Look who can sit unsupported! She's still a bit unsteady, but getting better every day.

I think she's getting ready for another developmental spurt too. Craftygrrrl pointed me to a great blog- Ask Moxie that had a link to the book The Wonder Weeks. It's about how, at certain weeks, babies are working out stuff in preparation for cognitive and physical advancements. Unfortunately, while they are working everything out, their sleep patterns get screwed up. (as if I wasn't having enough trouble already!) There's a big one at around 26 weeks. And right on cue, the last few nights she's been waking up every couple of hours. Yesterday, Joe came in to bed around 4am and found her trying to crawl in her sleep. After a few minutes of it, she woke herself up and wouldn't sleep for an hour. And this morning around 4:30, she started to cry in her sleep which also eventually woke her up. She didn't get back to sleep until about 8am. It's 9:30 and she's still asleep in the sling. I think she's also got a small cold. She's been sniffing like crazy the last couple of days.

At least it isn't like last week. A week ago, she woke in the middle of the night. I started feeding her when I realized that she was really warm. She usually runs a little hot, but this seemed different. We took her temperature and it was higher than normal. Not scary out of control (it was high 38C/low 39C), but enough to concern us seeing that this was our first experience with a fever. A long wait on the telehealth line later we were reassured that it was merely a low grade fever and were told we should just wait it out and not give her any tempra (too late) because the fever was probably trying to fight something and as long as it stayed below 40C it was fine (for a day or two at least). She and I spent the next day cuddling on the couch watching one of our favourite video stores burn down. At least that distracted me from the thought that the fever was burning away valuable brain cells and she was never going to be the same. Thankfully, by bedtime on Wednesday, she was back to her old self, giggling while her dad fluffed the pillows and covered her with the sheets.

Here are the week 24 and week 25 shots.

Man, I just don't know where the days are going. I've been meaning to post for quite a while now, but for some reason, I just can never squeeze in the time to do it. The only thing I can offer is that she has been especially clingy these last couple of weeks. I think she's going through a bout of separation anxiety. It really kicked in about 3 weeks ago. We left her with my niece for about an hour and apparently she started crying halfway through the hour. Since then she starts screaming when we are out of her sight and if she had her way, one of us would always be holding her. She is getting better though. I went for dim sum with my parents and one of my sisters on Monday and she actually let herself be held and taken around by my sister, for a little while at least.

I guess the other reason I haven't posted lately is because we've been going out quite a bit. One of the things we've been going to is the Carry Me Close meetings on Tuesdays. They've been great. I've gotten some great tips on how to use my mei tai and I've learned that the scarf I've had for the last 20 years was probably originally meant to double as a baby carrier. Who knew? I also tried on the Moby wrap today and quite liked it. I'm thinking about going out on Thursday afternoon to buy some material to make my own.

We've also had some firsts. She sat unsupported a couple of weeks ago. It was so cool. I had her sitting leaning against me at the library. She was playing with a toy that had wheels, so every once in a while she would push it and it would roll further away from her and she would lean forward to grab it again. The toy kept rolling further from her and she kept leaning for it. Then I realized that I wasn't actually supporting her anymore and she had stopped reaching for the toy and was just sitting there leaning on her hands. I backed away from her and she stayed like that for quite some time. I've been trying to get a picture of it, but she doesn't like to just sit there leaning on her hands, she always wants to reach out or sit up straighter which means she inevitably falls over before I can get the camera.
The other thing that she has started doing is saying Dada. She hasn't connected it with Joe yet, but that doesn't make him less excited.

As for the sleeping, Stephanie had a thought that we were possibly missing our window of opportunity and that if we tried putting her to sleep before she started yawning at 8:30 that might be enough to get her to stay down. Unfortunately it didn't work. She would sleep for half an hour or so and then wake up full of beans. So we're back to going in around 10pm. I figure, this way at least she's not rarin' to go at some ungodly hour like 5am. Of course it hasn't quite worked out perfectly. She's been waking herself up in the middle of the night by rolling onto her stomach. I don't know if she's awake when she rolls or if she rolls in her sleep, but the upshot of it is that she'll hang out on her stomach for a couple of minutes before she completely loses it and nothing will calm her down except being back on the breast.

We have week 22 and 23 pictures today. Man is she getting big! And also I finally got a shot of her in the mei tai.

She just passed the 5 month mark yesterday and I'm starting to think about the routines that we have and haven't gotten into. I'm especially worried about bedtimes.
Our current routine is for the two of us to go into bed about 10pm and we lie in bed together, maybe I read her a book, but mostly feeding, until she goes to sleep around midnight (and usually I fall asleep too) and a bit later Joe comes in and moves her to the crib where she'll usually sleep for the rest of the night. (It used to be straight through until about 8am, but lately she's been getting up around 3 or 4 for another feed).
I'm thinking of moving our going to bed time to around 9pm and getting it less dependent on being on my breast, but I just don't know how to go about doing that last part!
Sometimes, if she's really groggy, we can put her into her crib and walk away, but this is really rare. Usually, if we put her in her crib awake, she will lie there for a few minutes playing with her feet or what have you, but then she will start to cry and nothing but picking her up will stop it.
Any ideas?

here's the week 21 shot as well as one of Zoë doing physically what her mom only does metaphorically