Sleeping Like a Baby

Math quiz! If I went to sleep 3 hours after my 1 year old does, and woke up 2 hours before she did, how many hours could I sleep? I'm sure the answer would vary greatly for most people with a 1 year old (or any infant/baby/toddler for that matter). For me, the answer is 7. I could get 7 hours of sleep if I went to sleep 3 hours after her, and woke up 2 hours before her. That's how many hours I could get (at least). The real answer is 5. I get 5 hours of sleep each night. So the real question isn't how many hours could I get, but why don't I?

Most people I know would kill for 7 hours of sleep a night (especially parents). They would sign a contract right now signing over their first born for 7 hours of sleep, especially if it was their first born that was making that task impossible. But for me, 7 hours of sleep is apparently too much. In fact, if you did the real math, you would have figured out that I could actually get 12 hours of sleep if I went to bed at the same time as Kaylani, and woke up at the same time as her too (that would of course mean I went to bed at 7pm and woke up at 7am, but that's besides the point). So what's wrong with me? Why am I throwing away anywhere from 2-7 hours of sleep each night? And the other question some parents have asked me is, where do I get this wonderful drug that I give Kaylani each night?

The answer to the second question is easy...Target. Just kidding, I don't give her any drugs (except Infants' Tylenol...but only when she's teething, sick, or tired). The answer to the first question is harder...because I really have no idea. I've been given the gift of sleep and I've chosen to return it for what amounts to unusable store credit. For all her life, Kaylani has been a great sleeper. Whether it was only waking up every 3-4 hours when she was born, to sleeping 11-12 hours straight through now, she's been better than I could have ever imagined. The problem is that for all my life, I've never been a good sleeper.

I'm what you could call a morning and a night person. I'll wake up at 5 or 6am, and could still be going strong at 2am or 3am (sure helped me get through college...and by get through, I mean stay up and play video games while watching TV). I could be up and at the gym (back when I used to go to the gym) at 5am and then close down a bar at 2am. Or more appropriately now, I could be up at 5am checking email and surfing the web, and still up at 11pm checking email and finishing up some work. Something I figured out about 10 years ago was that I just don't need sleep.

For years, I thought that the phrase "sleeping like a baby" was a bunch of BS. Sure they look like Angels when they're quiet and laying there, but it only lasts for a few minutes or hours at a time. And if that were true, then you could say that I used to sleep like a baby. But now that I have Kaylani, the phrase makes a lot more sense to me. I only wish I could really sleep like a baby too.

Stick a fork in it...it's done

What to eat? No problem. We'll feed her anything we're eating. When to eat? Got it. Normal times, with snacks and milk in between. Where to eat? Any highchair will do (any highchair out of the house will do even better). How to eat? Well that depends on the what, when, and where...or her mood.

How to eat is our biggest food related challenge these days. It used to be much simpler. We used to be able to grab a spoon or fork and feed her ourselves. We used to be able to get her to open her mouth and eat when we put the spoon or fork near her mouth. We used to be able to get her to eat a whole meal using just that spoon or fork. We used to not have to say "used to" so much.

A few weeks ago, Kaylani figured out how to feed herself using a spoon or fork. We'd put food on for her, hand it to her, and watch as she ate it all by herself. Then, she'd hand it back to us for more. Sure that was much more work than just feeding her ourselves, but she was eating, she was happy, and she was cooperative. Now, she has taken things to a whole new level. Now, she doesn't want to just feed herself. She doesn't want us to feed her. She doesn't want our help at all. She just turned 1, and now she's completely independent.

Apparently, Kaylani is a pro at feeding herself. She can stab food with her fork, or scoop it up with her spoon, and put it in her mouth all by herself. Wait, I think I forgot to put "thinks she can" in that sentence. I mean, in all fairness, she can do it....every now and then. And if we wanted meal times to last 5 hours instead of 45 minutes, we're sure she could stab or scoop an entire bowl of pasta/fruit/chicken and eat it all by herself. But since we'd prefer to not have her spend entire days stuck in her highchair (well, most of the time), we try to help her eat. The problem is independent Kaylani doesn't want help.

Instead of handing us back her utensil after a few failed attempts at gathering food, she'll clutch it even tighter and move away from us. She'll turn, squirm, put her hand and utensil at her side under the tray, all in an effort to keep it away from us if we try to help her. Then when we back off, she'll go back to pushing her food around the bowl or tray with the fork or spoon.

Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that Kaylani is learning to use her fork and spoon, and I can't wait until she actually masters her hand-eye coordination enough to feed herself. As soon as she's ready, I'm going to give her a knife and let her cut her own food. Heck, might even let her cook for herself too. Might as well since she's a pro at taking pots and pans out of the cabinet already! By the way, in case anyone from child services is reading, I'm just kidding. I wouldn't give her a knife until she turned 2.

When all is said and done, the main thing is that she's eating. After awhile, and if we ask nice enough, she'll let us feed her again, or at least let us guide her hand to help her stab her food. The scary thing is that this is her being independent at age 1. God help me when she's 2, 12, or 22. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go double my blood pressure medication.

Monkey Business

One of the best parts of my morning is going to get Kaylani out of her crib. Most parents would probably say its the worst part since that usually happens around 5 or 6 am, but since Kaylani's a great sleeper, its usually around 7:15. Waking up and getting her actually isn't the best part. Seeing what she does is.

Some mornings, Kaylani will start talking around 6am, but that doesn't mean she's done sleeping. Most days, she'll fall back asleep for another hour before we know she's done. And how do we know she's done? We know when we look over at her monitor and see her standing there, staring at the door. That's when she's done (or when she screams at us while she's standing there).

But here comes the best part. After going downstairs to get her milk (she's been drinking whole milk for about a month now), I come back up and knock lightly on her door before going in (not because I want to respect her privacy, but so she doesn't freak out and fall over). After she says "papa" (or "mama" on certain days), I turn off her humidifier, turn on a light, and open her blinds. All this time she stands there and watches and listens to me do this. Then comes the best part.

When I walk towards her, she gets down, crawls over to her bedtime monkey, picks it up, stands up, and hands it to me. No idea why, but apparently she thinks its her get out of crib card. Its the best thing ever, and it happens every morning. In fact, it even happens after some of her naps in the pack and play, but instead of bedtime monkey, she hands over naptime doll.

On the days when we don't get her quick enough, we usually find monkey on the floor. Those are the bad days. So to sum up, Kaylani is highly correlated to monkey business, and that's something that is likely to hold for quite awhile I'm afraid.

Happy Birthday Kaylani!!

One year. In my life, one year is nothing. It's only 3% of my entire life, but for Kaylani, today it officially marks 100% of her life. She's one. I have a one year old. Just one year ago, I was writing about how I had a 1 hour old. And here I am now writing about how I have a one year old. Crazy.

What a trip it's been, and I mean that in the best way possible. We've had some hard times when Kaylani wasn't sleeping, or when she was sick, or when we were sick, but for the better part of this year, it's been absolutely great. Kaylani's grown up happy, healthy, and quickly, and so have Mommy and Daddy. Most people talk about how they survived the first year. We didn't just survive...we survived and had a blast doing it. And to celebrate Kaylani's first year, we had ourselves quite the weekend.

If you've been reading along, you already know that we've celebrated every one of Kaylani's monthly birthdays since the day she was born. So it really shouldn't surprise you that for her official one year birthday, we'd have not one, but two celebrations! Yesterday was the first, and I'd say it was pretty good. We invited over all of Kaylani's friends and were glad that most of them could make it. We even invited over our family, and they all did their best to make it too. Yin Yin, Yea Yea, Bat Bat, Auntie Shannon, Connor, and Zoe were here, and so were Titi Glendalys, Abuela, Alisha, and Rohan! Add to that 7 more of Kaylani's friends, their parents, and Padrino Tim and Meredith, and you have yourselves one rocking one year old party!

Not only did Kaylani get a ton of great presents, but she also got her own cake! We bought a 1/2 sheet cake for all the guests, and knew it was going to be way too much. Our actual thought was that Kaylani would dig her hands into the entire cake, and whatever was left, we would serve. Little did we know that Kayalni would (unwillingly) put her hand in the cake, then freak out. Who knew my little girl would be a neat freak?

To top off her birthday weekend, we went to the farm on an unseasonal 70 degree day (in November??) for some pizza, animals, and tractors, then came home to have dinner and more cake. This time, Kaylani got her very own cupcake which she made a bigger mess with. Maybe she was just shy with 20+ people staring at her messy hand because tonight, she had no problems ripping apart a cupcake and eating it too.

Anyways, now Kaylani is sound asleep, and hopefully will stay sound asleep even though she's had a ton of cake and cupcake in the last 24 hours. There was so much more than went on this weekend (like her teacher from Music Together coming to put on a show, and a pinata, and everything else), but I don't need to write about that. Instead, you can check out the 130 pictures I just posted. Only 100 of them are from her birthday. The other 30 are from the couple of days before her birthday, so check them out. And if you want to see a video of Kaylani and her cupcake tonight, check out YouTube (or just scroll down!)

Let's hope that Kaylani's 2nd year is just as good as her first. And if the first was any indication, then I think we're all gonna be just fine. Happy Birthday Kaylani!!! We love you!

Trick and Treat!

So today's the first day of November. It's also the day after Halloween. And it's also exactly one week before Kaylani's 1st birthday. Oh, and it's also the day after we had to set our clocks back an hour for daylight savings. That's a pretty busy day if you ask me, and we haven't even gotten into the details yet.

In the spirit of Halloween, I'm going to do a little version of trick or treat, but instead of the OR, I'm going to do trick AND treat. You see, the trick is that it looks like I'm going to write a real post for a change...but I'm not. The treat is that I've posted over 125 new pictures in 2 albums (updated the PR Week 50, and added weeks 51 and 52). It's definitely a treat because there are a ton of great pictures from Mommy and Kaylani's trip to Puerto Rico, our family trip to the farm, and also Halloween! If you haven't figured it out yet, Kaylani was Nemo (and yes, we know Nemo is a boy but who could pass up on a giant fluffy fish costume). We thought it'd be perfect for a cold October day, so who knew it'd be 70+ degrees and Kaylani would be sweating every time we put her in!

Anyways, check out her latest albums and enjoy the pictures. As an added treat, here's a video of Kaylani crawling in her Nemo costume. Priceless! Man, I love Halloween...for babies. Stay tuned for more posts to come (trust me, I've got a lot of stuff to write about...like shoes in the car, standing, kitchen safety, birthday preparations, and milk)! All that and more, coming soon to a blog right here.