7 Months

Bridget is 7 months old today and here's a little of what she's doing these days:

• She is still toothless, but I think a tooth must be on its way soon because her drooling has drastically increased this past week. I didn't think it could get much worse than it's been the last three months, but I was wrong.


• She's loving eating solid foods and doesn't seem to be a picky eater at all. She eats anything I give her so it's hard to tell if she has favorites, but they seem to be sweet potatoes, peaches, oatmeal, and rice cereal.


• Prior to this week Bridget didn't move around in her crib at all. All of sudden she's figured out that she can roll around on her mattress just like she does on the floor and now we find her sleeping on her tummy on occasion.


• Her favorite thing to do is to practice standing and walking while holding onto someone's hands. Quite often as she's sitting on the floor playing, she'll lose interest in her toys and turn to us and reach out to grab our hands so she can pull herself up to a standing position. As soon as she accomplishes this task she gets a huge grin on her face, and then she gets mad and fusses if we stop before she is ready to be done.


• Her biggest accomplishment of all has definitely been sleeping through the night consistently as mentioned in a previous post. She's doing so well at going to sleep on her own at night and for naps, and she consistently sleeps for 10-11 hours at night!! She is a much happier baby these days, and I'm a much happier mom.

Who Doesn't Love Kisses?

Thank You Dr. Ferber

For the last couple of months Bridget's sleeping habits were getting progressively worse. It was so bad a couple of weeks ago that I felt like I was at the end of my rope. She had to be held to go to sleep and would usually wake up and freak out as soon as you laid her in her bed and then the whole process would begin again. Add that to her waking up 2-6 times during the night and you can see why we were getting desperate for help. I'd read a lot online, in magazines, and in a book someone gave me, and nothing was working.

I decided to ask my older sister Amy for advice. She told me that they had very similar problems with their son and that they had amazing success with the method found in a book by Dr. Richard Ferber called Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems. Amy was very skeptical about it, but her husband followed the method exactly, and in 3 days their little boy was sleeping great. As soon as I told Nate about the book, he said that Amy's husband Stuart had given him a book for Christmas, and amazingly it was that exact book! When Nate started reading the first chapter, he was in tears laughing because Dr. Ferber described our situation exactly.

So last Saturday night we instituted his method which consists of putting your child to bed awake, leaving them for short periods of time which increase in length, returning to comfort them for 1-2 minutes without picking them up until they fall asleep. I knew it would be difficult because Amy warned me that it took her son an hour and 45 minutes to fall asleep the first night. Well, it took Bridget an hour and 30 minutes. It was hard listening to her cry for that long, but I knew I would only get results if I followed the method exactly. She only woke up a couple of times in the night, and when Nate used the method again she only cried for about 5 minutes before falling asleep again. I really thought the first night would be much worse than that, so I was pleased. When we instituted the method for naps, she only cried for about 5-10 minutes and sometimes less. The second night she only woke up once and cried for about 15 minutes before falling asleep. And she slept through the night (9-10 hours) nights 3 and 4. I love the Ferber method! Thank you Amy and Stuart for your advice and for giving us this book.

Father's Day

Today was Nate's first Father's Day, and although it wasn't too exciting, I think we had a pretty good day. It got off to a not so great start though because I didn't remember that it was Father's Day when I woke up and didn't remember to say or do anything until we'd been up for about an hour. Nate was grumpy and kept saying he was just tired but really he was mad that I hadn't wished him a happy father's day or done anything special yet. After I came out of my morning fog and realized the problem, I quickly gave him his gifts and apologized. Sadly, with 9:00 church and my forgetfulness I didn't have time to make him breakfast and he actually made it for me. We spent the rest of the day with Nate's family eating good food and visiting.

Nate is an amazing dad, and I always knew he would be. He loves playing with Bridget and can get her to laugh and smile without much effort. For the last few weeks he's also been great at getting up with Bridget when she wakes up at night because he does much better without good sleep than I do. And as you can tell from the pictures, they also enjoy taking naps together.

Hooray for New Toys and Good Deals

For the last few weeks I've been wanting to get Bridget an exersaucer to help keep her more entertained - especially since she loves to stand so much. Because I'm so frugal, I wanted to buy a used one as they are pricey and not something she'll use for very long. As luck would have it, I found a nice one for sale for a screaming good deal in the ksl classifieds yesterday, and it was only located about 15 minutes from where we live. I love a good deal, and Bridget loves her new toy!

Happy Anniversary to Us

Today is our 2nd Anniversary! The three of us went out to dinner at Red Lobster and the celebration was fabulous. The two years have gone by quickly, especially when you think that for over 1/2 that time I was either pregnant or a mom. While at dinner we reminisced about all the wonderful, exciting, fabulous things we have done. We also tried to remember specifics about our wedding day...like the rain.

Regardless of the "cheesy" factor, I have to say that you really do grow to love someone the more you put up with them...I mean, spend time with them.

Playing on the Computer

Bridget loves to touch everything she can. Tonight, after her bath, I set her in our desk chair...and here's the result.

Bridget & Charlotte

When Kimberly's sister Jill and her family came to visit over Memorial Day, Bridget finally had the opportunity to meet two of her cousins, Elaine and Charlotte. Charlotte is only three weeks older than Bridget.

(Evidently Google Video's embedded player is having some issues, so the video above doesn't work, click here.)

Dance!

New Layout

For some time now, I wanted to re-do the look of our blog. Kimberly set about finding something "we" (meaning she) like.

The new header took me some time to figure out. And, after several emails back-and-forth emails between myself and our friend Emily I was finally able to figure it out. (Thanks for your help, Emily!)

There will certainly be some tweaks to everything but hopefully this will stick for a while. As Kimberly said, it is "springy". We hope you enjoy the new look. Let us know what you think!