It sometimes surprises me just how much Daphne is starting to understand and learn.

For instance, she’s not required to be sitting in her high chair to eat; sometimes we eat sitting on the floor. But she’s required to be sitting with her butt on the floor. In the best behavior modification style, she doesn’t get her food until her butt is on the floor, and I just ask her once (or as best I can, just once) without nagging. And she now knows it. I don’t know how long it took her to learn it, but it was one or two meals. She tests it sometimes, but for the most part, she’ll sit and take a bite, play a bit, then sit back down and open her mouth for the next spoonful.

She knows what “let go” and “other side” means with respect to nursing. She is starting to sign for milk and potty. Well, rather, we suspect she is starting to try to do so, and isn’t really quite competent at it yet, despite her desire.

And in the past three days, she has made distinctive strides in sleeping, specifically learning to go to sleep. It seems that she needed to feel confident in being able to get onto her stomach to sleep and still be able to move around. She still isn’t quite there, and there is a fair amount of flailing and trying to get comfortable in the middle of the night. But last night, she tried to sleep two long stretches, and only had a little trouble doing it.

That little head has an amazing capacity to learn things even when she can’t tell you she’s learning. It’s like super behavior modification training. 🙂

Daphne’s second tooth (the bottom right front) came in last night.  No wonder she’s been fussier than normal.  Never mind that she won’t chew on cold things, or most hard things.  A little more drooling perhaps, but also a little less interest in solid foods.  Ah well.  Hopefully, they’ll get easier (until they get harder with the molars).  At least I know now why she’s back to making lots of raspberry sounds instead of the “bububububu” she had been working on.

She’s otherwise being cute and adorable.  A shy flirt with new people and remembering the folks she sees semi-regularly.

In other news, she discovered the toilet paper roll today, and unraveling that is apparently quite fun.  I had hoped she would wait to do that until she had stopped trying to eat everything, but she’s too … smart? … for that.

Somedays you have a cranky baby. Somedays a cranky mommy. Somedays both. This may be one of those days.

It’s always the sleep thing. (And will be until it’s not.) We tried a pocket diaper on Daphne last night instead of a gDiaper, and that seemed to help. (I think the only difference was the microfleece between her and the cotton absorbancy. I could just as easily cut out some fleece for the gDiapers, which seem to fit a little better.) So she slept better the second half of the night but still *hated* going to sleep in the evening. I blame part of that on the time change, and part of that on me not getting her to bed early enough. But I long to have my evenings back.

In the past 36 hours, I had 10 minutes off baby-duty. I hate that. And I hate that I hate that. (Though the later far less than the former.)

I talked to Jason about it this morning, and he doesn’t really get it. He was talking about how I need to learn to chill out and let her play in the pack and play or by herself for a little while. While I’m fairly AP, she likes to play by herself, and I’m happy to let her do that. But I’m still on-duty. I still have to be “ready” to respond if something happens. It’s not like I can just go take a walk around the block and leave her behind. And I don’t think he realizes that, when you have to be “on-standby” for so many hours in a row (21, most days – from 8pm to 5pm) that standby is significantly more energy requiring than “off”.

This is exacerbated by how I choose to get Daphne to go to sleep. I go to bed with her. I don’t expect to do this forever, of course, but it is part of how I’m encouraging her to learn to sleep unswaddled and without being bounced. She’s not one to easily self-soothe herself to sleep. (She self-soothes to things like feet-clapping. Silly girl.) That means that I don’t get that time in the evening when she’s asleep. (Of course, I’d still be “on-standby” in case she woke up…) But I’m usually tired enough in the evening that I really don’t mind being in bed for a long time.

But then I get up and have her all day. And this is one thing we’re going to try changing – when Daphne gets up, Jason gets her for a little bit. If only half an hour, I get *something* of a break between the night-watch and the day-watch. I think this may help with my sanity. I hope it does.

We’re also going to try putting her to bed earlier. Well, I am. Jason is of a mind to let her stay up if she’s staying awake in the dark room, but I think it just makes the problem worse. I get to take lead on this one, so, we’re going with the earlier bed time. For two weeks. We’ll see how that goes.

Daphne has made progress on the sleep front and no longer is swaddled to sleep at night. At the moment, that means I am going to bed with her, but she’s doing less and less nursing to sleep. It is funny, however, to watch her thrash MrWuffles around when she’s not quite ready to sleep.

In five days, I will be done with the hard part of my 2nd level of yoga teaching. I have enjoyed it, but it was a time commitment I’d rather not have made right now. My final project, time suck though it has been, is looking great, and marketable!!

I am looking forward to having weekends free, days free, and time to do housework again. Maybe even go for a walk during the day!

Daphne, Jason and I rang in the New Year by sleeping. Hey, I like my sleep and will take advantage of any opportunity for it. I was lucky too – ordinarily, as we are working out of the swaddle, I am nursing Daphne to sleep. She may stay latched and flutter sucking for an hour. That’s an hour of increasingly difficult on the hips awkward side lying with half my belly cooler than the rest of me. But she not only only ate twice in the night, but I was able to detach and move! Simple pleasures, you know.

This will be an interesting year. By the end of it, she will probably be walking and talking and all the more opinionated. But it will be a fun journey to watch.

I had originally hoped to start yoga therapy teacher training, but being away for 10 days at a time twice a year for two years – not to mention the homework, assisting, and classes – is just not the best decision for us. It does mean that I wont be doing that until at least 2013, or possibly 2015 or later if we have two kids, but that’s ok. I’m good with “mom” being my job.

Today was the last day of swim class for the current session. We will be moving on to the next session, but Daphne still doesn’t particularly like being dipped underwater, but she’s getting the hang of not trying to sit up in her backfloat.

Daphne has been working on all kinds of things of late. But if I try to think of it in terms of “milestones” on some silly chart, it just doesn’t make sense. She’s been able to sit on her own for a while, but we still have pillows behind her since she occasionally forgets that there is effort involved in sitting up. She’s started “eating” solid foods, but there is significant question as to how much goes in. It doesn’t seem like you can ever “check off” any milestone except in retrospect.

Her big accomplishment seems to be the ability to draw blood with her tiny little finger nails clawing my neck while nursing. That or smacking me in the chin or trying to grab onto my teeth. Ah well.

I’m sick, so our relatively uneventful Thanksgiving will now be totally uneventful. But there is likely to still be snow, and perhaps we can get Daphne to play in it again.

For my birthday, I received a gift card to REI, which I promptly spent on warm clothing and a fleece bunting for Daphne which may be the most adorable piece of winter wear I’ve ever seen. It certainly has kept her warm enough on walks with our mid-20F days, as long as she’s sufficiently dressed underneath it.