In the groove

Yesterday was a great day around here. I realized that Annie loves the bouncy chair (particularly after a feeding), which frees me up to do extravagant things like shower and use the bathroom with ease. I also realized that she can be calmed with running water. Sure, it means that I am raising an eco-terrorist, but these things are of little concern right now. I will make sure she makes up for it as an adult.

We did take a few steps back when I went back and re-read the sleep chapter in the baby book I had been reading. I recalled that we were not supposed to be using "sleep props", however I forgot that one of those props was rocking Annie to sleep. Oops. There's been a lot of rocking over here, and not the iPod kind. Of course, we have no rocking chair, so there are also a lot of sore backs over here. As this is all part of the greater plan to get Annie to be able to sleep through the night and learn to soothe herself, we will forge ahead in the effort to get her on a schedule and to sleep without doing 100 laps around the lower level of the house (my method) or while slow dancing her to sleep while listening to The Cure lullaby album (Rick's method). We did take a run at it last night and she only fussed for 10 minutes before falling asleep, so hopefully it won't be too rough a road.

And you might wonder how I was directed to this magical book about getting your baby to sleep. Well, I had a bit of a pregnancy guru that I tapped into about 10 times a day. I was/am blessed to find a person that is both hilarious and practical when it comes to pregnancy and child rearing. That person was Debbie and she also has a blog over at Team Botanical. As if blogging, working, tending to a toddler and a black lab was not enough, Debbie was also pregnant and gave birth to her sweet baby boy, Charlie, yesterday! Now I get to hit her up for child rearing tips as well. I am sure she's already got Charlie on a prop-free feeding schedule and has plenty of time to field my questions.

Congrats to Debbie and Chip!