Earlier this week, I posted about some of our recent struggles. I got lots of concerned emails and calls from people who know me in real life, and several nice comments, so I thought I would update you all on how things are going. In a word: better.
Pumpkin had an up and down week at day care. She had a couple of really bad days, which involved several biting incidents and a lot of crying. But she also had a couple of really good days, which included lots of happiness and "nice touches". Today was one of the good days. She bit once, but the teacher said she was sorely provoked. She said a little boy was bothering Pumpkin. Pumpkin apparently tried to "use her words" first, but the little boy didn't listen, and before one of the teachers could intervene, he got bitten. As someone who once hit a boy with a lunch box in a similar sort of situation (I was in the first grade), I can't really hold that against her!
Pumpkin also had a couple of decent nights of sleep. These coincided with the good days at day care, so Hubby and I are thinking about what we might do to encourage more good nights of sleep. Of course, if we knew how to do this, we would have done it already. But we feel like we should try to do something, since Pumpkin is suffering the ill effects from the bad sleep nights, too. When it was just Hubby and me suffering, it was easy to be lazy and not try to improve things.
Pumpkin slept well last night (she was up only once, although it took a couple of tries to get her to stay down after that wake up). However, getting her to sleep in the first place was unusually challenging. She wanted to play in her crib, or walk around her room, or do anything but settle into my arms to rock to sleep. Then, once she did decide to snuggle in and relax, she didn't want to be put down. I got up once to turn the music down, before I was going to try to put her in her crib, and she cried out "noooo!" and wrapped her little arms around me like I was threatening to drop her. She eventually went to sleep, but it took a couple of tries to get her into her crib, and in the end she was more asleep than I usually like her to be when I put her down. I can hear her in her room now, putting Hubby through the same sort of trouble tonight.
Pumpkin took a bath on her own tonight, so the bath freak-out was short-lived. She was in the big tub instead of her little plastic tub, but there were no bubbles and she went in with no fuss and splashed up a storm. She also insisted on several rounds of "This Little Piggy". She hold out a foot, rubs her chest, and says "wee, wee, wee" to indicate that we need to play this game.
The fruit eating continues, which is making my fruit-loving Hubby very happy. In addition to the apples and bananas that must be consumed whole, Pumpkin will eat bits of strawberries and pineapples. She still hasn't show any interest in cantaloupe or grapes, except to squish them.
Hubby and I went out on Wednesday night, to see Tim Finn in concert at a very nice dinner venue downtown. The concert was good, as was the dinner, but boy- that was a pricey evening! I couldn't help but think of the house cleaning that we could have had instead. But I didn't complain, because we have settled on getting the house cleaned once a month, and the only thing delaying the start of this plan is my lack of time to set up the appointment.
It was interesting to watch the crowd at the concert. Tim Finn (with his brother Neil) was a founding member of Split Enz, and was also in Crowded House for awhile. He played songs from both of these bands as well as his solo work. Women may age and a little younger sang along to the Crowded House songs. Women about 5 years older than me sang along to the Split Enz songs. Most men didn't sing. At one point, several women decided to get up and dance (Six Months in a Leaky Boat is the song that sparked this). They eventually have about 20 women up dancing, but only two men. I almost felt like I should get up and dance, like maybe I'd missed some sort of underground female signal. But I was too tired- by this point it was 9:30, which is when I'm usually heading to bed! He played "Stuff and Nonsense", which is one of my favorite Split Enz songs. It is a great truthful love song- it wasn't until I had a baby that I could comprehend a love that you knew would last forever. You get married in the hope that you can make the love last forever, but you never really know. (Incidentally, some of my favorite lyrics about marriage are also from the Finns, in Won't Give In: " What does it mean when you promise someone/ That no matter how hard or whatever may come/ It means that I won't give in... " I've posted about this song before, at the bottom of another very long post.)
The other interesting news this week is that I got my first invitation to get some mommy-blogging swag. The folks who produce the Singing Time videos have offered to send me a review screener of a couple of their new Baby Signing Time volumes (check out the comments on Wednesday's post for the details, or go to the Signing Time competition page to see how you can get in on a competition to win the Baby Signing Time gift set. I agreed to do the review- we've been very happy with how signing has helped Pumpkin communicate and I've been curious about the Baby Signing Time series. We only have DVDs from the "regular" signing time series. Hubby asked me if I had any ethical concerns, and I told him to shut up. He's just unhappy that he won't be able to hassle me about the amount of time I spend blogging now!
Oh, and the thing I thought would be a big deal this week, which was that I stopped pumping, was no big deal at all. Either I was too busy to think about it, or I really was ready to be done. We're still nursing whenever Pumpkin wants. She announces "Boppy!" when it is time to nurse, and gets very excited as I put the Boppy around my waist and get ready to nurse. I still enjoy the nursing, but the mixed feelings I thought I'd have about the end of pumping have turned out not to be so mixed.
Hubby asked me if I had any ethical concerns, and I told him to shut up.
ReplyDeleteHaha, you and your Hubby crack me up. It doesn't surprise me that he'd say something like that.
Great updates! Good luck getting more sleep for her (and yourselves). Ours is back out the window. Urg.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that the stopping of pumping went well.
I also got the invite to review the new volumes of Baby Signing Times! Our little one seems to like the Baby versions better than the one regular version we've seen. We've already watched the two new volumes, but I'm not going to tell you what I thought. You'll have to wait for my review. hehe.