A Sad Ending

We were ecstatic when Kaylani learned to go from belly to back. Overjoyed when she went from back to belly. Thrilled when she went from down to sit. And happy (ran out of fancy synonyms) when she could go from sit to stand. But now, all of that just makes us sad.

Being back from vacation means Kaylani finally was in the comforts of her own room and her own crib again. It also meant that bedtime routine was back on, and we didn't have to worry about her crying at night, or putting her down in the pack and play. Instead, we could lay her down in her crib after we both said goodnight, and she would drift away into dreamland for 12 hours (hopefully). But the past 2 nights, Kaylani's been the saddest little baby in the world before bedtime, and she knows it. She almost got through us yesterday too.

After Mommy finished nursing, I went back into Kaylani's room to say goodnight. After 2 kisses from us, she gets put in her crib for the night. Usually she'll either stay asleep, or ideally she'll open her eyes, look at us, and then go back to sleep when we put our hand on her for a brief second. Last night, she looked at us, rolled over, and tried to climb out. Being firm sleep training parents, we put her back down, kissed her good night again (no easy task with the crib lowered all the way down), and left the room. This is when things get sad.

For the next 5 minutes, Kaylani cried. While that's sad, it's something we're used to at bedtime. But now, she just looks sad (through the video monitor). She rolls over onto her belly, crawls to the corner of the crib, and tries to stand up. 2 nights ago she tried to stand up and toppled over pretty badly. We of course went in to make sure she was okay, which she was except for a small red bump on her chin. Nothing too bad for 2 nights ago, but there were lasting effects. Instead of trying to stand up last night, she just sat there, in the corner of her crib, looking out at the door, and crying. Not wailing, but more like a whimpering, sad, cry, for 5 minutes.

When I went in after those 5 minutes, she still cried, but tried to stand up to see me. And when she would stand up, I would lay her back down, rub her belly (or her back when she rolled over), and try to get her to sleep. Each time, she would crawl back to her corner and try and stand up to get me to pick her up. Again, being the strict sleep training parents that we are, I would lay her back down and try again. After 2 minutes, I laid her down, said good night again, blew her a kiss, and walked out the door as she crawled back to her corner.

The next 5 minutes was more of the same. Kaylani sat in her corner, holding the crib, looking at the door, crying, with a slouched over defeated look to her. At the 9 minute mark, Mommy called me from downstairs (where she was watching the other monitor) to beg me to pick Kaylani up for a little bit. She thought "Kaylani just needed a little love and wants to be with her Daddy." As if Kaylani wasn't tugging on my heart strings enough, there was Mommy guilt tripping me into picking her up. And then, Mommy goes "See?? She fell down again!"

Kaylani didn't fall down again. What she did was lie down and fall asleep, in her corner. It happened right at the 10 minute mark, and before Daddy could give in and pick her up to give her a big hug and let her know she shouldn't be the saddest little monkey in her crib. It's about that time now tonight again, so here's to hoping she stays asleep, or closes her eyes after she sees us when we put her in her crib. I'm not sure I can handle 15 minutes of the saddest baby ever waiting for her Daddy to come rescue her from her crib.

Seriously...roll over

Remember a few nights ago when Kaylani rolled over from her back to belly in the middle of the night, then rolled back over onto her back all by herself, which led to 11.5 hours of sleep for her? Yeah, that was awesome. And then you remember when Kaylani rolled over onto her belly and got stuck there and had to be rolled back over onto her back by Mommy and Daddy? Yeah, that wasn't so awesome. And in addition to being not awesome, it also happened way too frequently last night.

For a long time now we hoped Kaylani would roll over from her back to belly. That meant that she achieved yet another developmental milestone, and we'd be happy. What we should have been hoping for was that Kaylani would roll over from back to belly during the day while she was playing. That way she wouldn't freak herself out and wake herself (and us) up in the middle of the night each time she did it. Little did we know that Kaylani is only a push over at night.

We've tried to let Kaylani figure out how to roll over from belly to back by herself at night. I mean, we know she can do it (we even have proof from several months back caught on video tape). But whatever the reason is, she won't do it regularly at night. Some of it probably has to do with the fact that she's tired and was in the middle of a nice dream before she woke up with her face flat on the bed, and the other part of it might be how her arm gets trapped underneath her. But whatever the reason she can't or won't roll over is, it does mean that Mommy or Daddy have to help out.

The first time it happened last night, Mommy went in and rolled her over. After a few minutes of crying, Kaylani fell back asleep. Less than 30 minutes later Kaylani was back on her belly. This time, it was Daddy's turn so in he went and pushed, I mean rolled, Kaylani back over. Back to bed, and back to sleep. This happened about 3 more times during the night, and all 3 times were handled by Mommy because Daddy is a deep sleeper.

I feel bad that I don't hear the monitor. I feel even worse when I ask Mommy if Kaylani woke up at all during the night (that's when I get the morning death stare for not hearing the monitor). But the way I look at it, Mommy is better at rolling Kaylani over. I mean, she's had years of practice pushing me back over to my side of the bed (I'm a close sleeper). And when I went through my snoring phase, she was constantly rolling me over onto my side so I'd shut up. So in a way, this isn't much different. But I'll still try and do my part. It's hard not to when Mommy rolls me out of bed anyways.

Sleep-rolling through the night

You always wonder what parents consider "the night" when they say "my (insert child's name here) slept through the night last night!" Everyone has their own definition of "the night", with most people considering thigns like 12am-6am as "the night." Well last night, Kaylani slept through the night. And trust me, Mommy and Daddy have a much longer definition of "the night."

Kaylani was asleep by 8pm last night on the dot. Every night before Mommy goes to bed, she counts off 4 hours and assumes that's when Kaylani will wake up. So when we crawled into bed at 11pm, Mommy said "9, 10, 11, 12am...that's when she'll be up." I'm not exactly sure why Mommy does that since Kaylani averages closer to 6 hours, but it's never good to set expectations too high, especially when not meeting those expectations means waking up 2 hours earlier than expected. So anyways, 12am came and went, and Mommy was still sleeping.

Mommy woke up a few times after midnight just to take a peek at Kaylani and each time she found her fast asleep still. It wasn't until 5am that Mommy and Daddy both woke up to the sounds of baby talk. She wasn't crying so we let her be and laid in bed trying to fall back asleep. It wasn't until Mommy took a closer look at the monitor that we realized Kaylani was on her belly!

To our knowledge, Kaylani has only rolled over onto her belly once, and that was a week ago. And that time, she cried after a few minutes of being on her belly, and it was around 8am so Mommy just picked her up. This time, we stared at her on her belly reaching out for her bumpers and just talking to herself. After a few minutes, her head was down and she was still. Mommy, being the constant worrier, debated whether or not she should sneak a closer peek. Of course she ended up going in and sure enough, Kaylani was asleep, on her belly, for the very first time (again, to our knowledge).

As exciting as it was, Daddy went back to sleep. Mommy however stayed staring at the monitor to make sure that she could react in case Kaylani needed us. Around 6am, she woke Daddy up and said "she rolled back over!" to which the response was an incomprehensible grunt of approval. Around 7:30am, Kaylani gave her "wake up cry" and we knew it was time.

In total, Kaylani spent 11.5 hours in her crib before she got out. Our best guess is that she slept approximately 11 of them, which blows away her previous 9.75 straight hours of sleep she accomplished just about a month ago. So no matter whose definition of "slept through the night" you use, I'm pretty sure that Kaylani's sleep last night would hold up. Let's just hope she sleeps through the night again tonight. Or to avoid any confusion, let's hope she sleeps 11-12 hours tonight. It's best she gets it in now before her teeth start coming in. I've heard that's when it all goes down the diaper genie.

You gotta be flexible!

Flexibility is pretty important, and something that Daddy does not have. He's not flexible when it comes to schedules or timing, and he's definitely not flexible when it comes to his body. Kaylani, on the other hand, is flexible in both regards. She couldn't care less about a schedule or being on time (she got that from Mommy). But where she really shows off her flexibility is when she grabs her toes.

It's her newest trick, and it started about a week ago. Lately, she's getting even better at it and will spend a few minutes just grabbing her toes and rolling from side to side. It's really adorable to watch, and we wish it was warmer out so she doesn't always have to wear socks or onesies with feet all the time! Actually, I just wish it was March already so we can head to Puerto Rico! In PR, she'll be able to play with her toes all the time (as long as she's out of the sun that is)!

To grab her toes, it's really cute to watch her lift both her legs (and her butt) up towards the sky. Then, when her feet get high enough in the air, she grabs them with one or both of her hands, and just rolls side to side. Daddy, thinking that her rolling side to side while grabbing her feet/toes will help her roll over from her back to her belly, tries to help sometimes by pushing her. And when he does that, she either flops over on her belly or immediately straightens up so that she's flat on her back. And when she straightens up, it's almost like she's saying "stop pushing me!"

The downside to her finding her toes is tht she finds them in the middle of the night too. Maybe she did this pre-video monitor, but now that we have it, it's kinda fun to see her grab her toes in the privacy of her own crib. It of course means she's not sleeping, but if she's quiet in her crib, no complaints coming from here! She also finds them when we're changing her diaper, which is usually helpful, except when we have blowouts. Then it's not really that helpful!

Anyways, the last couple of posts have been kinda long, so I'll make this one short. But, since it ties in so well with this post, here are pictures from the last 2 days so you can see her in all her toe grabbing cuteness! Enjoy!

Let Her Be

For the last 3 months we babied our baby. Sounds kinda like an obvious thing to do to a baby, but we over did it when it came to bedtime. Our typical routine would be to nurse her, and then bounce her, sway her, or whatever her so she would almost fall deep asleep in our arms. And then at the last minute (sometimes after the last minute when she was really fussy), we would put her in her crib and hold her there until we were confident she was asleep before we snuck out.

On good nights, she would be so sleepy after nursing that she would go happily into her crib and fall asleep after a quick bounce or two. On bad nights, we would bounce and sway her for up to an hour (alternating turns of course). The unpredictability that bedtime brought, as well as the uncomfortableness on bad nights, led us to try "sleep training" now that Kaylani is 3 months old. And we figured if she could learn to roll over, she could learn to sleep on her own.

There are many different methods of sleep training, and after reading through a few of them, we decided on the "gradually leaving" technique. The premise of this technique is to put her down (you're small!) right away, say goodnight, and then leave the room without picking her up or doing anything. On the first night, if she's still crying after 5 minutes, go back in, calm her down without picking her up, say goodnight, and then leave the room again. After 5 to 10 more minutes, do the same thing. Then, you increase the time by 5 minutes every day. It also says that this technique could take awhile to work, but we gave it a shot anyways.

So last night, Mommy put her down (you smell like a baby!), said goodnight, and left the room. After 5 painful minutes of hearing his little girl cry (not a full out cry, but more like a whine/whimper), Daddy went in, put a reassuring hand on her chest, kissed her on the forehead, said goodnight, then left. The next 5 minutes were even more painful then the first. I sat on the edge of my bed staring towards her room, and listened to her while trying to restrain myself from going in there to pick her up. It was tough, but I sat there on that bed for 6 whole minutes (Mommy joined me halfway through).

After 6 minutes, there was silence. Another minute went by and there was a trace of a whimper, but not a strong one. Few more minutes went by and there was nothing. Only the sounds of Daddy and Mommy sitting on the edge of the bed breathing quietly together could be heard. 10 minutes had passed since Daddy last went in there and there was only silence coming from Kaylani's room. Hooray!

Of course, the first thing Daddy wanted to do was go in and check on her to make sure everything was alright, but he didn't out of fear that maybe she was awake and staring at the door wondering why her parents had abandoned her. Mommy did take a peek in her room an hour later, and she was sleeping. She didn't even look like she was sad, so that was a relief. I completely expected her to be asleep with a big ol' frown on her face. Luckily, that was not the case.

So that was "sleep training" day 1. Tonight will be day 2, although Mommy tried it this afternoon with successful results again at nap time, so maybe this won't be as bad as we thought. Well it's about time for us to give it a try, so while she's sleeping (or staring at the door wondering why her parents abandoned her), you can look at a few pictures from the last 3 days. Or, even better, you can check out this video of Kaylani rolling over! Mommy got it on tape today and Daddy even got to see it live! For us though, it's now time to just let her be.

Roll it!

This morning Kaylani rolled over (tummy to back) for the very first time! It happened while Mommy was at her "Mommy and Me" exercise class and it brought tears to her eyes when she saw this milestone occurring in front of her. Everyone in the class applauded and then watched as Kaylani did it four more times on her own! I only wish I could have been there.

Sadly, Daddy was in NYC for work today, so he didn't get to see Kaylani's first ever tummy to back rollover. The NYC part is irrelevant because I could have been in the office, or even at home, and I still wouldn't have seen it. But that's okay because I was just happy to hear that Kaylani rolled over. That means his little girl is developing her muscles and coordination just fine, and that's what is really important!

Being able to watch Kaylani roll over would have been pretty cool. Mommy, knowing that Daddy would be a little sad and that he would want to see it, tried to get Kaylani to repeat her performance when they got home. The video camera was all set, her rolling area ready, and everything was primed for Kaylani to roll over for the history books (or at least our video library). But just like a few nights ago with our attempt to record Kaylani laughing, she got stage fright.

I'm starting to get convinced that she knows she's being videotaped. After I got home today, we tried again to watch her roll over, and of course tried to videotape it so we could share it with the world. But after 30 minutes of recorded tummy time, Kaylani was still on her tummy. She came close a few times, and even propped herself up on her arms and looked at the video camera, but no roll over. The show would not go on. Not tonight at least.

So Daddy still hasn't seen Kaylani roll over, but listening to Mommy describe it is good enough to hold me over for a few more days. Hopefully she'll do it one of these days for Daddy to see with his own eyes, but there's no rush. After all, once she can roll over, she moves into the first phase of mobility. And a mobile baby will change life as we know it pretty significantly. Or so I've heard.