Jumping!

This is Judith in her exersaucer/jumper (a gift from my former coworker, Patrick). It's like the an exersaucer in that it's got a bunch of things around the circle to entertain her, but it's actually a jumper - the seat is suspended from three poles so that she can bounce it up and down. She's been not wanting to sit in either her bouncy chair or the bumbo chair - and is squirmy enough that if she doesn't want to be in it, it's not very safe to put her in it! So I've tried her in the exersaucer a couple times. But she'd get bored after a few minutes, and her feet don't quite reach the floor, so she can't jump.

A few days ago, though, I got the idea to put a big book (my cooking class textbook) underneath her feet so that she can push off of something. She will now jump (crowing wildly) for over an hour! She even spins herself enough to move from entertainment to entertainment. We don't have any batteries in it yet - it's busy enough as it is - but she sure has fun with it. It's so exciting to watch her interact so strongly with her environment! (And she's getting lots of exercise with that jumping - she's going to have muscles well built up for walking!)

Sleeping and Eating Update

The last 10 days or so have been pretty rough. It started when we went to Tahoe and Judith seemed not to want to eat very much. I started thinking maybe it was time for me to move from feeding her about every three hours to about every four. And so on the Wednesday after we got home, I tried it. It worked just fine that day. She slept a lot (probably recovering from the trip) and she had no problem with eating every four hours. And I thought, "can it really be this easy?"

And the next day she started a growth spurt and was eating every two hours. That lasted for two days, and even affected her sleep patterns (previous growth spurts haven't). She woke up in the middle of the night for several nights running.

When the growth spurt ended I tried to go back to every 3 1/2 to 4 hours (feeding) instead of every 3. That didn't work, because Judith was screaming hungry after 3 hours. And she continued to wake up hungry in the middle of the night! On top of that, she (I think) is teething and in some pain, which was waking her up every hour or so once we put her to bed (at the usual for-the-night time). She seemed to be almost on a caffeine high when we would try to put her down - overstimulation? She was just spastic.

I spent a couple days trying to figure out what I could do to help her sleep again. I tried cluster feeding her before bed (which didn't really work too well, because she won't eat much if she's not hungry, and apparently she wasn't). I sat with her in the dark to try to calm her down (after an hour I gave that up). But pretty much I had to wake up and get her in the middle of the night for four or five nights. Finally, last night, she slept from about 9 to about 6. (Not back up to 10 hours yet, but close!) I'm hoping that wasn't a fluke. We'll see! (I'm taking comfort in the fact that she WILL grow out of this eventually!)