She did it!

Ok, so although I said I was too much of a chicken shit to try to put Morgan down last night unswaddled, Jim and I discussed it and thought that consistency might be the best plan. Project NSN has morphed into the NSS (no swaddle sleep) plan. We sucked it up and prepared for a LOOOONG night.

My girl came through! Jim put her to bed unswaddled and she went down for 20 minutes. She woke up only once and after another 20 minutes or so she went down for the night. Three times during the night I woke up to the sound of her whimpering through the monitor but before I could get out of bed to do anything about it I heard her sucking on her hands and then... poof! Miraculously she was back asleep. She woke up a little before 7 and stayed in her crib cooing to herself for about a half an hour before I went in to change her diaper and give her her morning bottle.

My baby girl rocks. :)

Project NSN

So, from the day we brought her home from the birthing center Morgan has slept swaddled. Now that she is 4 months old, is beginning to rollover (yes, she is.. I'll put up a separate post about that when she successfully does it with no help), and has managed to escape form nearly every swaddle I have ever wrapped her in, I've decided it is time to break the habit.

Enter Project NSN (no swaddle nap). Today is day one and oh. my. god. is it ever hellish. We are now working on our third nap of the day (admittedly I chickened out for the first nap and just wrapped her up like normal) and it is killing the both of us. Each time I put her down for a nap she inevitably smacks herself in the nose with a free flailing arm and wakes up. And when she wakes up, she wakes up angry. None of this cute baby business. Morgan has morphed into Regan for the day.

Nap #2 took over a half an hour of work to get her down. The nap lasted 20 minutes.

Nap #3 took over 45 minutes to get her down. She is currently still sleeping (10 minutes later) but, please, Murphy, take pity on me and don't punish me for my statement.

My main concern with her still being swaddled is that since she is able to break out of it at night, I worry that she will end up with a lot of loose bedding around her face increasing the risk of suffocation. My second concern is that since she is starting to roll over, if her arms are constricted she will roll over onto her belly (she has an extraordinary leg kick maneuver which hurtles her upper body over without using her arms) and not be able to push herself up or get back onto her back. (Yes, I realize the paranoia that is coming out of me, but lay off, this is my first baby and I'm naturally high strung.) Thirdly, since Miss Morgan still really does not like to be down for tummy time, I fear that the swaddle might delay the development of her upper body strength. (yes, I do realize how absurd that last fear sounds.)

Anyway, Project NSN is underway. And I'm way too much of a chicken shit to attempt this particular feat at night. (read: I've gotten used to peaceful nights with only one waking.)

The up side is that she is damned cute when she throws her arms up above her head when she sleeps. If I didn't think it would wake her up, I'd take a picture of her.

by special request

Morgan's honorary Auntie Helen has specifically requested a photo of Miss Morgan with the blanket H.A.H. made for her. I'm glad to accommodate. :)

In this photo Morgan is sporting her "drama queen" onesie, which for the day it was taken was quite appropriate as she screamed for a half an hour in the car on the way to our destination. Of course, she was all smiles as soon as she was out of that car seat (read: torture chair).

ahhh, joy of joys

Morgan's trick for today is that she has mastered the art of shrieking. When I say "shrieking" I mean a sound that pierces ears and breaks glass. However, she apparently interprets this sound to mean, "wow, I'm happy and this is cool". I briefly debated on "not encouraging it" by not laughing at the sound when she makes it, but she's so obviously happy, what can a mother do? Suck it up, buttercup, the best is yet to come. lol

I hate gardeners

I never really had strong feelings about gardening and gardeners in general until I had a baby. No, let me rephrase that: I never had strong feelings about gardeners until I had a baby who hates to nap and wakes up each time the freaking gardeners feel the need to trim the same hedge outside her bedroom window for the better part of an hour while I'm trying to get her down for a nap unsuccessfully because the hedge upon which they are working keeps shooting shrapnel at her window startling her awake making her cry.

As I have mentioned in the past Miss Morgan is not a big fan of nap time. However, I'm a not a big fan of Miss Morgan sans nap time. And for some reason it seems that every neighbor on our street has his or her gardener come on a different day and a different time... of course that day and time always coincides with Morgan's attempts at naps. It seems that there is forever a gas powered mower (that's another rant for another time) screeching outside, or the ear splitting hum of that ever pointless power tool, the leaf blower.

Ahhh, the attack of the edger. It has woken the sleeping beauty... yet again.

She HATES the car!

For the first 2 or 2 1/2 months of her life I was convinced that Miss Morgan was going to be a world traveler. She loved being in the car. The moment you put her in her seat she would happily kick around and when she learned to make happy baby noises she cooed until she fell asleep. Well, those days are over.

Of late my charming daughter has started rehearsing for her operatic career whenever she gets put into her car seat. Wow, does she ever have the lung power. She hits notes I didn't even know existed. The real drawback to this (aside from the torment involved for both of us with the car screaming trick) is that Morgan will scream herself into a state of exhaustion and inevitably pass out 5 minutes before we reach our destination. Now, this is a problem because if she falls asleep in the car she will wake up the moment she is taken out of the car and once she's awake she simply WILL NOT go down for a nap again, even if her previous nap was only 5 minutes in length. She is just sure that if she fell asleep she has done her job even if she did not get enough rest.

If sleep is for the weak, my girl is signing up for the World's Strongest Baby competition.

Happy 4 months Morgan

So, Morgan's 4 month b-day coincides with St. Patrick's Day this year. Of course, her Great Aunt Andrea decided that she simply *must* have a Paddy's Day outfit. So, dressed in green and white, Morgan went off to Gymboree this morning with her daddy. I'm not sure who enjoyed the experience more. :D

Otherwise I felt the need to post a new picture of Morgan trying to sit up on her own. We took this one a few days ago and it really does her "Elvis" sneer justice.

Don't mind that drool.... lol

on line shopping...

... is a very dangerous past time. Since Morgan has been outgrowing all of her newborn clothing I've found the perfect excuse to shop on line. Well, she needs no clothing, no? I seem to have gone a little off the deep end, however. Who knew I was such a shop-a-holic?!!

There are many fantastic websites out there for smart-alecky onesies. (What the hell is a onesie, you may ask. Ah, a sure sign you've never had to shop for babies. Onesies are the brilliant baby clothing invention that allow you to button the baby's t-shirt between her legs so that it doesn't ride up into her arm pits each time you pick her up.)

Just this past week alone I have had at least 3 deliveries come to my door. Jim says I'm going to be put on shopping probation. But how can you pass up a onesie that says "Pinch my cheeks and I kick you @$$"? or "BA/BY For those about to walk" (of course, for the full effect you must imagine that the backslash is a lightening bolt.) How about the "Maternica, Spill 'em all"? Or my personal favorite, a bib that simply says "I drool". Priceless, I tell you!

Anyway, I figure the time I have in which I am allowed to dress Morgan is limited. I'd best indulge my whimsy while I can.

So close to sitting up.

Now I realize that the fact that Morgan get bored very easily is probably a sign that she will be a fairly intelligent child (at least, that's what I tell myself), but she is at that point now where she is increasingly frustrated with the fact that she can't sit up on her own. I tried getting her a Bumbo chair (one of the videos I posted a week or so ago shows her sitting in it). While that looked like a promising alternative to lying on her back playing she has discovered recently that she really doesn't like sitting in it at all. I'm not sure exactly what about it pisses her off, but as she is my child it is entirely probable that she has no good reason.

However, in the past two days Morgan has been getting progressively better at sitting up on her own. Ok, not quite "on her own", but if I put her down between my legs with her back to me when I'm sitting on the floor she does a remarkable job at sitting up. She loses her balance occasionally and still isn't sure quite how to play with the toys I put on her feet but she is determined that she can do it on her own and gets annoyed with me if I try to help her out by helping her balance. There is nothing she like more when sitting up than looking at either Simba or Tiger (Eleanor is still boycotting the baby... she'll learn eventually) and trying to reach out and pet them. Of course her idea of petting and theirs doesn't always coincide, as she tends to grab fist fulls of fur, but Simba, of late, has taken to helping her out. Morgan will reach out her hands and Simba very kindly head butts her hands and she LOVES it. This afternoon we spent a lovely half an hour playing with/ petting kitties. She does her best to communicate with the boys the only way she knows how, cooing at them.

Perhaps this weekend when her daddy is home I will get him to videotape her "sitting up".

baby music?

There really is only a finite number of times that one can listen to "b.i.n.g.o" and "Old MacDonald" before going batty, and to be perfectly honest I've never really been one for silly songs. So, in an effort to retain my sanity while I play with Morgan all day I've invested in some baby CDs that I find amusing. Our most recent purchase was "Full Metal Diaper". Yup, you guessed it, not an itsy bitsy spider to be found. Instead this ingenious compilation has such songs as: We're not gonna take it, Crazy Train, Enter Sandman and more. We have another cd called "Rockabye Baby" which as such greats as Heart Shaped Box, Buffalo Soldier and No More Tears. This was the first disk I bought, thinking that it was a great lark. Little did I know that there is a whole industry out there which caters to such oddball concepts.

It may be the only thing preserving my sanity. Luckily Morgan thinks these cds are hysterical. Now, as soon as she gets old enough I'll play her the real deal. Why not, she loved NIN in utero, not to be confused with Nirvana In Utero. ;)

Babies teaching babies?

My little Morgan has always hated being put on her belly for tummy time, an exercise designed to help strengthen the upper body and back muscles she will need in order to be able to sit up and crawl later in life. Since she has always started to scream mere seconds after being put down for tummy time I have always assumed that she will be a late crawler (perhaps skipping crawling and going straight to walking as her Uncle Dave did).

However, two weeks ago we went to a Gymboree class and things have changed. For those of you not in the know, Gymboree is a baby clothing store that also has centers across the US for mommy and baby play time. The idea is that moms learn how to play age appropriate games with their babies and at the same time get to meet other mothers with children in the same age range. When we went two weeks ago Morgan had just turned three months and was the youngest baby in her age group (0-6 months) at the class. All of the other kids had about a month on her and therefore most were physically ahead of her developmentally. The little girl next to us, for example, was nearly 6 months old and was rolling around on the floor and was very strong on tummy time. Morgan spent a good portion of the class watching her.

When we got home that afternoon I tried to put Morgan down for tummy time again. This time not only did she not complain, she pushed herself up on her arms without the help of a pillow! It seemed that she learned from watching the other babies in the class and finally understood what she was supposed to do. Now, I don't know what a developmental psychiatrist would say to this theory, but it seems to me that the proof is in the pudding (odd phrase....). My little girl can now push up enough on her arms that she will probably be crawling pretty soon. Her little back legs already seem to know what to do, it was always the front that held her up. Picture her with her butt in the air and her face smushed on the floor scooting forwards and you will get an idea of what I mean.