Tooshie!

Mila went down for bedtime and I checked the monitor to see how she's doing, and this is what I saw… a big ol' tooshie staring at me! LOL!

Watching Daddy Eat

Mila loves watching Daddy eat! So cute!

E.A.S.Y.: The "Eat-Activity-Sleep-You Time" Routine

Sleeping had been a bit of an issue the last few weeks. I think it was because Mila had been a tad bit congested before she caught her cold and that was affecting her sleeping. Also, she's in her 6th month growth spurt and she's also hitting a lot of milestones (sitting, teething, trying solids, grabbing things with her hands) and sleeping is always affected during that time. She'd been waking up more often and her naps were out of whack. But now they've gotten a bit better.

Our routine used to be eat-play and then eat-sleep, because the only way she'd fall asleep was when she was nursing, so she'd nurse ever 2 hours which made that a very long day for mommy! Then I read somewhere online about the EASY routine: "Eat-Activity-Sleep-You Time" routine and I thought I'd give it a shot. But the thing was, since she used to nurse to sleep, what could I do to get her to fall asleep now? So I started rocking her to sleep. I'd rock her on the big birthing ball and it worked! I'd rock her for about 20  minutes (10 minutes to get her to fall alseep and then another 10 minutes after she'd fallen alseep) and then I put her in the crib and then she would roll over and fall asleep. It's been a bit rough on my arms and my back, although I think I'm building muscle and it's starting to get easier, haha. She's quite the work out!! Now I don't have to nurse her down to sleep anymore for every nap. I know rocking her to sleep isn't ideal either, but I think it's progress. Plus, now she's napping in her crib instead of on me, which lets me get a few things done around the house... particularly blog. :)

So now we do the eat-play-sleep routine every 3 hours. It's a much better arrangement. Well, except for the rocking for 20 minutes part... that gets to be a bit exhausting, especially when she wakes up after only being in the crib for 10 minutes and I have to do it all over again. But now I'm so much more in tune with her schedule and we're both happier. I'm starting to cut back on the length of time I rock her after she's fallen asleep, so now I'm down to 10 minutes rocking her to sleep, then 6 minutes rocking her while she's asleep (instead of another 10 minutes). I'm sure that this is far from perfect, but for now, it works for us.

I did purchase the "No-Cry Sleep Solution" by Elizabeth Pantley and I've just started reading it. I'm hoping to find alternatives to rocking her. She'll cry if I just put her in her crib when she's awake, and I am not comfortable with the "cry it out" method. I'd prefer to find something else. I've heard this book is very helpful. I'll let you know what I think when I finish reading it.
Our Eat-Play-Sleep routine for the day kinda looks something like this (see below) if we're home for the day. If we go out, our schedule goes off a bit. This schedule is by no means a typical day, but of what an ideal day looks like.

A lot of times, for her naps, she'll wake up after 10 minutes and I have to rock her again so she takes a nap of at least 30 minutes. This happens for at least one or two of her naps during the day. If she's particularly fussy, I put her in the Ergo Baby Carrier and she'll take a long nap. (However, she's a bit heavy so I prefer she sleeps in her crib, so the Ergo is my last resort.) This is just to give you a rough idea of what our routine kinda looks like. Obviously if she gives hunger cues or tired cues I feed her or put her down for a nap, even if it's earlier than I planned. What's good about this routine though, is if she starts getting fussy I don't have to guess what's wrong, I know what's coming up so I know that's what she wants.

The bedtime routine at the end of the day is particularly difficult. Sometimes it takes 3 hours for her to fall asleep. She seems to think it's just a nap and keeps waking up.
I'm looking forward to what "The No-Cry Sleep Solution" suggests to help make those naps and the bedtime routine a bit easier! For now, this is a rough idea of what  our day looks like.

9:45pm -  Asleep for the night. Sleeps about 5-6 hours straight.
3:00am - Wakes up for feeding only. Diaper change and nurses for 20 minutes and falls asleep right away on the boob. Put her in the crib and stays asleep. Sleeps for another 4 hours or so.
7:00am - Wakes up. Diaper change and nurses for 20 minutes. Awake for less than an hour and then falls asleep.
7:45am -  Rock to sleep for 10-15 minutes to get her to fall asleep, then rock for 6 minutes after she's fallen asleep. Naps for 40-60 minutes.
9:00am - Wakes up for the day. Diaper change and plays a little.
10:00am - Nurses for 20 minutes. Then continues playtime. (EAT, ACTIVITY)
11:00pm - Naptime. Rock to sleep for 10-15 minutes to get her to fall asleep, then rock for 6 minutes after she's fallen asleep. Naps for 40-60 minutes. (SLEEP)
12:00pm - Wakes up. Diaper change and playtime.
1:00pm - Nurses for 20 minutes. Then continues playtime. (EAT, ACTIVITY)
2:00pm - Naptime. Rock to sleep for 10-15 minutes to get her to fall asleep, then rock for 6 minutes after she's fallen asleep. Naps for about 45 minutes. (SLEEP)
3:00pm - Wakes up. Diaper change and playtime.
4:00pm - Nurses for 20 minutes. Then continues playtime. (EAT, ACTIVITY)5:00pm - Short Nap. Rock to sleep for 15 minutes to fall asleep, then 6 minutes while alseep. Naps for about 30 minutes. (SLEEP)
5:30pm - Wakes up. Diaper change and plays with Daddy when he gets home while Mommy makes dinner. Eat dinner. (EAT, ACTIVITY)
7:00pm - Nurses for 15-20 minutes.
7:30pm - Daddy begins night time routine: bath, puts on pjs, story time and dancing with daddy with dim lights to Rockabye Baby CD. Mommy cleans up kitchen, play area, bath tub and prepares bedroom for bedtime.
8:30pm - Bedtime. (Instead of the 3 hour interval for naps, at bedtime we wait 4 hours.)  Last feeding of the night. Nurses for about 30 minutes. This feeding is just to top her off before falling asleep, but she pacifies a lot. She sometimes falls asleep on the boob, but if not, then I rock her to sleep for 10-20 minutes to get her to fall asleep, then rock for 6 minutes after she's fallen asleep. This is the time it takes the  longest for her to fall asleep. She usually wakes up and then I have rock her all over again. This could last an hour our more. :(
9:45pm - Asleep for the night. Sleeps about 5-6 hours straight. (SLEEP)

New Food: Rice Cereal

For the last 3 days we fed Mila bananas just to get her used to it. It's interesting because although she doesn't eat very much (most of it comes right back out!) I've noticed it's affected her bowl movements. She used to go at least once a day, and ever since she's started eating solids, she didn't go for 2 days! I mentioned it to the doctor and he says as long as she doesn't seem to be in any discomfort or straining (which she isn't) then he's not concerned. Thankfully, she went at the end of the day on the second day.

For Mila's second new food, we decided to go with rice cereal. My go-to book for all things baby is Dr. William Sears' "The Baby Book" and he suggests the first foods for a 6 month old should be bananas, apples, rice cereal and pears. So we went with rice cereal. One one side, I thought it might be best to stick with real fruits and veggies first, but on the other hand rice cereal is easy to make (just add breast milk) when you don't have much time. Also, when I was a kid, my parents gave me baby cereal and I loved it. Actually, I still eat it, haha! My favorite is the Gerber Oatmeal with Bananas. So good. Especially mixed with Cheerios. Yum! I'd also like Mila to enjoy baby cereal like I did.  Or, should I say, like I do, haha! Rice cereal is kinda bland so she didn't make the terrible faces she did when she had bananas for the first time the other day.

Notice that we've perfected our workflow: she's not wearing any clothes and is in just a diaper and the bib is vinyl so just wipe and it's clean! Thanks for the bib, Gaby!!! Works great!! :)

Baby This Week: 27 Weeks Old

Your baby's growing tower of babble indicates movement toward talking, although the ability to form words and sentences is still many months away. You may hear the same syllable repeated over and over with variations in pitch and tone. Or she may make more complicated sounds, such as two or even three different syllables strung together. Your baby is experimenting with them like a musician testing out a new instrument.

If you want to introduce sign language to your baby, now's the time. Her understanding of language and her motor skills develop much faster than her ability to speak. Most babies, for example, discover how to wave (around 9 months) and point (by age 1) long before they can say "bye bye" or "look at that!"

Giving your baby the tools to express herself may help cut down on her frustration. While baby signing doesn't promise to eliminate tears or tantrums, babies this young have been taught to "sign" successfully.

To begin, try using a hand signal every time you use common words such as "book" (open your palms with your hands together) or "hungry" (put your fingers to your lips). Later on, your baby will be able to express more complex ideas such as "I'm done with my juice" with a simple gesture such as putting her palms up at shoulder height.

And don't worry: Signing won't interfere with your baby's progress in learning to speak. In fact, it may actually help develop her language skills.

Your baby may favor one hand for a while and then switch to the other. But you can't really tell whether she's a lefty or a righty until she's about 2 or 3 years old.

Don't try to influence your baby's hand preference (it's determined before birth). Forcing her to use her right hand when she's really a lefty, for example, may confuse her and lead to problems with hand-eye coordination, dexterity, and handwriting down the road.

Your baby will love turn-taking games, especially ones that involve sounds and language. Let your baby be the leader sometimes, and mimic her vocalizations. When it's your turn to lead, a good way to teach — and amuse — your baby is to make animal noises ("quack-quack," "bow-wow").

One upside of these kinds of games is that they can be played anywhere. Your baby will delight in the sounds of water splashing in the bathtub or blocks hitting the floor. Show your baby how to make these fun (if sometimes annoying) noises and then let her have a turn.

- BabyCenter.com

Mila Recommends: Humidifier

Mila and I are doing much better from our cold. Mila's feeling better than I am, though. I'm still dealing with some post nasal drip that's affecting my voice and makes me sound like I'm all congested. But I'm doing alright.

So. While Mila was sick, we took her to the doctor because she developed a little cough and we wanted to make sure it wasn't anything serious. Doctor said it was fine, that it was just part of her cold and to get a humidifier and use saline drops in her nose to break up the mucus. We'd been doing the saline drops, along with the my favorite nasal aspirator (which, by the way, was the VERY BEST THING EVER when your child is sick with a runny nose! That thing got all the boogers!!! Loved it! Thank you again, Karina!!!) But we hadn't gotten a humidifier yet. We kept reading how hard they were to clean and we'd been looking for a good one. We struggled with several bad nights with Mila and her cold until finally, after one night with Mila having such a hard time breathing because she was so congested, we brought her into the bathroom and turned on the hot water and let her breathe in the steam. That helped so much!! The very next day, Jorge went out and bought a simple Vicks Warm Mist Humidifier. And from that night on, Mila was sleeping so much better! It helped sooo much! I couldn't believe it! I'd never used a humidifier before and I had no idea how helpful it would be. It even helped me when I got really congested too! Why, oh why, didn't we get this sooner????

I remember being terribly sick with a cold when I was pregnant with Mila and not being able to take any cold medicines sucked! I would cover up my nose with my blanket and breathe in the warm air and that helped so much... I could've totally used a humidifier then. Ugh, where have you been all my life?! 

The Vicks Warm Humidifier worked great. It stayed on all night like we wanted and warmed up a medium-sized room very well. It is hard to clean though. After one use, the heating element had gotten this brown crust on it that was impossible to scrub off. We would clean it every day as much as possible. For $30, it did what we needed it to do and it was totally worth it. From what we've read, all humidifiers are super hard to clean anyway, so if it does get too dirty, we can just get another one. And considering that we won't be using it too often, hopefully it won't get too dirty too soon. 

If you've got a recommendation for one that you use, that's easy to clean, I'd love to hear it! :)

Cindy's Birthday Lunch (& Bananas Part II)

Today we had Cindy's birthday lunch at our place. Cindy's birthday was actually on Monday, but since Mila and I were sick, we held off until today to get together. Mila and I are feeling muuuch better, by the way!

I cooked a fabulous lunch, if I do say so myself! I made some chicken with mushrooms (Cindy's fave!) and some Cauliflower Mashed Potatoes and some real mashed potatoes with fried plantains. YUM! Then we had some cupcakes from my new favorite cupcake place, Humpy's!

It was so great to get together to celebrate Cindy's birthday! Happy birthday!

We hung out and watched the finals of the World Cup and then it was time for Mila's lunch so we fed her some bananas again. Mila did not find any of this amusing at all… although we were all laughing at her adorable reactions to the food. So cute!

She seemed to take to it a bit better than last time...

Ok, so maybe not so good... LOL! I love that face!

Look at those teeth poking through!

Mila has banana alllllll over... can you see it almost in her eye? Geez! You'd think I'd clean her up?! Oh, and another tip I learned with this second feeding: feed baby in diaper and a bib. Clothes get very dirty!

Milestone: First Solids

Mila had solids for the first time today! She's been on all breast milk up until now, so this is a big change! For her first meal, we decided to go with bananas mixed with breast milk.

She didn't know what was coming!

Let's just say Mila didn't really care for it.... LOL!

"Ewwwwwww!" says Mila.

"Heeee-YA! Karate chop!!! No bananas for Mila!"

"Mommy, bananas yucky!"

"Et tu, Daddy? Et tu?"

"Whew! Glad that's over!"

So, as you can see, she totally hated bananas. It all ended up on her bib, on her chin, all over her face, in her hair, all over her arms and her table. We haven't gotten a high chair, so we fed her in the Bumbo over a plastic sheet so she wouldn't make a mess on the carpet. I got the plastic sheet at Babies R Us and it's made specifically for feeding time. Worked great! Now they need to make a tarp I can put on Mila so it doesn't get all over her! Something like the things they put on you when you go get a haircut, maybe? Haha! I had to give this girl a bath right after -- she made such a mess all over!

I love the cute little bowl that my mom got us. It's perfect, it hooks onto your finger so you don't spill it and the spoon is soft and flexible. Here's a tip though: don't wipe bananas off with anything made out of cloth! Bananas are sooo sticky and get embedded into everything! Arg! We started off using a vinyl bib, but she kept playing with it so we switched to cloth -- big mistake. That thing turned all brown. Yuck. Stick with plastic ones and the ones with the little scoop at the bottom, those are perfect!

Milestone: First Tooth!

Mila's  bottom gums have been swollen for a few days and today I FELT it! Mila's got her first tooth!!!!! Click on picture to see it close up!

Baby This Week: 26 Weeks Old

Independent sitting is itself an important skill, but it's also a big step toward learning to crawl. Once your baby can sit up, it's only a matter of time, strength, and coordination before that translates to a lunge forward onto hands and knees. A few babies start crawling (or getting around via some other form of early locomotion, like scooting) by 6 months, although most take off between 7 and 9 months.

Your baby's stronger neck and arm muscles allow her to practice rolling over toward one side, a milestone that will probably awe and amuse you. Your baby might adopt rolling as her primary mode of ground transportation for a while, or he may skip it altogether and move on to sitting, lunging, and crawling. As long as your baby continues to gain new skills and shows interest in getting around and exploring her environment, don't worry.

At this age your baby not only tolerates attention from others, she'll often initiate it. Though you may soon notice the beginnings of stranger anxiety, your baby will probably still be fairly indiscriminate: Chances are anyone who approaches her with welcoming eyes or a grin delights her and becomes an instant friend. But don't worry — she still needs and craves lots of love and attention from you.

Your baby is also learning that her behaviors, both the ones you like and the ones you don't, engage you, so starting now (and for years to come) she'll do just about anything to get your attention. Right now almost everything she does is endearing, but as she gets older, she's more likely to get into mischief to provoke a reaction from you. Just don't forget to give her positive feedback when she's being good. It's a great way to start teaching right from wrong.

One thing will become clear: Your baby is beginning to expand her attention-getting repertoire to include more than crying. You may notice her wriggling, making noises, blowing "raspberries," and so on. Over the next three months, she'll develop a uniquely personal way of letting you know what she thinks, wants, and needs.

- BabyCenter.com

Happy Birthday Aunt CC!

Happy birthday to Aunt Cindy! Wishing her a very happy birthday from Mommy and Mila! Great big hugs! :)

Mila is 6 Months! (& Happy 4th of July!)

Dear Mila,

Today you are 6 months old! Holy moly! You are half a year old today... I still can't believe it! I remember when we were having a rough time when you were a newborn, I would think to myself, "I can't wait until you're 6 months and everything will be so much easier!" Hahahahahahahaha! And now here we are. Six months later. And, yes, some things are a bit easier, but now we have other things we're going through: you're on the verge of teething, you're getting more and more mobile and rolling around everywhere! Not the peice of cake I thought 6 months would be, but definitely not as stressful as it was at the very beginning when we had no idea what we were doing. Now we've gotten to know you so much better and have an idea of what you like and what we're doing. :)

Each month seems to go by faster and faster. Just the other day, your Daddy and I were looking at pictures from the day you were born and you look so different! Almost unrecognizable! I can't believe you've grown up so much in just 6 months.

Mila at 8 days old.

Mila at 6 months old.

Your eyes are still that beautiful blueish-gray. The doctor says they can still change color up until you're 18 months old though. But they still haven't changed. But your eyes are beautiful, no matter what color they are.

Your hair has gotten so long! Although, now you realize you have hair and when you nurse, you like to tug at it above your ears... and I have to tell you, that's not a good idea. You keep yanking at it and although I don't see hair in your hands, you are definitely starting to go bald there! Believe me, you don't want to look like you have a mullet, haha! Fortunately, your hair is long enough to cover up your little balding spots, but you won't have much hair left if you keep pulling it out!

You've gotten really big too -- you've grown 8 inches and gained 10 pounds since birth! I'm so proud of how big you're getting!

Bath time has become a bit of an adventure. You love it! You love to splash! You love to splash ALL OVER Mommy and Daddy! It's so cute to watch you play in the tub, but you're making a mess young lady!

....Ahhhh, who can resist your cuteness? Go ahead and splash away, haha!

Another big thing this month is that you realize when I leave the room. I put you to play in your Exersaucer and if I leave the room, even for just a second, you cry! It's so sweet, yet it's hard when Mommy's got to go to the bathroom! :/

One of your biggest accomplishments this month is you're sitting up so much better now! You still need a little bit of support, but you pretty much sit up all by yourself! Such a big girl!

It's not fun being sick, I know, but today your Abuelita came over with a little cake to celebrate your 6 months. It was so thoughtful of her! You, of course, didn't have any cake, but Mommy and Daddy and Abuelita did! It was yummy. You got breast milk, which is your favorite, so you were happy too.  We still haven't given you solid food yet, but you'll be getting some as soon as this awful cold blows over, possibly next weekend. This month is the last month you're exclusively breastfed and it's both sad and exciting for me. You're fascinated by watching us eat, and I know you're eager to do what you see Mommy and Daddy do. (Funny story though -- we've specifically put off giving you solids until you're 6 months old because we've read breast milk is best until 6 months. We want to make sure you eat the very best! And then the other day I was nursing you and your daddy was feeding me a little red velvet cake. Little did I know you had pulled off the boob and were watching me eat. As usual, your tongue was out, and the next thing I know there was a giant red velvet cake crumb on your tongue! We got it before you even noticed it was there, but eeeek! How terrible that your first food would have been red velvet cake?!?! LOL!)

Today is not just your 6 month birthday, but also the 4th of July! The whole country is celebrating your half year! Today you saw your first fireworks. Since you and I have been sick with a cold, we didn't really plan to do much, but you were still awake by the time the fireworks started, so we walked downstairs to the pool area of our building where you can catch a peek at the fireworks outside. You were mesmerized!

What a wonderful 6 months it has been my sweet little girl! Happy half-birthday! Will you do me a huge favor though? Can you make these next 6 months slow down a bit? I want to savor your babyhood and you're just growing too fast for me.

I love you. :)

Your Mommy

6 Month Status Update: 

17 lbs.

27 inches