Maggiesville

I took a little blog break. No particular reason... just lazy, I suppose. After just five days away there is a variety of things to report. (It's amazing how much she can change in such a short period of time.)

Our biggest accomplishment (adventure?) is that she is now sleeping in her "big girl" crib and through the night. I'll admit that she outgrew the bassinet long ago but Graham and I just weren't ready for her to be in a different room. We usually started the evenings with Maggie in the bassinet and then once she started rolling into the sides of it, we would bring her into bed with us. (Yes, I can hear some of you groaning.) There are a lot of things we like about sharing a bed but the biggest downside was that our own quality of sleep was suffering. She was waking us up and we were probably waking her up.

We made the switch the other night and I made the cardinal mistake of going against my own instincts and trying the "cry it out" technique. I know many parents that this has worked for and for some reason believed that we would only have success if we did the same thing. Despite the fact that I knew full well that this wasn't for us, I spent an hour listening to Maggie sob in her unfamiliar crib. It was terrible. In the end I scooped her up, allowed her to nurse as long as she wanted and went to bed with her in my arms. (Everything I wasn't supposed to do.)

The next night was much different and devoid of any "techniques". We simply put her down when she was ready and let whatever happen, happen. To our surprise she slept soundly through morning. Lesson learned: trust myself.

Our other recent milestone was the introduction of vegetables. She's a champ with rice cereal so we decided to give carrots a try. We simply boiled a frozen bag of them and then ran them through a food mill. The result was a lukewarm flavorless puree that Maggie received in disgust. Her facial expressions were priceless and how can you blame her? The only reason we ate carrots in my family was because my parents told us they put stars in our eyes. By "stars" I guess they meant celebrities because I was always told they saw Mr. Rogers. I tried telling Maggie that I saw Miffy but this didn't help.

Last tidbit... our pool opened this weekend! We finally have an excuse for Maggie to sport her bikini. (Aside from random exploitation of cuteness, as shown above.)