Spring Forward!

Normally I am NOT a fan of switching our clocks. I have always had a strong internal clock, and I don't like having it messed with! Paul is always a BIG fan of the time change in the fall, but he's never liked springing forward an hour. Well this time I have been REALLY excited about the time change, and I've actually been glad it's happening earlier than it used to in the past. I am not planning on adjusting Nadia's body clock at all so I thought it should be a cinch for her. Her routine lately is to go to bed about 7pm and get up at 6:30am. She usually first wakes up between 5:50-6:10am and usually she will coo (and maybe fuss a little) until 6:20-6:30 when I go get her. It seems 11 hours of sleep is all she needs at night although other babies seem to sleep 12 hours at night. So the new plan will be for her to go down at 8pm and get up around 7:30am. YAY!!! The only downside of this plan is that it means that she'll be awake an extra hour during the times Paul watches her on Monday and Tuesday nights when I'm at class, and it also means he'll need to watch her for one hour on Wednesday nights when I'm at choir. An upside will be that it means she'll still be awake when Paul gets home on Thursday nights. In the past she's often been in bed before he got home. The biggest positive though is that she won't be waking up at 5:50am. I am still more of a morning person than a night owl, but I admit I don't like getting up AS early as I did in the past. I think 7am sounds like a lovely time for me to get up each morning. Of course while we're in Chicago I am sure she'll be functioning back on the earlier schedule due to the time zone difference, but that will just be for a few days.

Well I wrote most of this post a couple of days ago. Now I have to add that my plan didn't work this morning! I put her to bed only a few minutes early last night (6:30pm which is 7:30 the new time) and yet she woke up at 6:15 (5:15 the old time). I was frustrated!! I didn't go get her until 7am which was still 30 minutes earlier than normal according to the old time. Obviously she doesn't know the clocks changed. I guess it's just a bizarre circumstance that she woke up earlier than normal today when I wasn't trying to change her body clock at all. She didn't nap well yesterday (her three naps totalled 2 hours which is at least 1 hour less than usual) so she must be one tired little girl! I am tired also as I didn't sleep well last night. Paul forgot that our RE appts are on Thursday, and he scheduled a meeting at PSU for 10:30 on Thursday. I am going to try to move his appt up as early as possible that morning so he can still make part of the meeting, but it means I'll probably be alone for my appt. I found the test to be excruciating back in June 2007 and am really dreading it even more now that I know I won't be able to squeeze Paul's hand.

Lately her first nap has been starting at 8:30am so that will shift to 9:30am. The time of her 2nd nap has been more variable because the length of her first nap is sometimes as short as 45 minutes to as long as 2 hours. So the 2nd nap starts sometime between 11:30-12:30 which would become 12:30-1:30. She hasn't completely given up the 3rd nap yet. If her first or second nap is 2 hours long then she doesn't have a third nap. If she has a third nap then it usually starts sometime between 3:00-4:00. I have wondered about the 3rd nap. Weissbluth says to stop that by 9 months old, but he always takes due date into consideration so that would mean she could still have it until almost 10 months old. I have been wrestling with whether to just keep going with the flow and deciding whether or not she has a 3rd nap on a daily basis based on the length of her first two naps OR if I should just have her go cold turkey and say only two naps from now on. When it was time to give up the 4th nap, she really did that 100% on her own. She just started refusing to take the 4th nap as she does now with the 3rd nap if her other naps have been long. So I thought the same might happen with the 3rd nap at some point. Any thoughts?

Nadia had fun going down the slide again yesterday (another gorgeous day!). Here's a really short (5 second) video of her going down the slide.