Milestone Lull

I'm behind in posting, but I'm going to blame it on what I'm calling the "milestone lull." While every day Sonia is a bit more smiley and fun, it's been a while since we've had any big "whoa, look at what she just did!" moments. I'm not sure what's next (sitting up? laughing?), but at least for the time being things are pretty much constant around here. We've successfully broken her of swaddling (in favor of SleepSacks), which was a good thing since she has definitely outgrown the Miracle Blanket by now. She still doesn't sleep through the night, and we're not even close on that front since she routinely wakes up somewhere in the 1am - 3am range and sucks down a whole bottle like she is starving. That being said, she goes to sleep reliably at the same time every night and in the morning she tends to wake up pretty quietly and sometimes just chills in her crib talking to the mobile, so we can't complain too much.

One "milestone" of sorts is that she is definitely getting better at playing us. I've noticed recently that she has figured out how to cry while keeping the pacifier in her mouth (kind of defeating the purpose?!), and clearly this is just to bring us back into her room when she doesn't want to sleep. Then when one of us goes in she spits out the pacifier, and when you reach down to give it back to her she takes the opportunity to grab your hand with both of her hands and won't let go. Sameer especially finds this so cute that he often stands there and just lets her hold his hand. And, yes, he is aware that this encourages her behavior. I think the most uttered phrase in our house is, "It's a good thing you're cute, because otherwise [insert annoying behavior] would get old real fast."

We were hoping for another milestone recently when at least two times Sonia managed to turn on the mobile in her crib while we were out of the room. I was convinced she was some sort of genius who had watched us turn it on and had then figured out how to do it herself. But, alas, the other day at 6am I watched in person as she "thumped" her legs up and down all over her crib, and eventually managed to kick the mobile which apparently turns it on quite easily. Turns out we are not raising the next Doogie Howser, but instead a sort of spastic baby who manages to thrash all around her crib eventhough she can't sit up, scoot, or crawl yet.

We have had a couple of social outings recently. I've yet to write about our first official date night (as in hire a babysitter and go out)...exciting stuff! Sameer and I went to dinner on Valentine's Day while Claudia (a German au pair for a family who lives year us whom I found online) watched Sonia. "Watch" is a strong word to describe sitting on our sofa watching our giant television while Sonia slept the whole time, but everyone was happy all around. We were especially happy to find Claudia who seemed very capable and lived quite close, only to learn she is leaving her host family in April. Lovely.

Last weekend we headed up to the city for the Dodson twins' first birthday party, which was great fun. At this age birthday parties seem to be more about giving adults an excuse to eat cake or cupcakes, and we are big fans of that. The party was easily the most exposure to other children that Sonia has had all at one time. At first, she seemed to enjoy hanging out, including making repeated attempts to grab Sameer's beer bottle while he held her (to her credit, this seemed to be a pretty smart thing to do since at our house all bottles are filled with milk for her). But, after about 30 or 40 minutes she decided she'd had enough and started to have a bit of a meltdown. Despite getting to temporarily hijack Dylan Dodson's crib, there was just way too much going on for her to take a much-needed nap, so we headed home. I think she was asleep in the stroller before we even got to the car 3 blocks away.

The next day we headed up to Berkeley to attend Sanjay and Melissa's Oscar party. I recall at this event last year we were expecting but hadn't told anyone yet...what a difference a year makes. I didn't fare too well on my Oscar picks (I should have known the Academy was not going to give an award to a guy currently starring in Norbit), but at least beat Sameer who filled them out randomly in the car on the way up. Sonia was for once not the youngest child at the party (although the one with the least hair, especially considering she has rubbed off a large patch on the back of her head). Since her Dada was in attendance, I don't think she spent a single minute without being held, so she was a big fan of the night as well.

Other than that, life goes on pretty much as usual. I must admit that Sameer and I have finally joined 30 million others and started watching American Idol. I figured it was by far the #1 show of our time and it was becoming kind of odd that we didn't watch it (after all, we weren't above watching "So You Think You Can Dance?" last summer which was clearly more embarrassing). It has joined the elite list of shows Sameer does not let me watch without him: Grey's Anatomy, House, 24, Studio 60, and Scrubs being the others. Okay, maybe not such an elite list. It's amazing what being stuck in your apartment with a sleeping child in the next room starting at 7pm every night will do for the amount of TV you watch.

I'll close with one particularly cute photo of Sonia taken recently...a rare smile at tummy time (typically she just tolerates it for a few minutes and then puts her face down and cries). For more photos from the last month, click here.

Housing bust? We wish...

In a rare non-baby post, I decided to write a couple of updates on our latest adventures in real estate. Yes, the housing hunt continues. And, yes, Austin-based friends, if you want to feel better about your finances just ask me how much I anticipate our "starter" 3 BR / 2 BA house in Palo Alto is likely to cost us. Try about 50% more than we originally budgeted when we began this search 6 months ago. Try about 5x what it would cost in Austin. And, yes, I do know that it is insane.

First off, despite countless magazine and newspaper articles to the contrary, there is certainly no housing bust hitting our neighborhood anytime soon. Just to give you a sense of the craziness still prevalent here, last week a house came on the market that we were actually pretty excited about. It was a good location, good size house / lot, and priced at something that we could actually stomach paying. On Friday, we met our realtor at the house to look at it, but unfortunately the listing agent was not allowing people to tour the house prior to the open house (scheduled for the next day). So, we had to settle with peeking in the windows like peeping toms. Our realtor had seen the interior of the house on the realtors' tour the previous day and said it was quite nice and she anticipated the house would go for "well above asking." That kind of put a damper on our enthusiasm, but we still were pretty sure we would put in an offer and see if we could get the house. Fast forward to the next day when we showed up for the open house so we could actually see the interior. We arrive pretty close to when it starts only to find a sign that says, "Open House Cancelled." That's right, someone had already bought the house. A house that you could not tour before the open house, suggesting that these people had bought the house sight unseen. How foolish of us to wait to actually see the house before bidding. Rookie mistake.

Speaking of rookie mistakes, we have learned that you should never, ever go to open houses for places you can't afford just because you're curious. Surprise, surprise...houses that cost more are much, much nicer than the ones you normally look at. Sameer and I stopped off at this open house for a place that was too expensive because it was in our ideal location and we wanted to just get a sense of pricing in that neighborhood. The second we walked in the door I knew we had made a mistake. The house was incredible: perfect location, big enough to not outgrow it, lots of character...basically, it was what we're looking for, just lots more money than we plan on spending. For about 24 hours we were experiencing shared insanity as we considered actually bidding on this house and eating ramen for the next 5 years as a result. But, then we had an epiphany that while the mortgage broker might be willing to loan us the money, that would be small consolation when we declared bankruptcy later this year. Apparently it takes two Harvard MBAs to do a simple cashflow analysis and realize that when your cash position goes negative, that's a bad thing. (And, yes, this house was also expected to get multiple offers, so a low-ball offer was not an option.)

So, we're still stuck at square one. In the meantime, since we are living (and in Sameer's case, working) in such close quarters, Sonia is getting to participate on a lot of Sameer's conference calls. She keeps trying to chime in with her ideas about his accounts, but tragically for some reason everyone on the speakerphone just seems to ignore her "talking."

Mmmm...thumbs taste good

Sonia is trying to learn how to suck her thumb...I say "trying" because as you can see from the video, she hasn't quite mastered it yet. These days everything is going into her mouth, although her favorites are her right thumb and the legs of the giraffe on the playmat. (Note: she is not wearing pants in this video because Sameer dressed her and has recently declared that her outfits are too complicated and he is "done with pants.")

One step forward, two steps back

After the last blog post, we were feeling pretty good about the progress Sonia was making toward (eventually) sleeping through the night. We had a breakthrough night where she went down at 7pm (like usual), woke up at 3am (!), and then didn't wake up again until 7am. Miraculous (vs. two feedings per night, like usual). It was so great that I didn't want to write about it in the blog for fear of jinxing it. In parallel, our efforts to wean her off of the swaddle were going pretty well -- as of the night before last, we were down to just wrapping the swaddling blanket around her body (with both arms out). Good progress. Way to go parents.

Right? Wrong. Wah.

So, "the slide" back started out slowly. After the 3am night, she instead woke up at 1:30am. Still, progress relative to 11pm. After eating at 1:30, she slept until 5-something and woke up. Not as nice as waking up at 7am, but we were prepared to get up early in the name of sleeping through the night. Still okay.

But, 1:30am became 1am became 12:38am. All efforts to calm her down just led to more crying, and she sucked down food when fed as if to say, "See! I told you I was hungry!" Finally, last night she started to wake up at 10:30pm (!), and we made her wait until 11-something before deciding that if any of us were going to get some sleep we had to get up and go to her. Then she woke up again at 4:30am to eat some more. Two feedings per night, just like she was doing a week ago when we started this process. I don't know if it's because she's in the SleepSack now or if she's somehow gotten used to eating on a more regular basis during the day, so the effects of that have worn off, or what. But, needless to say, no one in this house will be sleeping through the night anytime soon.

Sonia 1, Parents 0.

Sonia "talking" with Ellie the Elephant

I got lots of calls for more videos of Sonia (okay, mostly from people related to her, but requests nonetheless). I've been trying to capture on video the "conversations" she has with the animals on her playmat, but as soon as she sees the camera she gets quiet and just stares at it. So, this one looks a bit like it was shot by a stalker from a distance, but at least it gives you a bit of an idea of what we hear at our house all day long. Not exactly quiet times!

Dreaming of sleeping

Sonia recently passed the 12-lb mark, and I recalled someone telling me at that weight babies are physically capable of sleeping through the night (or at least for ~8 hours without feeding). Since Sonia goes down around 7pm, but systematically eats at 11pm and somewhere between 3-5am every night, I decided to do some homework to see if we could look forward to her sleeping longer anytime soon. I consulted several of the books we own - everything from the infamous Ferber to "The Baby Whisperer" (Sameer went on a shopping spree for books before we had Sonia, so there were lots to consult). The good news was that they all universally agreed that a 3-month old could (in theory) sleep through the night. The bad news was that in reading these books I discovered that we were no way on path to making this happen, and in fact had managed to hook Sonia on several bad habits:

• She loves the swing and sleeps (naps) here several times a day. Heavy use of the swing was universally condemned by all of the books (motion-based sleep isn't as restful, plus she gets hooked on needing the swinging motion to go down). Strike one for us.
• We've been swaddling her with the Miracle Blanket and it's been working great. While several of the books say that swaddling is good for young babies, they all then go on to talk about the need to wean the baby off of swaddling. Sure enough, as if on queue I noticed just the other day that Sonia is getting to be too long for the blanket and the packaging says it is for 0-14 weeks (she is 12+ weeks already). So, I tried putting her down one night without the swaddle. Lots of crying ensued, until finally I rewrapped her for the night. Uh oh. Strike two for us.
• While I had a vague notion of how it would be nice to have a daytime schedule, we'd been kind of just going with the flow. In reading about how to get the baby to sleep through the night, I also read up on naps. Turns out that ideally by now she would be taking a few naps a day, ranging from 60-120 minutes or so in length, at somewhat regular times. Instead, she takes about 6+ naps, with none longer than a half-hour. One of the books called these "naplets" instead of naps. And, yes, these are bad because they're not as restful and they encourage frequent "snacking" instead of more regular feeding. Oh wait, yes, she does that too. Strike three.

Rest assured, I am (as always) exaggerating for effect. Sonia is doing great and if she did everything as these books describe she would be on path to be ready for college by next year. Surely no one's child actually hits these sleeping / eating milestones, right? Well, unrelatedly, I finally motivated to go to one of the new mother groups that meets every week down by where we live. I happened to end up sitting next to a woman whose daughter was born just 6 days before Sonia. Sure enough, her daughter is sleeping through the night (no feedings) like a champ. Another woman reported that her 2 month old sleeps 7-8 hours at a stretch. Mind you, I do think there is some sort of selection bias that women who have babies who sleep are well-rested enough to motivate to attend these events, but still, this was confirmation that it was in fact possible.

So, we now have a goal of getting Sonia to sleep through the night, ideally soon but at least before I go back to work (early May-ish). I know, I know, many people are deeply against doing any sort of this type of "training." We're not being hard core, just trying to modify a few of these bad habits which in theory will allow her to magically start sleeping longer. We've started with swaddling: for the last couple of nights, we've swaddled her with one arm out. I call it the "Statue of Liberty" approach to weaning her off of this. Sure enough, she doesn't sleep as well (apparently she is quite a pro at waking up because she has hit herself in the face), but you don't meet any 18-year-olds who are still being swaddled, so she'll figure it out eventually. Already night #2 was better than night #1. In parallel, we are working on trying to get her to eat every 3 hours or so (instead of all of the time, or at least it seemed). This one is definitely harder (it is pretty exhausting to keep her entertained so she doesn't notice that time is passing and she is not eating), but so far so good. Supposedly this will let her nap better, but no results yet. She did make it to 1am last night before wanting to be fed (instead of the usual 11pm). Not sure if this was a coincidence or not, but we'll see.

Since Sameer and I have pretty short attention spans for this kind of thing (let's just say don't ask us about our New Year's resolutions), smart money is on us being back to business as usual by next week. :-)

One habit we were forced to break was the television. As predicted, in the last couple of weeks we started to notice that Sonia would be playing and then would get very quiet. Sure enough, she was just lying there on her playmat watching the television (see photo, the TV is on the wall above her). I guess she would have to be blind to not focus on the giant, glowing screen dominating the wall. So, I've stopped watching it while she is in the room (which is pretty much all day until she goes down for the night). It was sure nice to be able to watch it while it lasted. Ah...television...RIP. I miss you already.

Other than that, things are going great for us. Sonia is getting more adept at grabbing things (favorite item: my hair) and Sameer claims that he actually heard her laugh once (I'll believe that when I hear it). We're feeling ambitious enough to plan a trip to Hawaii in April before I go back to work. Given that Sonia flinches every time the sun hits her face when we're outside, and screams when she gets put in the water for her bath, we're probably idiots for thinking that's a good idea. Oh well, I guess she's got a bit of growing up to do between now and then. :-)

Click here for more photos from the past month!