You know the saying that babies don't come with instruction manuals, but it sure would be nice if they did? Well, today I decided to start a new feature here at Denice-isms. I call it: Instruction Manual for being Gracie's Mommy. Every time I stumble upon something very important to Gracie's upkeep and general well-being, I'll add it to the manual.
Today's inaugural entry:
Rule #1: Never, ever, under any circumstances, wake her up in the morning before she is ready to be awake -- or suffer the consequences!
I could write a really long blog about how much she cried and how frustrated I was last week, but I'll keep it to the basics.
For the past couple of weeks, Gracie has been going to bed later, and later, and later, to the point where all last week she didn't go to bed until well after midnight. Which isn't that bad, really, considering her Dad and I are night owls and we probably wouldn't go to bed before then anyway. But since she's formula-fed now, after she goes to bed I have to wash and sterilize all the bottles, boil enough water for the formula for the next day and then mix the formula -- plus do a couple of loads of laundry, clean up the kitchen, tidy the living room -- you get the idea. So when Gracie goes to bed at midnight, I don't go to bed until 2:30 a.m.
Now, when she goes to bed at midnight, sweet Gracie will usually sleep until at least 10 a.m., maybe even 11 a.m. if I'm really, really lucky. But one day last week, I heard her stirring a bit at 9 a.m. and instead of just going into her room and sticking the soother back in her mouth and fixing the blankets so she could instantly drift back off to sleep, I got the brilliant idea that I would instead turn on the lights and wake her up, so that tonight she would go to bed earlier.
Let's just say that didn't go over well. And she punished me for the whole rest of the day. She was grumpy all day, and even though she was clearly tired, she absolutely refused to go to sleep. And she still didn't go to bed until well after midnight.
So in the future, if it doesn't look like she is ready to get up, I will not, under any circumstances, try to wake her up. It's just easier that way. Who needs to go anywhere at 11 a.m. anyway? Stores stay open pretty late here…
2 comments:
DO you have a dishwasher? I throw all my bottles in there and it's hot enough to sterilize them. Also why do you boil the water. Just curious because we have well water and I have always used it straight from the tap (with pediatricians OK) and I was also asked if we had city water because it is already flourinated and Cayden would not have needed flouride supplements if we had city water to use...
Just curious, trying to come up with a few ideas tosave you some time!
OMG... I agree about the boiling water thing. Chris was bottle-fed from day one and I don't think I ever boiled water to make his formula and he turned out OK - OK he's massive now, but healthy as a horse, too. I didn't have the dishwasher luxury, but I used the Playtex bottles to avoid the bottle boiling thing... just have to do the nipples then - piece of cake! I hope you can figure out the routine that works best for you!
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