A lot happens in a week!

I'm a wee bit neurotic when it comes to how my child sleeps.  She moves around in her sleep constantly.  I think this is partly due to the fact that she is an incredibly light sleeper.  God made her this way; we did not.  I am very sensitive to noises and perhaps because of it or in spite of it I tried very hard to make Amelia used to being in the midst of life itself.  All day every day in the months following her birth (until she started sleeping in her own room for naps) she would take her naps in the living room.  David and I would keep the TV at a normal volume, unload the dishwasher, etc., hoping she would just get used to sleeping wherever, whenever.  Didn't work.  I guess with my noise sensitivity and David having been a light sleeper most of his life our child didn't stand a chance.

This is why my blog posts are so lengthy - I get off on tangents and ramble.

Anyway, so Amelia moves around a lot at night and I'm neurotic about checking the video monitor to make sure that she's still covered up and her face isn't too close to the bumper.  David makes fun of me because even though I can see her on the video monitor, I frequently go into her room to check on her.  Sometimes I accidentally wake her up by moving the blanket out from underneath her feet or by grabbing her by the ankles and pulling her away from the side of the crib.  Usually she goes right back out, but since she's been teething it's a whole new ballgame.

First, it takes forever to get her to sleep at night.  Bottle, nursing, teething tablets, Motrin, paci, rocking, more rocking.  You name it, we've tried it.  Gone are the days where I could lay her down and she'd drift off to sleep.  She needs me to rock her now.  I really don't mind - I absolutely love the time I can spend rocking her and cuddling with her.  It's the times that she's so uncomfortable that she screams when she's in her crib and she screams when I'm rocking her that's tough.  Or when I rock her to sleep only to lay her down and have her start crying again.

Can I just stop and say that it's really creepy to be in the living room of your home and hear breathing that isn't your own?  I know it's either the dog or one of the 2 cats, but still...

My entire point is that I didn't check on her tonight at all after I put her to bed.  I saw in the monitor that she was covered but I didn't check the monitor after that.  Usually I'll check it before I go to bed around 11pm then go and adjust her and cover her up, but obviously I haven't gone to bed.  So she woke up at midnight crying.  I tried rocking her to sleep a couple of times but it resulted in her crying and standing in her crib.  She's finally asleep now after I nursed her and rocked her.

She can pull herself up to stand in her crib.  As of, oh, last Saturday.  She pulled to her knees (which I actually think is what's pictured) a couple of times that day so I asked David to lower the mattress.  He did, and after her next nap when I went in to get her she had pulled all the way up to standing.  Whew.

And here she is today.  I caught her in this position when I came back to the living room after having heated up her lunch.  She really loves those Yogurt Bites.

And she somehow managed to prop herself underneath the same table a little later.  You can't really tell, but she's standing with one hand on the diaper caddy and one hand on the table support.  If she moved, she bumped her head.  So, being the wonderful mom that I am I made sure to snap a picture and then help her get out.

After David got home from work today we took Amelia outside for another shot with the tree.  It looks much better than it did even a few days ago.

I want to try feeding Amelia what we eat since I hear that's the best way to raise a non-picky eater.  So David broke out the high chair for the first time and she ate at the dining room table with us.  Well, she didn't really eat.  She posed for a few pictures and shoved the food around.  She wasn't hungry. 

She also might want me to tell you that for a while now she's been drinking out of her sippy cup all by herself.  Not always tipping it far enough to get water and not always attempting to drink it with the sipper facing the right way, but she has the right idea, anyway.  She's still just on water...we are holding off on juice for as long as humanly possible.

Finally, here are a couple of pacifier clips I made for Amelia tonight.  If you have any sewing ability whatsoever, please don't look closely at my stitches.  One of them is just one-sided ribbon.  The other is one-sided ribbon that I stitched together so that it would be a thicker, two-sided paci clip. 

Business is going well...many new items listed and I have a few orders I need to fill which is why I haven't been blogging much. 

Happy Tuesday!