Lavendar corn husks

I don’t think I mentioned it yesterday, but when I was altering the crib, Ashley was in the next room with her Dad. Jake had to go do something so Ashley was alone. She moved to the bedroom door and I swear she said "hello?" because I was hiding behind the crib at that stage. It was the cutest thing ever. She says "hi mum" when I say "hi Ashley", and… I know there is more. She is working on ‘grandma’, at the moment it sounds like "a-ma" but it sounds right. It blows me away how often she responds correctly to what I say, mostly non-verbal but it shows that she understands me. Of course, there are simple things like "I’m just going to the bathroom, I’ll be right back" that I don’t know if she understands, it doesn’t stop her crying when I walk away. But that may be just the seperation, sometimes she cries if I put her down and sit next to her.

Last night was horrendous. She went to bed at 8:30, woke and wanted me at 10:30. she woke when I went to bed at about 11:30, she wanted me again at 12:30, and she stayed with me all night because I wait for her to get properly asleep for 5-10 minutes before I move her, and that NEVER HAPPENED. At one point she was latching on every 20 minutes, and because she was suckling so often I was very saggy-boobed so the nipples didn’t line up with her mouth so I had to move so every single time she wanted nipple I woke and…ugh. At 6, I woke Jake up and asked him to change her diaper, and I just started crying because I was so exhausted. He took her to the couch and I got close to 2 hours sleep.

I actually had coffee this morning. I very rarely have coffee, because it makes Ashley explosive, so I have to wait until I will be away from her for many hours or be truly desperate for it in order to make the inevitable extremely messy poos worth it. They were worth it, I was still almost falling asleep after the coffee, can’t imagine how bad I would have been without. Ashley got to have a nice warm bath in the middle of the day, so it worked out well for both of us.

Near the start of Ashley’s afternoon nap, Jake came up to ask if he had a doctor’s appointment today. He did, but he asked me 15 minutes after we were meant to be there. So I had to call to reschedule with a crying, suddenly woken baby in the background. Hopefully that worked in our favour and they understood why we were no-shows. I had absolutely no recollection of an appointment being today. My old, dead phone had it programmed into the calendar to remind me, but this new one, that was something I had forgotten about. So there is a new appt tomorrow afternoon.

Because of Ashley’s constant feeding last night, I seriously upped her food intake today. Normally she just gets 1/3 – 1/2 of a rice cake, and if she eats all of that, it is surprising. Today she had corn/butternut squash for lunch (~1.5oz) and the same for dinner. She also had her rice cake for pre-dinner snack and she ate it ALL, and when I had my sandwich after her bath, she stole some of that too. So her new foods for today were corn, whole wheat bread, and peanut butter. Although I don’t know if she actually got any peanut butter, that was on the sandwich. All that meant I had a good amount of food for her bedtime feed, so here’s hoping she stays asleep with her nice full tummy. I’ve also slathered my upper body in the lavendar baby lotion that apparently helps babies go to sleep, because I don’t feel lotion is necessary for her, but hopefully if she wakes in the night this will help her calm down so she can be moved back to her crib. Anything I can do to make a repeat of last night never happen.

One last thing. This afternoon I tried to do a hand tracing of Ashley and me on the same piece of paper. She moved too much, so hers is jolty looking, but it got done. I figure this would be a cute thing to do every so often. Maybe eventually we can turn them into turkeys. (Hand turkeys make me sad though. They remind me of the Simpsons, when Homer goes to apologise to his mum with a "sorry I was such a turkey" drawing and finds her dead.)

Umm…. happy thoughts! This entry is ending on happy thoughts!