Naps, Trips, and Books

Jessie: Everyday is a weekday for me now.

That more or less sums up Jessie’s life these days. Somewhat depressing, isn’t it?

It’s now been a week since my parents went back home and left Jessie alone to fend for herself with the baby. It also didn’t help that I was sick for most of that week and tried to avoid getting anyone else sick. Thankfully, Caitlyn is still slowly making progress to make life somewhat easier for the wife.

First time dozing off by herself!

Her new favorite sleeping position

This doesn't look very comfortable

Conked out

The biggest milestone thus far is Caitlyn being able to self-soothe herself now. No longer do we have to carry her in our arms for hours on end. We can put her in the rocker or bassinet when she’s tired, she’ll fuss and cry a little, and then she’ll doze off to sleep all by herself. Whoo-hoo!

However, bedtime for her is still around 12-1:30 a.m. No matter how hard we try to get her to sleep before then, she refuses to budge. Sure, she might take a quick cat nap before then, but it’s nowhere in the range of 3 to 4 hours.

To help her drift off to sleep, we’ve started using white noise and background sounds to calm Caitlyn down. I downloaded an app for the iPhone that has several different sounds that you can choose and mix from. Caitlyn has a preference for running water, so for the majority of the day and night, our house sounds like we’re in the middle of a torrential downpour or we’re listening to the dripping sounds of a Chinese water torture.

First time in her car seat

Looking pretty pitiful

 Wave to the camera and smile!

Snoozing

After having success the first time we took Caitlyn out in the stroller, we’ve started taking her out on a more frequent basis. This includes going to Grandma’s house, trips around the block, a trip to a restaurant, and the granddaddy of them all, a 4-hour trip to the shopping mall.

I’ll admit I was a bit hesitant about going to the shopping mall, but Jessie was going a bit crazy after being pent up with the baby, so I decided to take them out for a change of scenery. Caitlyn slept like, well, a baby, for most of our time there, except during a diaper change and a quick feeding. Therefore, I am happy to report our lengthy excursion as a success.

My main objective for going to the mall was so that I could go to the bookstore to buy some good board and cloth books to read to Caitlyn. I stumbled upon a series of books that I really like. This is the Begin Smart series. I bought 4 of them at the store.

They have their books leveled for the appropriate age group: 0 to 6 months, 6 to 9 months, 9 months to 12 months, and so on. These books are simplistic in design, but not too tacky looking at the same time. I like this better than the Baby Einstein series. My only wish is that they would have more actual photographs than drawings in their books. Hopefully, these books will live up to their name.
 

Hamming it up with Uncle Elvis

Posing with her new best friend, Jocelyn

The happiest and cutest baby...

on the block!