Thanks for the posts everyone. About 3am my wife woke up and commanded me to bed. She took second shift. Somehow the baby managed to survive me getting sleep. Last night there were only two times I was worried, when she was making noise and when she wasn’t. When I heard a noise I worried about what was wrong and when she was silent I was worried why she wasn’t making noise. We did have a heart to heart last night about her career goals. I was thinking neurosurgeon and apprently she was thinking about being a diaper absorbancy tester. She seems to have a nack for the latter.
I’ll throw some pics on my old AOL account soon as I log back in and play with it.
Baby skittles is now just over 3 months. I HOPE for him to sleep at every given moment. It is those times where I can actually accomplish things like napping!
It does change…though the fears still stay in the back of your mind.
Heh. I remember those days. Any noise was a cause for concern. No noise was even more disconcerting.
Now the Rykid is a hulking teenager who snores.
Count your blessings.
And, what the hell, I’m going to pass on a recommendation I’ve made in a few other baby threads…
I’ve taken a picture of my son each year, at about the same time of year, at the same place. There’s a big boulder near where the Minnehaha Creek enters the Mississippi River. Each year I’ve had my son pose by it. Seeing the change in proportion over the years is really pretty cool.
I recommend you think about doing something like that.
Adorable baby, and quite a wit about her, too!
I was just talking to someone else this week about when my first was a baby (She’s now 3 1/4, so it feels a little funny to be talking about “all that long ago”). At the start of every day, I would have the thought, “OK, we all survived that one. Let’s see how today goes…”
Ivyboy didn’t sleep through the night until he was seven months old. When Ivygirl slept through the night at one month old, I thought something was wrong.
You’re doing fine. Remember, as long as she’s healthy, she’ll make it. Love her, love her, love her, read to her (yes, even now) and enjoy her. It goes by in a snap.
I assume you’ve already contacted the engineers about building the moat when she turns 16 and the boys come a-calling? Those teenaged boys…with the raging hormones and their parents’ cars…remember?
I love new parents. They’re so cute when they fret!
Our son arrived home from Korea at six and a half months (the annoucement was the "that he arrived in the “new, improved, sleeps through the night size”). However, his clock was six months off and he was completely and totally used to cosleeping. The first week was some sort of living zombie hell of two first time parents with all the first time parent worries, my mother - who is an ubergrandma and would have saved me - off on a cruise, and a kid who napped through the day, but was wide awake for most of the night. Oh, add every horror story you’ve ever heard about adopted kids not attaching because something wasn’t perfect. And I was about two months pregnant - and exhausted from that.
Six month later (she was early) we had the fragile newborn, which is a whole different type of late night zombie horror movie. Breastfeeding meant being up every few hours. And that first week she wouldn’t latch, so we ended up bottle feeding her, and then pumping to stimulate milk production. Not latching meant we were back with a dehydrated baby within 48 hours of release. And baby sleep apena. She was so loud when she breathed and then she stopped! For ten seconds, long enough to make it halfway to the bassinet, when the snoring (how can something seven pounds snore so loud) would start again. And the horror of a fall baby in Minnesota, and in daycare, which means that you spend winter fighting RSV.
Just wait until the first time she sleeps long enough that she doesn’t wake you, and you run into her room knowing she must be dead. Its really fun.
Mine are six and seven, now. We are almost done needing to change sheets in the middle of the night (an accident here and there from “don’t pay attention and use the bathroom before bedtime girl”). And I think sometime soon our house hits the point where we haven’t had diapers for as long as we did have diapers.
With my first two children, I had a normal amount of parental paranoia, but with my third, I was almost a complete basketcase. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t have her out of my sight, I was checking every few minutes to see if she was still breathing, waking her up when I started to worry she had slept too long… It was madness. It seemed strange to me that it was my third child, and not my first, that I had reacted that way with, but I think part of the problem was she had a few relatively minor problems when she was born. Then there was the fact that she just loved to sleep - she was sleeping through the night within days of getting home, and still sleeping through most of the day as well. All that, with the fact that some sinister little voice saying that I couldn’t possibly be lucky three times in a row, and I was a raving loon. I finally begged her pediatrician to just give me some good stats on SIDS and the like so that I could get some peace of mind, which she did, and after about two months, I finally started to settle down. It was rough though, and I’ll never forget that terrible paranoia…
Cute young’n, Long Road. What’s her dopername, Short Ride?
Heh. No kidding. Another story…
Rykid was just short of two years old when, upon hearing a tiny little “enh”, I went into his bedroom to check on him. Not there. Checked the living room, bathroom and kitchen. No kid. The doors were locked–no way he could’ve gotten out. Checked under the beds. No kid. Turned on all of the lights. No kid.
Started checking closets, hampers and drawers.
No kid.
Then I heard it again, a little louder this time. It seemed to come from his bedroom. I go in there and look again. Seems he had rolled over and slipped down between the bed and the wall. The blankets were holding him in a sort of hammock. He was still sleeping, but I guess he was subconciously voicing his displeasure at being in such cramped conditions.
I ‘rescued’ him and put him back on top of his bed–and moved the bed back up against the wall.
He stayed asleep, but I don’t recall getting any more sleep that night.
Eh, our first didn’t sleep through the night until he was over 1 year old. Yeah. The second slept pretty well, lucky for him…
About the “yearly picture” idea, I have one that unfortunately I didn’t hear about until too late! You take a picture of the baby/child/teen wearing one of dad’s suits (shirt, tie, jacket, pants, hat) or mom’s dresses (dress, shoes, gloves, hat, purse) every year ont heir birthday. It looks so cool as they slowly grow into the outfit! I assume you stop at 18 (or when the belligerent teenager says “enough of this shit, Dad. Can I have $50?” )
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