Our gifts for Nadia

  This picture is of 4 of the 5 toys we got Nadia for Christmas (a little after the fact). The cookie jar shape sorter we bought at Target the day after Christmas. The others I ordered online. The 5th one hasn't come yet. Three of them I picked because they had won awards. I already described the Mozart magic cube in another post. I think it's really neat. Alex Jr. Around the Farm is a soft ball which features the faces of four animals. When you squeeze the right ear of each animal it makes the very realistic (maybe recorded?) sound that animal makes (pig, dog, cat, and frog). She smiles when she looks at the cat face and hears it meow. Well I hate to break it to you, Nadia, but this is about as close to owning a cat as you're going to get over the next 18 years as Daddy is very allergic to cats. The other toy (by Leap Frog) was highly rated by another mom whose blog I read. She said if she could only own 5 toys - this would be one of the 5 she'd want for her kids. I thought that was pretty high praise so I decided to get one for Nadia. It has legs which can be attached to make it a table, but since she can't walk yet I haven't assembled the legs. Nadia is already able to push some of the buttons on her own to make it do various things. I must say it is quite fun to shop for toys for Nadia. I won't buy any more for awhile though as she got quite a few for Christmas between my family, Paul's family, and what we got her ourselves.

Lynn made a comment that her cheeks look very kissable. Let me tell you they ARE!!! Paul told someone recently that I kiss Nadia 50 million times a day. Well I don't kiss her THAT much but I am 100% positive I give her more than 100 kisses a day although I've never kept track. I didn't use to wear lipstick that often, but I almost never wear it now as I want my lips to be able to kiss my little girl without leaving marks all over her face!

I am still struggling to get Nadia back on a schedule during the day. She had been taking 90 minute naps which was wonderful. Lately they're either 30 minutes or 2 1/2 hours. Well we've only had two naps total that were 2 1/2 hours in the last week. Mostly they've been 45 minutes or less. She'll usually play quietly in her crib so the total crib time is about an hour each time, but I can tell she's tired. I think in part her awake time needs to be longer. I am finding that although she starts rubbing her eyes and such 90 minutes after she's gotten up, if I keep her up for 2 hours that she goes down easier for her next nap. So we shall see if continuing to keep her wake times to 2 hours each helps her naps get back to normal.

I am also determined to keep her up until 7pm tonight as this morning she got up a little after 5am. She had gone down at 6:15. Usually I won't get her up before 6:00, but I was really in pain so I went and nursed her. She nursed more than 20 minutes!!! I put her back down hoping she'd go back to sleep. She stayed quitely in her bed for about 25 minutes and then started crying so I went and got her at 6:00. However really we'd both been awake since a little after 5am so that was much too early of a start to our day. The good news is that she is easily going 11 hours at night without a peep (well I put her down at 6:15 last night so it was a little less than 11 hours). If she's going to sleep 11 hours then I definitely want her to go down no earlier than 7pm as 6am is the earliest I'd like her to get up although I'd love it if we could push that back to 7am eventually. Let me tell you though it is SO nice to be able to sleep through the night again. What a blessing that I am not taking for granted like I used to!