My girls spent most of the day sleeping, which I'm glad for. I was able to work on a small project putting up plastic sheeting over the bedroom windows (for those of you south of the 40° parallel, plastic sheets over windows create a pocket of air that further insulates the window) to help keep the bedrooms warmer.
Well, I definitely would not have posted an entry about sleeping last night (in case it isn't clear, we did not sleep very much last night). Like I mentioned, I knew that we wouldn't be getting much sleep, but I had assumed it would be because the baby would cry ALL. NIGHT. LONG. But that just isn't the case. Lyla slept pretty well last night, the problem was that she only would sleep when Katherine and I were holding her. We think it is because of the warmth of being against our bodies, whenever we would try to put her down to sleep, she would stir and cry.
The other reason Katherine and I didn't sleep much was the anxiety, Lyla (like most babies) has a range of breathing sounds. About 70% of my awake time last night was paying attention to her breathing: making sure she was breathing, making sure nothing was obstructing her breathing, trying to figure out what could be obstructing her breathing and resulting in those deep grunting breaths, and trying to determine what the pace of her breathing was telling me about her condition. 15% of the time was given over every time she would move or squeak or start to fuss, forfeiting any progress I was making toward sleep. And finally 10%, asleep but dreaming about bad things happening to Lyla. The other 5% she
was crying. And man can she cry. Last night walking and singing seemed to work when combined with holding her close and gently patting her bottom. Anyway, another revelation about me: I like singing to Lyla.
Lyla likes to suck her thumb while she sleeps and is overcoming the tendency of her hands to do whatever they darn well feel like. It's kind of cute watching her move her face around trying to catch one in her mouth only to be thwarted at the last second as her arm pulls a
Crazy Ivan and shoots out past her ear. So when she does catch one, our tendency is to let her be. However, we've noticed the tendency of her other fingers to gravitate toward (and often into) her eye like it was a tiny little black hole and it makes we worry because her little fingernails are sharp. In addition to the dread I have about anything harming my daughter, there is also a little fear of the shame I would feel as if I would be responsible for
letting whatever happened happen.
"Ooh, look there's Kevin Ring, he's that horrible father who didn't stop his daughter from poking her own eye out when she was a baby."Ever the optimist (in these bizarre little fantasies I concoct), if it did happen, it would be a great deterrent to stop any future kids from sucking their thumbs.
"Now now, Gerald R Ford (the hypothetical name of my first son
), don't suck your thumb unless you want to turn out like your sister."Okay, enough with this rant. I'll let you guys see for yourself what I'm talking about. With out further ado: Lyla Sucking Her Thumb in a Weird Way!! (p.s. there is sound)
I guess being so awesome sure takes a lot out of you because Lyla has been a sleeping machine (sort of explains why Katherine sleeps a lot, too). We gave her her first bath at home last night, and, well, Katherine and I are not quite adept at bathing Lyla yet. We didn't drop her or anything, it just didn't go smoothly. But Lyla was clean and happy once we dressed her in another cute outfit. Then Katherine fed her and put her to sleep. Some new, G.R. friends loaned us a bunch of baby supplies including a swing that seems to not wake Lyla up, so we put her down for bed in that last night. She slept from 11 pm until 4 am, when Katherine got up and made her eat. She then slept soundly until 8 am (another mandatory feeding, which turned on some hunger switch because Lyla ate every hour after that for the next four hours). From 12ish to about 1ish, Lyla spent some quality awake time with the fam. Then back to sleep. We consider ourselves quite fortunate (especially because we all got a full night's sleep last night) and definitely aren't complaining. I really enjoy holding Lyla and am perfectly content to watch her sleep for hours. (see picture)
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