Wordless Wednesday

Hey! Hey! Hey!

In the last few days, Charlotte’s been very vocal.  Her favorite new thing to say is “hey.”  Do we have  a laid-back little Californian on our hands?  Or a Fat Albert impersonator?  Hard to tell.

David and I find ourselves repeating “hey” many times a day to see if we’ll be rewarded with a response, and we often are.  Yesterday, after a good dozen “hey-hey” exchanges with the Bean, I decided it would be amusing to catch this on film.  However, the minute I turned the camera on and started in with my “heys,”  Charlotte became utterly silent and smiled coyly at me as if to say, “I’m not your little performing monkey, Mom.”

Indeed.  And hey.

Father-Daughter Bond

And another thing about David and Charlotte spending their mornings together (see yesterday’s post).  It’s really improved their bond.  Charlotte’s face lights up when David walks in the door after work.  Her eyes follow him when he leaves the room.  Of course, when she’s really hungry, she still looks to me, but I have noticed that her attention to David has increased.  It’s a beautiful thing.

Couch Beans

Scenes from the Weekend

One of the best things about weekends is that David gets to spent lots more time with Charlotte.  During the week, it’s hard for him to leave the Bean every morning, but it’s become easier with our new schedule.

Charlotte reliably wakes up (and the pants start rumbling) around 6:45 AM these days, so we all get up shortly after that.  I eat breakfast and then lock myself in the office for an hour to write.  I’m very excited to be working on a new novel, and I find that I can get quite a bit of writing done if I have that uninterrupted hour every day.  So David plays with Charlotte for a while, and by the time my hour’s up, she’s usually hungry.  David heads out the door, and everyone has had a great start to their day.

A meeting of the minds

Weekends are great because we can be more laid back in the morning and even tag team so that one parent can sleep in a bit.  We didn’t have anything planned this weekend, just hung around the apartment, decluttered the closet, ate an excellent Indian dinner that David cooked, walked around the neighborhood, and went out to Fort Funston by the ocean.

Papa Bean and Baby Bean at Fort Funston (Golden Gate Bridge is faintly visible in the upper right.)

Quigleys on the beach (Those aren’t birds behind them; they’re hang gliders!)

Upright Girl

The Neglect-o-tron

We acquired this Evenflo Super Saucer (also known as the Neglect-o-tron in some circles) from a colleague of David’s who has four children.  It was a bit crusty from the love bestowed on it by its previous occupants, and a few of the attachments are missing, but I gave it a good scrubbing the other day and let Charlotte try it out.  She loved it!  I knew she was ready, too, because she’s very interested in toys right now, and sometimes it’s difficult for her to pick them up when she’s lying on her back or stomach.  Now they’re right in front of her, and she quickly figured out how to turn in the swivel seat.  She also started playing the classic baby/parent game of throwing things on the floor and watching in amusement as David and I fetched them for her.

Sitting!

Of course, Charlotte doesn’t need the Super Saucer to get vertical.  In the past few days, she has been sitting up on her own for a few seconds at a time.  She also practices sitting with support from the Boppy pillow.  Aye-yai-yai, she’ll be crawling before we know it.

Wordless Wednesday

Five Months Old

In her fifth month, Charlotte tips the scale at 14 pounds, 11.4 ounces, up a pound and two ounces from last month, (three, two, one months) and exactly six pounds heavier than she was at birth.  She doesn’t have a pediatrician’s visit this month, and she’s too squirmy to let us measure her length, so that will have to wait for next month.  This picture reveals the main elements of Charlotte’s state of being: drool flowing from her mouth and hands that are always in motion.

Charlotte also hopes that her Gramacita is having a fine birthday in Minnesota.  Maybe she’ll be able to sing to her next year!

A Social Whirl

Over the long holiday weekend, Charlotte dazzled friends with her cuteness.  On the Fourth of July, we went over to Oakland for a barbecue at Helene and Kareem’s.  Katie, Jay, and their three-year-old son, John, joined us.  John is quite smitten with Charlotte, as this picture reveals.  Charlotte was probably staring at a beer bottle or one of Helene and Kareem’s cats or something equally fascinating when the photo was taken.

Charlotte also took the opportunity to show off with all of her tricks, rolling around naked on her special moisture-proof blanket made by Gramacita and laughing as I played pee-a-boo with her shirt.  Helene was clearly impressed.

On Saturday, we all just hung out around the apartment, going for an early evening walk and feeding bread to a duck down by the lake.  We have no photographic evidence of this, so you’ll just have to take our word for it.

Today, we went to Golden Gate Park for a picnic with Diego and Alison.  Charlotte was extremely charming and well-behaved, and David and I agreed that Charlotte made parenting look easy.

Sleep Q and A

Charlotte enjoys an afternoon nap.

Everyone, from strangers on the street to our closest friends, is interested in how much sleep our whole family is getting.  I (Sarah) thought I’d write up answers to the questions that seem to pop up most.

Are you and David getting any sleep?
Plenty!  We’re getting more now than we did the first few weeks when nursing was still tricky and Charlotte didn’t yet recognize the difference between night and day.  These days, though, David doesn’t report nodding off at work, and I don’t nap nearly as often with Charlotte as I used to, maybe just once or twice a week now.

Is Charlotte sleeping through the night yet?
No, but it’s OK.  She usually falls asleep around 8:00 PM and wakes up for the day at around 7:00 AM.  In between, there are 2-4 nighttime feedings. Honestly, I don’t mind it.  I don’t have to go to work in the morning, so I can always take a nap with Charlotte later in the day if I need it.  Plus, Charlotte sleeps with us, so I just latch her on, and we both fall back to sleep.  David doesn’t even wake up much of the time.

She sleeps with you?  Is that safe?  Aren’t you worried that you’ll roll over on her?
We feel that the arrangement is quite safe, and many experts agree.  Charlotte starts out in the co-sleeper, which is a basinet attached to the side of our bed.  I usually go to sleep between 10:00 and 11:00, and Charlotte wakes up for her first feeding an hour or two later.  I pull her into bed, and that’s where she stays for the rest of the night.  We sleep on our sides facing each other, and I tuck my arm under my pillow and bend my legs.  It would be pretty difficult for me to roll on her in that position.  And with the co-sleeper strapped to the side of the bed and a pillow tucked into the small gap between the two, there’s no danger of Charlotte falling out of bed or getting caught in a narrow space.  Sometimes Charlotte is between David and me, and he’s never come close to rolling over on her, either.

When will Charlotte sleep in her own bed?
Definitely when she goes off to college.  But seriously, we don’t know.  Just like we don’t know how long she’ll breastfeed, or when she’ll be potty-trained.  There is a belief, especially in America, that babies who sleep with their parents may never want to move to beds of their own, but I don’t think it’s true.  My siblings and I slept with our parents when we were small, and we all wound up in our own beds eventually.  It will happen for Charlotte, and I’m not worried about it.

But doesn’t having a baby in the bedroom make it difficult for you and David to have couple time?
Babies require a lot of time and attention whether they sleep with their parents or not.  I don’t think the fact that Charlotte sleeps in our room makes it any more difficult for David and me to be alone together than if she were in her crib in the nursery.  Besides, there are four other rooms in our apartment, plus the hallway and two walk-in closets.

Is Charlotte on a sleep schedule?
Not really although she pretty reliably takes a mid-morning nap and snoozes again once or twice in the afternoon.  I don’t try to get her to sleep at a certain time, and this works fine for us because we typically don’t have many scheduled activities during the week.  Some days, she naps for two hours at a stretch, and other days, she takes several 20-minute cat naps.

***

Before Charlotte was born, many told David and me that we needed to cherish our sleep, making it seem like we were going to be a perpetual state of zombified sleep deprivation.  That hasn’t been the case.  Maybe we’re really lucky, or maybe we’ve set up a situation that works well for our family.  That’s what it boils down to in the end: finding what works.  I know that that’s different for every family.  I don’t think that the way we’re doing things is necessarily the best way for everyone, but it’s the best for us.

I also know that I enjoy sleeping with my baby, and I think we all get more sleep this way.  I also feel that this time is so brief and special; Charlotte won’t be a baby forever, and she will move to her own bed in her own room someday.  However, I’m not counting the days until that happens.  I could make it happen now if I wanted to, but I’d rather have her next to me.  I love snuggling next to her all night, hearing her breathing, nursing her, just being close to her.  It feels right.

Wordless Wednesday