To Sleep, Or Not to Sleep... (Weeks 18 and 19)

That seems to be the question around our house! We've gotten a handful of nights were Turtle goes down at 8ish and doesn't even stir until 6ish when we wake her up to eat. And then in between there has been a few nights where she doesn't want to be in her bassinet at all and she tosses and turns in my arms all night alternating between spitting out her paci and whining for me to find it. It's been super fun! (You know there really needs to be a font to indicate sarcasm. Could someone please get on that!)

Thankfully, I think we've gotten the no-sleeping thing figured out. We really need a dual a/c system for our house, but that cost moneys and we don't have moneys right now because we have a baby and it seems like you can only have one or the other. Anyway... in order for the upstairs be cool it would have to be down right frigid downstairs, so we usually just deal with it being a little warm upstairs. Apparently we hadn't realized that it had gotten a little too hot upstairs in the last few days. So, in a fit of desperation, I discussed the possibility of the temperature affecting her sleep with Jay. He agreed and bumped the temp down a little. (I do not touch the thermostat if possible. This comes from years of being yelled at by my dad (and ex-husband) for turning it up or down too much. It's a thing. I should get over it. I don't really care.) Anyway, we also turned the ceiling fan up a notch and ta-da! Like magic she slept through the night! Woohoo! Just like her Mama, she can't sleep if it's too hot. Lesson learned.

This weekend was also monumental because Turtle laughed for the first time ever! Now she's a very happy baby and has been squealing and making happy noises for a long time, but I've been waiting for that rolling laughter for a long time. On Sunday I went to Dunkin Donuts for a quick chocolate fix (read: chocolate overload!) and when I came back Jay said, "Please don't be mad!" Hehe. I wasn't mad. I was so happy, and so happy that he got to experience it. Apparently, the puppy had been scratching on the couch trying to get to one of his toys. Jay snapped at him to stop and Turtle thought it was so funny. Well, needless to say we spent most of the evening snapping in an effort to get her to do it again. The poor puppy is so freaking confused. She only did it one more time and it was, again, when the puppy was getting into something and Jay was snapping at him to stop. It was the best sound ever!!

One of the other things we've been trying lately is eating at the dinner table. We put Turtle in her high chair and let her play with her toys while we eat. It's been so fun to interact as a family of three and gives me a glimpse of what it will be like in the years to come. We don't do it every night. It really depends on whether or not I got to see Jon Stewart's The Daily Show before we sit down for dinner. :-) Priorities? What are those?

We also got Turtle an Exersauser this weekend. She wants to stand up all.the.time! This gets old. So, I figured it was time for a big, obnoxious, over-priced, plastic thing to help her do that. So, we went to the local consignment shops and found one in good condition. She loves it. Well, for about 10 minutes at a time, which I can sympathise with because that's about as long as my attention span is too. Poor girl.

I also started experimenting with putting Turtle in the shopping cart and restaurant high chairs. It was a huge success! She's not quite sitting, but she does pretty well with a little help from us. We do have to teather any toy she's playing with otherwise we end up spending half the time playing the pick up game.

I think that about hits the highlights for the past couple of weeks. I've taken lots of photos though, so get ready for cuteness overload!

We love our Bumbo. I know some people aren't fans because they can be expensive and the babies grow out of them so quickly, but we got ours at a consignment shop for about half price and it's been well worth it. I take it to restaurants so that we don't have to hold her all the time. (Although this weekend we put her in the highchair and it seemed to work pretty well.) My mom also uses it a lot during the day at her house since she doesn't have a high chair yet.

"Red White & Cute" How cute is that onesie?!?! I loved it so much that I had to get a few pictures of it. And I love having Daddy help with the photo shoots. You can see in the first picture that I took by myself that it's like she loses me when I put the camera up in front of my face. In the second one she's looking at Daddy. Oh how I love that!

She's also starting to do this thing called "tripoding".  It's when they sit up and balance themselves on their arms. It's a pre-sitting milestone and helps them learn to sit up. She'll be sitting before we know it!

These are a couple I got in the yummy morning light in my craft room. I realized thought that if we ever get the guest room cleaned out, that will probably become my studio because it gets the most light of any room in our entire house.

Have a great week everyone!