Things Are Looking Up

The past two nights Ayden has woken only for feedings which is totally awesome. Last night he had his last feeding of the day around 6:30pm and went down for the night around 8pm. He then woke to eat at 10pm, 1:30am and 4:30am. I always bring him to bed with me for the last feeding and we snuggle and sleep while he nurses off and on for the next couple of hours. It is the perfect amount of co-sleeping for me. Long enough to enjoy the closeness that co-sleeping offers but short enough that I don't end up stiff with aching hips (which is what happens if we attempt to co-sleep all night). Though he is still waking every three hours or so, it is an amazing improvement! I still feel like I need a nap during the day, even if I don't always manage to take one, but I don't feel like I've been hit by a truck in the morning which is always a bonus.

Switching to shorter days for Little Miss has been wonderful! She leaves by 2 so I have time to nap, finish any partially completed projects from the day and make dinner by the time David gets home around 5:30.

Eating dinner early has also been an awesome routine alteration. We used to be racing against Ayden's need to go to bed which would usually lead to us leaving the kitchen a wreck, which I had the luxury of waking up to in the morning; and getting an over-tired baby to bed, which is never an easy or enjoyable task. Now we eat dinner as soon as David gets home and are able to be super flexible for the rest of the evening.  Ayden's early bedtime is pretty awesome too because it gives us some time before we go to bed that we can use to workout, do computer stuff, or whatever else we want.

I've heard that it takes the full first year to really get into a groove and I believe it.  As time passes we are finding ourselves making small changes to the way we do things that make our lives less stressful and run more smoothly.  At this rate, I can imagine that by the year mark we'll have a pretty good system down pat.

Today, I got our DSLR camera out and did a mini photo shoot with Ayden while Little Miss was taking her nap.  We got our Canon Rebel T1i so that we could have great pictures of our *someday* baby.  Now that he's here, we don't get it out much for random snapshots.  I suppose I'm spoiled by the ease of the semi-good quality photos I can take with my iPhone which is always at the ready.  I'd like to start getting the Rebel out a little more because there really is a huge difference in quality. Today, I used the natural light coming in our bedroom window and caught some pretty cute photos.  Of course the pictures here I took of the DSLR screen with my iPhone.  I rarely can take the time to import pictures from the nice camera for the blog. Oh well, you can at least get an idea of how stinkin' cute they turned out!

We had another seamless transition to bedtime tonight.  Are we making progress or is this just another phase??  Only time will tell :).  We read Goodnight Moon to him every night as part of his bedtime routine; but if he's in the mood, between PJs and putting him in his crib, we sit in the glider and read a couple of other books too.  Tonight, David read him his pre-bedtime story.  I really love how much he already seems to enjoy books.  He even helps us turn the pages which is pretty awesome!  

What's your baby's favorite bedtime story?

~Sarah