Shhhh....

Do you hear that?  
I do.  It's the sound of a baby sleeping, which is no crying!
We decided to try the dreaded CIO (cry it out, as known on message boards) two Sundays ago.  
My darling baby girl started playing me at night.  She'd fall asleep in my arms but wake up the moment I put her in the crib and cry.  So I'd pick her up, rock her to sleep, and then put her in her crib.  And then she'd cry.  Lather, rinse, repeat.
Nothing is harder than hearing your precious cry alone in her crib.  But I realized that that rocking a high school, or college, student to sleep each night is ridic.
I felt like a total jerk leaving her in her crib to cry.  I would plan each night to get all kinds of cleaning done at night while she put herself to sleep, and it took about a week for her to learn to get to sleep without freaking the eff out.  My house should have been spotless.
But hearing her cry for an hour would bring on a sort of attention deficit disorder where I would start projects but not finish them because I just wanted to drop everything and pick her up and snuggle her.
It wasn't until a week in that I realized her third nap of the day was probably what was keeping her from falling asleep on her own.  She just wasn't tired enough to go to sleep.
Once I dropped the third nap, it was like a switch was hit and she'd cry for a second when I put her down and then she'd fall asleep.
Naptime is the next beast we have to conquer.  I will admit this freely:  I still hold my seven-month-old during every nap during the day.  A lot of times we nap together, and it's something I look forward to.
But we agreed that in May we would try to get her to independently nap.  We gave it a go in March, but crying twice a day for an hour made her a different baby.
Hopefully it goes well.  Stay tuned!

She loves Cartman!  I couldn't get both of them to not be blurry. 

 

My little lady lately

We seem to have fallen into a daily/weekly routine around here lately, which is good!  Bedtime continues to be a challenge, but Lucy is slowly learning to get to sleep on her own at night.  Next up is working on napping solo during the day.  Which I'm looking forward to, because as it's getting warmer out, she's become a little heat generator.
She's been getting two solid meals a day, either oatmeal and a fruit/veg or yogurt and a fruit/veg.  I've been making most of her fruit and veggie purees, with the exception of carrots, which I buy in those fun little pouches.  I guess the carrots you buy in the produce section can have high levels of nitrates, which is okay for adults but not for babies.

Broccoli puree.

 So far she's eaten peas, sweet potato, apple, pear, avocado, banana, zucchini, yellow squash, potato, green beans and broccoli.  
Green beans and broccoli haven't gone over too well, I think they might be a little too chunky for her liking.
Everything else has been a hit though.  
She doesn't seem to have any interest in feeding herself, though.  I've tried given her diced banana, avocado and puffs.  She's either more interested in the plate they're one or smooshing them all over the place.
She love love loves eating frozen cherries in the mesh fresh food feeder.  They are messy as hell, but she loves it.

She's also gone pro with the whole sitting thing.  She still falls over on occasion, which makes me nervous, but I guess falling over is part of learning.  She doesn't usually care when she falls, unless she falls onto a toy.

 

 

Vacaville

I am so on the ball with this blogging thing.  Not!  (That was supposed to sound like Borat.)
Not this Sunday, but last Sunday, we drove to Vacaville to visit my grandparents, a.k.a. my mom's parents.
Andy had two weeks off and funnily enough that Sunday was his last day off.  Vacaville is only about an hour away, so I suppose we could visit more often but as always, life gets in the way.  You would think since I'm not working, we'd go down there more often but I'm not brave enough to drive down solo with Lucy.
She did pretty good on the drive down, but that's probably because I sat in the back seat.
It was nice to catch up with my grandparents and for them to see Lucy.  They are getting up there in age, in their early eighties, which makes me sad.

I hope that they are around long enough for Lucy to have memories of them.  
We went to lunch at the diner they like to have coffee at after church on Sundays.

 My uncle Mark and his wife Lynda live across the street from the diner, so they joined us for lunch.  We went back over to my grandparents house after lunch, but we didn't last very long over there because someone was cranky!!  Plus we had to get home to Brody and Cartman (who I like to refer to as Biscuits and Gravy.)

 Home relaxing with her doggy!