First nap without a pacifier!!!

Totally unplanned, Carolina didn't ask me to get her "chupon" when we changed her into pjs for her nap, and I forgot to offer it.

She normally remembers after books, when I put her in the crib, but today she didn't. when I got her up she was very groggy and asked for it. But even then, just for a few minutes.

I seriously doubt this is a new trend, but at least I know this too has a shelf life.

a little bit of thanks

In my pursuit to keep a level-headed view of this with-baby life, I thought I'd put down a few things that I've become grateful for:

1. Strangers on the bus (and subway), who take an immediate liking to Carolina and spend a few minutes making funny faces and sounds. So she smiles. Gives me a few minutes to tune out.
2. Swim class with other babies. She loves other babies, and loves water. Now if I could only get her to stop trying to drink up the pool, she'd be a bit happier by the end of each class.
3. Dinner and a movie with my husband. After Carolina goes to sleep. In our living room. We get at least 3-4 hours after she's asleep. And is usually the first meal of the day I can actually finish.
4. Naps. They are now longer than before. I can actually get some sleep, too.
5. Sleep. Still a bit hit or miss, but she's moving towards (with a lot of constant enforcement by mom and dad) longer sleep periods at night. Longer being 4 hours. I'll take it!!!
6. Something of a schedule. For the first time in her little life, she's got something of a schedule. She made it all by herself. So now we can go out and plan to meet up with people. Sometimes. Sometimes the schedule thing doesn't work.
7. Adventure-adventure. It's what I call anything that involves Carolina and I going outside to: visit someone, buy something, or see something where we'll be out of the house for at least 2 hours. 2 hours is her max before needing another nap. sometimes that can be stretched to 3 hours. So adventure-adventure is fun to see how long we can stay out, and just to get out of the apartment.
8. Stoller naps. I haven't been as diligent as I wanted to encourage these on a weekly basis, she's only had a smattering of them since early January. Sometimes she sleeps for 45 minutes, sometimes 10. 10 minutes is bad. Mostly for her. But I'm grateful she can do it.
9. Grandparents. Holy moly, I don't think I've ever appreciated my parents so much. And Abuelos in Mexico are just as awesome.
10. Smiles. It's true that when your baby smiles at you, it makes everything better. And trying to get her to smile, means I have to smile at her a lot. So that keeps us both on the happy side.
11. Spongebob Squarepants (and Dora the Explorer). Two things on TV that will get Carolina smiling in a second. And sometimes buys me 10-60 seconds to leave the room while she's engrossed and doesn't notice I'm gone.
12. Crawling. I'm getting some really great reaction-time/sprint training. Especially when she's about to go off the bed. So I leave her on the floor. And then I have to keep her away from trying to climb up on the TV table and up our dresser drawers. Faster, mommy, faster! Keep up!
13. More bottles, less breastfeeding (and sleep). Now that she's back to taking bottles like a champ, and onward to formula and solid food. She needs me less. I'm completely split on how I feel about this. I'm very proud of her for moving into new food territory and accepting change. Even not needing me to feed her before she goes to bed at night and willing to take a bottle -- WITH FORMULA. But I also miss that time of day's blissful moment when she's had enough to eat, keeps her eyes closed, and moves her head to rest it on my chest while pursing her lips together for a second. She is so calm, I can put her down into the crib and she doesn't wake herself up. It's a necessary trade off to lose that moment to the bottle. It's similar with a bottle but less, well, satisfying for me.

In the upcoming months, we'll be saving our pennies to get some friends to babysit on rare ocassions. Going out takes on a whole new level of expense and planning. BUT! She's sleeping enough during the first part of the night where I can leave her for 4-5 hours, and not feel like I'm burdening someone.

We are looking forward to taking her to the beach next month. Let's see if she likes it more than when she was 4 months old and I thought it was okay to put her feet into cold ocean water. Yeah, memories...

another car ride, another afternoon of crying

Since we took Miss Carolina in a car twice this week, we have more experience with what makes her cry (and consequently delay the trip) and what we can do to calm her down. You've read similar tales before (bus ride to Central Park and car ride to Babies R Us), so I'll just cut to the chase.

We went to Brooklyn to visit Kari and Jenn's new apartment. Really we went to have lunch and ice cream and walk around the neighborhood a little. But the lady didn't like getting in the car in the first place. She was great at the Post Office when we were on line for her US Passport application, but that was the hour before we picked up the ZipCar. Ah... good. Needless to say, there was no lunch out and no walking around. There was a nice time at the apartment and a quick, but painfully full of crying, visit to the ice cream place.

The following day we took Miss thing in the car to visit her grandparents so that mommy and daddy could visit their accountant. The ride was longer, the visit was longer, and there was more napping. We even tried a few different things in the car from the day before. It was less crying-ful and yet we still will avoid car journeys as much as possible.

Here's what we learned:

1. Feed her before you get in the car. Even if she's not interested. She'll be very interested as SOON as you start to drive forward. So, you'll spend the next 10-20 minutes with the feeding and then change the poopy diaper. Because, of course, she WILL POOP when you're in the car. She might not have for HOURS beforehand. But there will be poop while in the car.
2. If you can, get her to relax and fall asleep IN the car seat before you get the car seat in the car. This is a tough one. It's the best and will not require you to do most of the following things, but it's hardly ever something you can time with her. It's really just a matter of luck.
   
3. Bring 2 blankets. One to either wrap her or roll up to keep her sleepy head up and one, this is the more important one, to cover the car seat so she can't see all the wonderful life outside the window and less light. Keeping her focused on a smaller area, keeps her from freaking out about either not being able to see enough or, truthfully, from seeing too much and being overstimulated. She's a curious kid, so let's not overburden her by giving her too much to see when she's already unhappy about being in the car seat. I've since seen on Babies R Us website that there is some product you can zip up AROUND the entire car seat to keep it dark and, well, better than a blanket. I seriously don't need to keep track of more crap to bring in the car when we go out. The list is long enough right now thank you very much, and she's only 3 months old.
   
4. Bring 2 chupons (pacifiers). If she spits one out and it makes its way to the car floor, there is little chance of getting it clean in time to pop back in her mouth to keep her quiet.
5. Bring a little more milk than you think you need. I thought I did this, but you don't want to be, say, 1/4 ounce short and bear the wrath of still-a-little-bit-hungry baby. It kills me when it's been more than 4 hours and we have to throw away what she didn't drink, but it's better than screaming baby.
   
6. Sit on the side of her car seat that makes it easier for you to rock it left-to-right for at least 20 minutes.
   
7. "Car asleep" is not sleeping. Accept the fact that even when "asleep in the car" she will not really be asleep. So every pothole, bump, and construction hole that her father drives over will either surprise her (little hands go up in a kind of "I'm on a roller coaster and I don't like it" way), or wake her up completely.
8. Keep moving. Know that if you have the option to keep driving or stop, keep driving. If it means going further out of your way, do it. Especially if she's just ABOUT to relax for a long while. Keep the car moving. The worst is when she's JUST ABOUT done and you stop at a light. Yup, the whole thing starts all over again.
9. Nap interruptions have consequences. If you interrupt more than 2 nap periods, she will go to bed for the night much earlier than usual but it will be preceded with hours of on and off crying and not much smiling. So her usual happy self will be replaced with fussy baby. She did, however, fall asleep for the night at about 5pm and didn't wake up until about 10pm. She was about 10 minutes shy of a full 5 hour stretch of sleep. Of course that was followed by being awake every hour and a half afterwards, but I'll take the breaks when I can get 'em.
   
10. Bring a Ryan. If you have the chance to have a Ryan around, do so. A Ryan is a good distract-the-baby-from-crying friend who luckily was around while we were in Brooklyn to entertain Miss Carolina for at least 20 minutes with just moving his hands around. God bless the Ryan :)

All in all, I'm not sure if it's better to drive her to bring her on the subway. I think it depends on the day and how "up" I am for having strangers stare at me while she sounds like I'm torturing her.

She was exceptionally unhappy in the subway on the way to the Mexican Consulate on Monday, and midtown Manhattan was completely overwhelming with all the sounds. I'm glad the Baby Ergo has a snap cover, so that we could cover her head and she couldn't look around as much. If you think she has big eyes normally, you should have seen how big they got when she was trying to take in all of 42nd St at 5th Avenue. Thankfully they were disorganized enough that we had to go home right away, and she slept on the subway ride home. But it was interesting.

Stay tuned for more Travel Tales with Miss Carolina....

She's going for her 3 month checkup today and there will be immunization shots involved. Hooray!