Ellie

Thanks to all for the sleep suggestions. Pretty sure that the doctor was right about the teething, though I don't remember the first two being this bad. She has one breaking through on the top of her gums that seems to be hurting her.

The last three nights or so we have drugged the heck out of her. The Benadryl seems to work best as it makes her sleepy. Motrin doesn't do as much for her though. The Baby Orajel works okay for relieving the pain it seems. We don't like having to drug her, but we need to sleep.

She has been able to sleep for about 3-4 hour stretches pretty consistently, with the occasional hour wakeup thrown in there. Definitely much better for all involved. However, she still wants to get up for good at really early hours. 5am early. She'll be happy as a clam, wanting to play, and it takes a lot to get her back to sleep. And then it will only be till around 8am. This morning she was up with me at 7am. If we can get that part squared away, we'll be happy parents.

Posted by Brian at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I recently heard a story that debunked the saying "busy as a bee." Apparently, German researchers determined that bees are in fact very lazy and spend most of the day sleeping and watching TV in their underwear.

The last few days/weeks/Ellie's life have convinced me that we should similarly debunk the phrase "sleeping like a baby." Ellie has never slept more than 4 hours at any stretch. Most nights, it takes us anywhere from 30-60 minutes to get her to sleep, then she will wake up about 30 minutes later, briefly, then sleep for around 2 hours, and then be up every hour after that. So, unless you mean really bad sleep when you say you "slept like a baby", stop saying that!

Oh, and by the way, if you have any suggestions for helping Ellie sleep through the night, we'd appreciate them. The doctors are useless and want us to drug the kid with both Benadryl (in case she's uncomfortable from allergies) and Tylenol (in case it's teething). The books we've read emphasize having a bedtime routine, which we have done for about a month, but has not helped. The routine seemed to be helping at first, but she still woke up frequently at night. She was taking decent naps for a while, but now barely naps. Yesterday, she was awake from 1pm to 9:30pm without a nap. Last night, she slept from 9:30-11, then woke frequently throughout the night, including a rough stretch at 3:30 which took around 45 minutes to settle her down from. She was up pretty much for good at about 7am. Normal babies are supposed to get 16-18 hours of sleep, and she's obviously not getting that. Please help!!!

Posted by Brian at 2:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Ellie made this video for all the fathers out there.

Posted by Brian at 10:05 PM | Permalink

Ellie is almost 10 months old now, and I've slowly been filling up the web server with pictures and videos of each event in her life. Unfortunately, I'm really filling it up! We're about at 90% of our allocated space right now. So, eventually, I'll have to take some of the content offline. However, this also gives a great opportunity for faithful readers of the Ellie site. For anyone who wants it, I'm going to make a CD of the web site containing all the entries for Ellie's first year. It will basically duplicate everything you have seen on the web site. I am thinking about also adding some extras, like pictures that didn't make the cut, etc. This will be free to anyone who wants a copy, and I'll send it out around Labor Day, close to Ellie's first birthday.

For anyone will to put up an extra couple of bucks, you can also get a VHS tape with the raw video footage of Ellie that we've taken so far. The reason for the small charge is that CD's are cheap and easy to mail, VHS is more expensive for the tapes and to mail (plus it's more work to get the videos onto a VHS tape).

Send me an email or leave a note in the comments section if you're interested in either of these, and I'll put your name on the list.

Posted by Brian at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Ellie is really into the bathroom now. She will crawl in there while you are brushing your teeth and play with the toilet paper. And now, once we strip her for her bath, she crawls from her room into the bathroom and hangs on to the edge of the tub. We think if she could, she would climb right in on her own.

See what I mean? How cute is that???

Posted by Brian at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Another first for Ellie: frozen custard!

The last time Ellie was at the doctor, her height was in the 50th percentile, but her weight had literally dropped off the chart. Not surprising, as she apparently hadn't gained much at all in the previous month. So the doctor encouraged us to get more fat in her diet (as much as reasonably could be done), by, for example, buttering the crackers we give her, etc. Since it was pretty warm this week, we went out last night for Lisa's favorite, frozen custard. As you can see, Ellie liked it too.

Ellie's first bite of custard.

She wasn't sure about it for the first few bites, but she got into it the more we gave her.

Even the child size was still too big for her though. Plus, sometimes she'd rather just play with the spoon.

Posted by Brian at 9:19 PM | Permalink

Memorial Day weekend brought the usual: barbecues, and the town fair! And Ellie's first rides!

Ellie and Grandma riding the fun train.

Ellie riding the elephant on the merry go round.

And don't forget to check out the video! Warning: the carousel music may get a little annoying, and the video is about 2 minutes long, and 2.6MB big. But it's worth it to see her face as she gets into it.

Posted by Brian at 8:45 PM | Permalink

Ellie now has two teeth. Unfortunately, I've only recently gotten a possibly halfway decent picture of them. If you thought a toothless gummy smile was cute, wait till you see one with two little teeth on the bottom.

And, the big news from past week, Ellie is standing on her own! Seriously, for extended periods of time. Even long enough to get a good picture of her standing for her nine month portrait this weekend. I should have a good picture that we took of her standing as well. Lisa is taking bets as to whether she will be walking by July 4th (that would be just after she turns ten months old).

Posted by Brian at 4:39 PM | Permalink