Squeal

Now we have a baby who rolls over AND squeals. She'd made the occasional happy shriek before, but in the past few days she's realized that she can control it, and that she apparently LOVES to do it, because now she shrieks all the time. When she's in a good mood. And the really funny thing is how she moves her lips and tongue all around while she's squealing, so it makes all these hilarious sounds like she's talking in some foreign language that has no plosive consonants. I love it.



She had been sleeping for 7 to 8 hours a night for a couple of weeks, and even gave us two amazing 9 hour nights, but for over a week now we've been lucky to get 6 hours. I've been putting her to bed by 9 so that I can pump once more and still be in bed by 11 or so, and she is still as easy as ever to put to bed--just finish nursing, lay her in the crib and swaddle her, turn off the lights, and walk out the door. We rarely hear a peep from her after that; she seems to fall right to sleep whether she stayed mostly asleep after nursing or not. We credit the routine of swaddling & turning off the lights--she doesn't fight it at all, so she seems to get the message that swaddle + dark = sleep time. But then for the past 2 weeks, she's been waking up to nurse somewhere from 2:45 to 4:30 AM. Right now I feel totally fine with it, and I swear I'll take the early morning nursings in exchange for all the awesomeness that is Penelope (goes to bed super easy, cries mostly only when hungry or wet, doesn't pee or poop out of her dipes, makes adorable noises, is generally extremely cute), but when I hear that little cry at 3:00 AM? I just want to stay asleep for goodness sake. But I know she'll start sleeping all night again soon, and then my problem will be putting her to bed early enough that she's waking up to nurse before I leave for work in the morning, and I'll be bummed that I don't get to spend enough hours with her after work!

I work from home on Wednesdays, so it's the best possible time to catch up on pumping. In addition to my usual night session, I got in 2 this morning, for a total of 3 extra ounces. That's an entire afternoon-sized bottle! I am so thankful to have a job that lets me work from home one day a week. I'd be able to keep up if I had to go in to the office 5 full days, but it would make my weekends a lot less fun. That extra day of using no bottles and fitting in a few extra pumps...it's a life saver! Speaking of which, it's time to unplug my boobs and go to bed now. Good night!