Oh so much Christmas crafting is happening and this little grinner just rolls with it all. It's nice that she's still little enough that I can make her presents in front of her. I ended up with 6 sewing and 2 bookbinding projects for our list this year. Q has 3 woodworking projects. We both have granola to make and the hot chocolate mix (Alton Brown's - mmmmmmm) is done. I'll have to post pictures after the gifts are given so I can remember what everyone got this year. :)We were nap training last week, not a wonderful experience but totally worth it because she's sleeping really well now and she almost never cries. Despite what many people say, I do think that sometimes the only way to create a good sleeper is to let them cry it out after they were put to bed drowsy. We have been using Dr. Weissbluth's Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child since she was born and have found his descriptions of different stages to be spot on and his recommendations about solutions to be helpful. I was watching my poor baby wake herself up over and over when we were holding her because she wanted to continue being with us.
I am counting the days and hours of W thinking we are AWESOME and wanting to spend every minute of every day with us since I know they won't last forever, but it's best for our baby girl to get her sleep as well. According to this poll, many babies don't get the recommended amount of sleep. My guess is that this is partially due to a parent's unwillingness to make them unhappy for a few minutes. I'm so conflicted about this issue because I believe that there are a lot of good things about attachment parenting, especially in the first few months, but there are cases where it doesn't seem to serve Willow.
Similarly, we're strongly considering trying to move her out of our bed after we return from our holiday trip - verboten at 4 months in attachment parenting circles - because we're waking her up when we come to bed at 9:30 or so, after she fell asleep at 6 or 7. One compromise is to put her down in her crib and then I can bring her back to bed with me whenever she wakes up for her first night time feed, usually around 11 if she hasn't woken up when we go to bed. If any parent doesn't think it's worth it to invest time and energy into supporting their child's sleep, they haven't really imagined how wonderful it is for them to have time to get things done after the 6 or 7 pm bedtime or during a 2 1/2 hour morning nap. Bliss with the bonus of having a very smiley happy girl when I go in to get her.
1 comment:
We also used that book for our sleep training, although we didn't start before 7-8 months (mainly because we didn't think about it until then). I can't begin to explain how much good sleep and a child that likes to sleep in her own bed has improved our life and hers. :)
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