Sleepy Baby

Today ended up being another low key day...

Ayden was wide awake after our 5:00am feeding this morning.  We ended up having some playtime for about an hour where he swatted at the giraffe on his play mat and I read him books. When he was ready to go back to bed, we both slept off and on until about 9am or so, and then he was up for more playtime.

We think that he is beginning to understand the cause and effect relationship between his arm swatting and the giraffe's movements.  Also, as you can see in the video, he is beginning to grasp things that happen to cross paths with his open hands.  He even tried to pull it toward his mouth a few times.  Once I realized that's what he was trying to do I helped him and once we got it in there he gave me the biggest smile as if to let me know that's exactly what he had been trying to do.  This being entertained by toys thing is a whple new realm for us!

I've deemed Tuesdays as Ayden and Errand days where I spend extra time focusing on playing with, stimulating and developing Ayden before lunch and running any errands on our to do list after lunch.  Since we got a late start to our day due to our extra early morning playtime followed by our extra sleep, I chose to push errand day to tomorrow so we just hung out at home.

I've decided to try to get Ayden on the eat/awake/sleep cycle that is recommended by both Secrets of The Baby Whisper and On Becoming Baby Wise.  Today was kind of an akward day to start because of how our morning already started differently than that of our usual routine.  Needless to say, Ayden only got two short naps all day due to my failure efforts to get him to fall asleep on his own (I was with him but just wasn't rocking or wearing him). I ended up giving in and putting him in the Moby both times. This, as with all things, will be a process but both of the resources above claim that just getting your baby on this predictable cycle will help facilitate sleeping through the night.  I'm okay with waking up once during the night but as of right now he'll start the night with a 3 or 4 hour stretch of sleep and then he's up every two hours or so for the rest of the night.  That much interrupted sleep makes me feel like I've been hit by a truck by morning.  Sometimes I think I'd feel better if I didn't sleep at all.  Anyway, the eat/wake/sleep cycle is worth a try.  If it works, awesome!  If not, at least I know I tried something...  

Ayden's first Moby nap was had while on a walk because it was another B-E-A-utiful day in The Bluegrass! 

The high was actually in the mid 70's and tomorrow is supposed to be close to 80*!!

Look at that sky!

His second nap was exactly like the first only we had David with us.  We enjoyed the last bit of sunset on our evening walk then had leftovers for dinner and watched an episode of Heroes on Netflix (which we haven't done for the past week or so).  It was nice to end our low key day with a low key night.  

The bad part of having having an over-tired baby by the end of the day was that David didn't get much quality awake time with him like he usually does right when he gets home and before we go to bed. The benefit is that Ayden fell asleep hard once it was time!  He's usually pretty easy to get to sleep but tonight was a piece of cake! Here's hoping for a good night's sleep for us all!!

~Sarah