Look, what's that?

The grandparents took Isabella for the morning while we went down to the climbing gym. Everyone asked "where's the baby?" and went "whee!" when we told them the grandparents were in town... :)

We're still sort of on West Coast time - or at least, we slept in until 10 Tuesday and Wednesday, and nearly so on Thursday. Although today she was up bright and early at 7:30am, had a very short nap at 10:00am, and then was up until nearly 5. But she seems happy enough, so maybe she just doesn't need to sleep....

Although evenings have been rough again. Thursday night it was a 1.5 hour walk in the stroller, followed by 40min of nursing, 15 min of screaming, pinching, pushing, kicking, pulling hair while I walked her around, another 20 min of nursing, more screaming and thrashing while I carried her around, then she fell asleep, mostly, in my arms, I wrapped myself around her and slept that way until she woke up at midnight... 1:30... 2:30... 3:00... 5:30... 7:30... 9:00... with at least one more bout of walking and rocking. And Friday wasn't much better. Although Saturday, at least, she was relatively quiet if waking up every hour and a half.

Let's see, Tuesday was half a day at day care (after she finally got up). Annie (one of the women there) managed to get Isabella to sleep in a crib for a whole twenty minutes! Put her down on her stomach and patted her back to sleep.

Wednesday was the "thunder" day - she was sitting and playing on the rug (fortunately in her diaper) for an hour or so, then, pffftttt. No real warning except a bit of fussing to be picked up. I've been hearing thunder jokes constantly since then. Sigh. I completely missed my appointment with Jennifer because she had a very long nap - 11:30 or so until 1:30. By the time she was up and nursed I'd missed half of it (of course, I just plain forgot, too). She fell asleep in the car on the way back from the music class. Wednesday afternoon we went to Peggy's retirement party (sniff) where Isabella had a bit of fruit and some crackers, then we went to the Scottish Arms for dinner. I asked for a small plate of fruit for Isabella, and they gave me a large bowl... which she proceeded to shovel into her mouth, blueberries first, grapes (I cut them in half) and melon (her least favorite). Since she had so much trouble sleeping, I'm thinking large amounts of fruit before bedtime are not a good thing.

Thursday we were late to day care (again) but that was ok because I was tired, too. Had a small, messy diaper at day care - her poop all day was black, I think because of the blueberries.

Thursday night she wasn't so into what we had for dinner (tacos) so I thought I'd round out the dinner with oatmeal. Which she proceeded to wear... she actually got so much on her face that I had to clear it away from her nose so she could breathe!

Thursday night Bill took her for her usual evening ramble - and she spent the entire time craning her head around to look at things. She can sit herself up in the stroller now, and grab onto the bar. I took her with me down to the post office, and she was looking at the dog... at the person walking by... the other dog... She's sitting up like that in her bouncy chair now, too. Bill was trying to rock her to sleep last night. I hear no noise, quiet (which is good) and peak over the bed to see her sitting up at the end of the chair playing with Bill's toes. Sigh.

Friday was uneventful. She's decided playing with toys isn't so much fun anymore, she'd rather play jungle gym with mom or dad. She can pull herself up to her knees without any problem, and likes to stand, balancing on her feet while hanging on. The only thing that happened was I caught my foot on Bill's computer cable and sent it crashing to the floor - where it landed on, and popped, the tummy water toy that Aunt Barb had bought for us. Good for the computer, bad for the toy.

Saturday we went down to Babies R' Us and got a foam play mat made out of letters and numbers (Amy & Bruce had one). Not only can she pull it up and eat it, it's also a bit more sticky so she doesn't slide around so much. I've been putting her half way on her tummy (she does a great downward facing dog) and letting her rock herself back to sitting. She can actually hold herself up with straight legs and arms, although she kind of plunks herself back down again onto her backside less than gracefully. She likes to hang out there, though, looking at the ground.

We're still trying to get her to sleep upstairs in the bouncy chair, with the hope of moving her out of the basement up to the bedroom. Mostly she hasn't gone to sleep at all, and I've been some form of nursing her to sleep most evenings. Bill thinks there's teeth coming in, so hopefully they'll finish coming in and she'll go back to sleeping. The one time he took her down to the basement she kept waking up, too, so I don't think it's sleeping upstairs. We tried some Tylenol, but that didn't seem to help much, either.