The favorite toy

Well, we seem to have settled into something of a pattern.

N is sleeping through the night now and has been for a week or so. She even stopped waking up an hour after going down, or at least she hasn't done it for four nights. She did wake up twice in the middle of the night Sunday, but other than that, she goes to sleep at around 9 and wakes at 6.

She usually naps from around 11 until 1. I have the best success getting her to nap in the car. I know that isn't ideal as a long-term solution, but right now I am just trying to establish a habit of sleeping at a certain time. It takes me about an hour to get her down to bed at night from beginning the bath to putting on her sleeper to bottle time to quiet play in her room to quiet play in her crib to me laying down and with one hand in the crib to her finally sleeping. If I start at 7:30, she doesn't sleep before 9, so nowadays I start it all at 8. Last night I started at 8:45 and she went to sleep at 10 because she had some weird nap times yesterday. 9:45-10:30 and 3:30-4:15.

I started leaving the ceiling fan on in her room. It is pretty noisy and creates background noise. I have it so that it blows up toward the ceiling and creates air movement, which is also good because little N heats up like a furnace when she sleeps. She also has two crib toys that play nature sounds and music and she plays with them before she sleeps each night.

When we were at the baby home the last day, I asked the director and caregivers what N's favorite toy was. They looked at each other like I was crazy and said. "there's no such thing!" as if I were an idiot for even thinking it. How sad is that? In their world, there were no "favorite toys".

Well, N has a favorite toy now. We noticed last week that N would hold a ball or something up to her ear and talk and it wasn't until she did it this weekend with a baby biscuit that we realized she is imitating me on the cell phone. Not that I talk on it all the time, but she is definitely mimicking the cell phone. I met some of the Rockstars Sunday (they knit...I fed and minded my child) and when Dawn answered her phone, N put her teething biscuit to her ear and started jabbering. So yesterday I bought her a toy cell phone and she is in LOVE. I gave it to her before trying to take her to the park and she played with it all the way there. At the park, she only wanted to walk in circles and talk on her new phone. We were there for about 2 minutes and some boy who was about 7 or 8 came up and just took it right out of her hands and put it to his ear.

wtf?
I quietly said, "Hey! That's her toy! You can't just walk up and take her toy away from her!" He handed it back to her and said, "Oh.' and walked off.

Anyway, she was only interested in that phone and the mosquitoes were out en force, so that was the shortest park visit we have ever had. We came home and she played with her phone all night and this morning she is back at it.

In this video, you'll see my air mattress on the floor of her room. Eventually I plan to move out, but I want to make sure she is sleeping securely through the night first.



And her she is with Uncle Rudy, who stayed the night with us last night so that I could take him to the airport this morning.



BTW, the climbing phase has begun. One of these days she is going to stand up on something, like her little plastic parking garage toy I found her on yesterday, and break her neck falling off it. Constant vigilance is required.