2 months (and then some)

Over two months into this whole three-kids shindig and Miss Avery is still giving us a run for our money. I do have to say, though, that she's getting better. Not so much crying and a little more sleeping has been preserving my sanity just enough to get through my days.

So, sleep. I have to ramble about sleep (or the lack thereof) for a minute. I just cannot get this silly girl to sleep through the night! I know she's only two and a half months old. But I really can't come up with a good reason why she can't make it all the way. She's in the 75th percentile for weight. Now that her acid reflux is under control, she actually has a pretty content personality. She takes decent naps during the day (when I can let her between running her sisters around to their various activities) and is even getting pretty good at putting herself to sleep when I lay her down. I don't think it's an issue with not being able to soothe herself to sleep.

I've tried multiple things. I've tried upping her formula amount during the day, under the assumption that she just thinks she's starving to death in the middle of the night. (She's not, by the way. Just get a load of those cheeks! LOVE them.)

I've heard a lot about the Baby Wise method, so I bought the book looking for some magical answers. I think the basic concept of Baby Wise is pretty logical, but the book had a ridiculously huge emphasis on breastfeeding with hardly any mention of how to adjust for bottle feeding, so I basically felt like throwing it out the window after I was finished reading. Anyways, even enforcing an eat-wake-sleep routine (the basic concept of Baby Wise) hasn't helped in the sleeping department. You know. Even though the authors promise up, down, and sideways that sticking to that routine is guaranteed to make your baby sleep through the night by two months old. Riiiiight.

Earlier bedtimes, later bedtimes, feeding right before she goes to sleep, waking her up for a short feeding after she's gone to sleep...nothing has worked.

Considering that the last time I wrote a post like this, I was up at all kinds of random hours with her in the night, it has definitely gotten better. On her worst nights, she wakes up every three hours but almost always goes right back to sleep after eating. On occasional good nights, she can go almost eight hours without eating (but she almost always wakes up at least once during that eight hours). Usually she's somewhere in between those two scenarios. So like I said, I'm able to function. I'm getting more sleep than I was even a month ago, and I'm not quite as much of a grouchy mom. So, hey...progress, right?!

Now that I've written a novel about the sleep deal, I need to write another one about everything Avery has been up to these last couple of months.

--She weighed 11 pounds, 9 ounces at her 2-month appointment. Like I said, 75th percentile. We adore every inch of her chubby goodness!

--Her pretty dark hair is starting to fall out. I knew it was inevitable, but it still tugs on my heart strings every time I observe more of her little pink head showing through. It's growing back in, but it's much lighter - more like the color of the girls' hair.

--Her eyes are definitely blue. It's always a fun guessing game with my babies since we have just about every color in the spectrum coming from our immediate family line. But blue wins this time around.

--She's been brightening our days with heart-melting smiles for a few weeks now. Oh, I love baby smiles! It's like all of a sudden all those hard, hard first weeks just vanish from my memory when she looks right at me and grins.

--She can still roll over from front to back, but she doesn't do it as frequently. I have to time tummy time just right in her happy stage to get her to not scream as soon as I put her down. Oh, the joys of tummy time!

--She had her first cold a couple of weeks ago, and it was a doozy. She caught it from her sisters (no surprise there) and had the most heartbreaking cough for the longest time. It was not fun for any of us.

--She's still taking baby Zantac for her acid reflux. I thought it was starting to go away a bit so I didn't give her medicine for a couple days right over Christmas. Then one night she was doing the crying-for-no-reason, arching-her-back routine and it dawned on me why. So back on the Zantac she went. She should grow out of it eventually, but apparently now is not that time.

--She's a pretty good binkie sucker. Not as good as Sadie was, but certainly better than Ellie, who was totally over them by this point. I have a love/hate relationship with that binkie. I love that it can put a stop to her fussing when nothing else can, which is especially nice in places like church. But I hate keeping track of them, worrying about all the germs they collect, and having to chase it down when she spits it out and it rolls across the floor. 

And that's our Avery right now. We love her, her sisters ADORE her, and life is a whole lot of fun (mixed in with a good dose of crazy) with her in it.