And there's more....

After putting Tinysaur to bed tonight (which was sooooo easy tonight! - BOY is this a rollercoaster!!) I opened up my email to discover babycenter had sent me something for this week - 50 reasons why it's fun to be a parent.

My favourites would have to be:

• Gazing into your baby's eyes and knowing he trusts you totally.
• Discovering how infectious a baby's giggles can be.
• Crying when you see a baby born on TV, understanding how mothers feel everywhere

and then one which I really look forward to:

Hearing my Tinysaur say "mum" and wondering who that is, then realising - it's ME!!!

Aww.....

Count your Blessings...

My little tinysaur and I are at loggerheads lately - she wakes up about every hour during the night, and I can no longer put her down in the cot until she is fully asleep. The lovely routine I had established with her has gone cactus, thanks to her carer's different methods and refusal to even loosely follow my routine and methods.

Over the past two weeks which were my holidays from work, I have tried controlled comforting, introducing nightlights/toys/thumbsucking, etc. And nothing is really working. I have googled baby sleep problems that many times I think I have read nearly everything there is on separation anxiety and the like.

Today, when we were playing Tinysaur started to get a little grizzly. I stood her up on my lap, and just gave her kisses on the belly and tried to make her laugh.

Grabbing either side of my face, she pulled me towards her and proceeded to bombard me with wet, sloppy, huge kisses. At a point where I was sad and a bit bummed out she totally lifted my spirits.

Those huge sloppy kisses turned my day around, and made me step back and count my blessings, and appreciate what I have in life. I am so lucky to have my Tinysaur in life, that I shouldn't sweat the small things. And I love her more than anything in the world.

Round 2 - The Angry Little Monster

So last night and this morning started what I presume is Round 2 of teething. After her promising signs the other day, then no teeth arriving and her going back to 'normal' I thought I would be in the clear and have my happy baby back for a little while.

Not so.


Last night was punctuated hourly by screaming, crying, sobbing, you name it! Tinysaur even spent some time lying down in our bed with us, doing that funny hiccupy thing they do after crying. By 6am I was exhausted, but fed her a morning bottle then dozed back off.


She woke up happy enough - smiley, giggly, and wriggly. But as the morning passed (in fact - after she had been up for an hour), the terrible monster was unleashed. She wasn't happy in her highchair, on the floor, on her rocking horse, in her pram. You might laugh, but the one place I even got her to be slightly happy this morning was the 45 minutes we spent in the bath together. She managed to avoid having a nap all morning, purely by using her new talent: scratching and twisting the skin on my face. Wow. I never knew something this small could sometimes make me feel this sad.


My little monster gradually turned into a snuggly little Angel (thanks Panadol/Tylenol!!) and fell asleep at 12pm. The house is peaceful and quiet. It's nice. But the strange thing is, I kind of want her to get up and be grumpy again so I can try to figure out how to 'fix' this. Maybe this afternoon we will go for a drive in the car and find something to distract the pair of us.

Monster Baby

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I am going to jump on Abbasaur's teething bandwagon. I hope you don't mind.

We have had an awful few weeks. Whining, crying, refusing feedings (bottles and solids), clinging, not sleeping, you name it. Seriously, I wasn't sure we were going to make it through. We were doing regular doses of Tylenol, Hylands gel or pellets (depending on how much time we have - the pellets seem to work better for him, but I don't always have the time to disolve and apply them) and pretty much anything else we could think of. I'm telling you, it was bad.

And then, a tooth arrived. And within a few days after that, one more. And there are at least two more on the brink. Poor little man. No wonder he's been so miserable. I just wish I had better ideas about how to help him for future bouts with the teething monster. He's not the slightest bit interested in toys that are intended for teething relief or teething biscuits. I tried giving him ice (and other frozen things) in one of those mesh feeders. He looks at me like I am insane.

So does anyone out there have any tricks up their sleeves that I haven't thought of? I'd really like to be prepared for the next time.

What the Hell?

When Sirensaur recently commented that there was no manual for babies - Boy, was she right. After showing such promising signs of teething, Tinysaur has returned to 'normal', and has started sleeping through the night again. WHAT THE? It's enough to make me despair!!

Advice from the MIL included stuff like

• I wasn't giving her enough cuddles,
  
• our 'routines' with her are too different (MIL cuddles her to sleep and doesn't ever let her cry - often referring to my style as baby bootcamp),
  
• she is obviously hungry and I'm not feeding her enough (folks, I DO NOT starve my child...),
  
• and that I should start giving her yoghurt.

What yoghurt has to do with sleeping through the night, I have no idea. And I'm not too sure if I can start giving her yoghurt yet... She's just only 6 months old! Another suggestions was to start feeding her toast... Again, I have no idea what toast will do to make her sleep through the night... Sigh....

So, I'm sticking to what I've done for the last couple of months - solids at 5:30ish, playtime til 7:30 with Mum and Dad, then a bottle, a tight wrap and into bed for Tinysaur. It has worked the past 2 nights, so I'm gonna stick with Baby Bootcamp.

Uh Oh.....

I think we're teething. And it's not just Tinysaur: the whole family is in pain. What with Little Miss Grumpy waking up every half hour to an hour for the last 3 nights and wanting to be cuddled and rocked to sleep, the routine I worked so hard at to get in place has now gone clean out the window. A week ago, I was able to put Tinysaur down in her cot when she started to show signs of tiredness and she would happily lie there until she drifted off. Now, it's a struggle to get her even IN the cot, let alone wrapped and lying there happily...

Image Source

So... these are the symptoms: grumpy, red cheeks, dribbling, chewing on EVERYTHING (I mean, everything: even the cats tail - thank God he is patient!!!), TINY lumps on her bottom gum (and I mean tiny!) and tons of crying and she just isn't herself.

Anyone out there got any tips for surviving this? And does anyone know if our routine will fall back into place or do we start from scratch?