Before I begin I want to update a previous post. Evy now sleeps at night and plays during the day. Her one very consistent sleep period is between 11 pm and 3 am. I followed my sister Sandy's advise on this. She advised me to not talk to Evy when she woke at night. She said to leave the room dark and only change and feed her, no other contact. As she is the mother of 5 and a NICU nurse as well I thought I would give it a try. She was right, soon Evy learned that night was to sleep and day was to play. Hooray!
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Now is the time of year we all sit down and try to make ourselves better, get a new start; we call it resolution season. I have a few myself. First, I want to make better lifestyle choices. Evy was born to two older parents. I want to make sure we are around to help her through all phases of her life. Second, I want to start investing in our future. We will be lucky to have Evy through college by the time we retire. Lastly, I want to be less sarcastic. I read once that sarcasm is the death of childhood. I want Evy's childhood to last as long as possible. Out of all my resolutions I think this will be the hardest to keep. My sarcasm has help me through many impossible life events, including my own lost childhood and the loss of my child, Leo. But these are not Evy's burdens and she should not have a mother so weighted down by them only sarcasm can lift her up.
It seems Evy too has made a resolution. No more naps. On New Years Days she didn't nap at all. Other days she naps for twenty minutes here half an hour there. It is as if one day she decided she was sleeping her life away. She went from sleeping 17-18 hours a day to 11-12. She seemed to go from a newborn to a six month old over night. She gets very tired and extremely grumpy, but she is just too stubborn to sleep. She wants to stay awake and play. Only problem is she still has the attention span and development of a 2-3 month old. Still she just reaches out to toys, she does not bring them to her mouth. The only places she can be "left" for any amount of time are in her swing looking at the lights or in her bounciung chair in front of the mirror. Neither of these things tire her out. So I have come up with a little exercise routine we do while she is on the floor for tummy time. We stretch her muscles and practice sitting, rolling and crawling. I use her toys and books as props allowing her to interact with them for brief periods between phsyical play. It seems to be working. The last couple of days we have had one nap of 2+ hours. Again, Hooray!
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