making Friends

At six and a half months, Audrey is now old enough to start making friends - or more precisely, she is old enough to remember that she's seen some of these babies before. She and Gavin have been "friends" since about 8 weeks.


Other friends are newer - at the Birth Center mom's group that I go to on Tuesdays, there are three little girls (including Audrey) who were all born within about a week of each other - Zarya is the oldest (by 3 days), then Audrey, then Casey, six or so days younger. Here she is with Casey - look for Zarya in future posts.

Blame it on the heat

There are many things on which I may blame Audrey's tendancy to sleep for just a few hours during the night. Teething, growing, not having had enough milk, having too much vegetable at dinnertime, etc. One of the most perrenial, though, is temperature. I'm always thinking she might be too hot or too cold - we've been using sleep sacks (wearable balnkets) at night to keep her warm, but when she was teething she was running a low fever and seemed to be burning up in her sleep sack. So I stopped putting it on her for a few nights. Plus it had gotten warmer (no more temps in the 30's at night) so it didn't seem she needed it. Until last night when it seemed uncommonly cold. And she woke up every 2 hours and wanted to be cuddled up to me all night.

In the morning, Paul said we had forgotten to turn on the heat last night - it's warm during the day so we open the doors (and turn off the heat). We had grad group over last night so even as the evening temps dropped, out house with a dozen people in it remained a toasty 75 degrees. We even opened the windows. Then we closed everything up and went to bed. But we didn't turn the heat back on. So maybe that's why she was up so much...who knows!

Sleeping through the night

Audrey and I went yesterday to have a playdate with Lauren and Gavin down in Sahuarita, and we started talking about sleep. Lauren said Gavin has now been sleeping approximately 12 hours at night, and she achieved this by a means she called "Every 15 minutes" but what I would call "cry it out." It's hard to argue with the results - 12 hours of time to sleep, plus spend some time with Paul or pursuing my own interests (actually reading a book? amazing!) seems very tempting.

But I am besieged with thoughts about all the "other" things that are going on. In addition to the thought of having to listen to Audrey cry for perhaps hours for four or five nights (the time Lauren said it took Gavin to adjust, although there's no telling how long it might take Audrey) I think, should we really be forcing self-soothing on her when she's growing? When she's teething? She's a pretty good self-soother (no losing your pacifier when it is two fingers on your left hand - always there!) and will sleep in her crib, but there are just some times that she adamantly does not want to be in the crib, she would rather be close to us (well, me, sorry Paul) to sleep.

So I don't know, though some of Paul's co-workers say we're "spoiling" her by going to her in the night and bringing her back to bed with us if she won't settle otherwise (or if I'm too tired to spend the time to try to get her back in the crib) I prefer to think we're raising a happy, secure child. Will Gavin, or other "cry it out" babies turn out insecure or be somehow otherwise lacking? Probably not, but I guess each set of parents just does what seems best to them at the time and no one knows the results until much later!

Getting Baptized

So much has happened since I last wrote. If I was a more dedicated blogger, you would have heard about going to Alexandria for Christmas, including hanging out with great-grandma, and then going to the Stanley family reunion in Ventura, CA, where all the cousins but one (and there about 20 of them, 15 males and 5 females) made it to California for two days of hanging out. But the most recent event in Audrey's life was getting baptized on Sunday, January 11. This was also "Baptism of the Lord" Sunday in the liturgical calendar, so the rest of the congregation also got sprinkled to remind them of their baptism. But Audrey got the full "water-on-the-head" deal thanks to our pastor friends Ben and Gretchen. Grammie Pat Orzech made her dress, which is now the "heirloom baptismal gown" (well, at least it will be once I clean it). She actually seemed to like the fuss of getting in the dress, and especially of going down to hang out with the little kids at the children's sermon. They were all rubbing her head, like they were saying "welcome, Audrey!" and she was just loving it. The pictures I have are from after the baptism, in the church's cry room - not that she was crying, she just wanted to play and tends to want to compete with the pastor by "talking" during the sermon...So here is one of her hamming it up - after all this, and a few more pictures after church, we took her out of her gown to ride home and she fell asleep in the car seat and slept through most of the celebration lunch.