My parents came over today after not seeing Allie for the last 2 weeks because of our road trip. I get a lot of emails from my mom about how much she and my dad miss Allie when they’re not able to come by. Once in awhile she bothers to throw in that she misses us, as well. That’s nice of her. They brought Allie an electronic learning toy that turns into a push-walker when Allie starts walking, and a cute little halter swimsuit. We gave my mom her Mother’s Day present early: an iPad 3 which Mr. W preloaded with photos of Allie. My dad says she sits in bed at night and watches and rewatches videos and photos she’d taken of Allie in the past months on her laptop, giggling like an insane grandma. Now she can do the same thing with a lighter object on her lap. The back of the iPad is inscribed “Happy Mother’s Day” with my mom’s name, and “Love” from me, Mr. W and Allie. If someone stole it they’d have to prove a lot to claim it’s theirs.

It’s interesting seeing Allie thru my parents’ eyes. Because they only see Allie for a couple of hours once a week, they don’t realize all the progress she makes. So my dad will make comments like, “She’s making deliberate audible vocalizations now! I think she’s learning to talk!” “She now looks straight at you and concentrates on your mouth when you talk! She’s learning!” “She’s starting to grab things on purpose! She knows what to do with her hands now!” These are things she’d been doing for weeks to months, but I don’t say anything and let them make their own discoveries. No need to make them feel worse; they already feel like they’re missing out.

When my parents first arrived, Allie was in the second hour of what turned out to be a very nice 2-hour noon nap. It was needed, because after she was put into her crib for her morning nap, she popped up and rolled onto her back. After crying for awhile like that, she sucked her thumb until she fell asleep, but woke up with full-body nocturnal jerks every minute (I was watching the timer on the monitor), then every 45 seconds, then every 15-20 seconds, then every 30 seconds…basically she woke up at least 60 times, falling back to sleep each time only to wake up again with another jerk, until she gave up trying to nap after 40 minutes. (She sleeps all night on her back just fine, but then she’s laying on her fuzzy bear.) Poor baby. It was worse than when she was in the car being woken up by Mr. W’s aggressive driving on the road trip. I was really hoping her nervous system had outgrown the jerking; this was why we started napping her on her stomach to begin with.
For Allie’s 3rd nap, even tho she fell asleep on me, as soon as I put her in her crib she popped up and fussed. I picked her up, resoothed her to sleep on me, and tried again. Same thing. Wide awake in her crib. I finally walked out to let her soothe herself to sleep in the crib. It didn’t happen; for the first time ever, she cried and screamed through the ENTIRE duration of her nap period, from 3:30p in her crib until 4:15p when I went and got her. She was in fine spirits after she was picked up and played until almost 6pm with my parents, so it kind of looked like she had a bit of habitual tiredness for that nap, but didn’t really need it. The Sleep Book says that at age 5-8 months, 84% of babies have 2 naps and have dropped the 3rd, the late-afternoon nap. She could be phasing that nap out on her own already. I advanced her bedtime a little bit, we gave her a bath (my first time bathing her sitting in the adult tub with her, while hubby helped and gave pointers from the toilet seat), and she was falling asleep nursing by 6:30p. By 6:45p, she was sleeping in her crib. She’d gone to bed at 6:45p plenty of times before, but we’ve been letting her sleep in until 7a to help her catch up on the missed sleep from the road trip, so she’ll still be getting her 15 hours of total sleep this 24-hour period, even with the missed 3rd nap. I think knowing that babies her age are starting to eliminate her own last nap is what kept me from freaking out while I sat and helplessly watched her scream for 45 minutes earlier (while my mom got tutoring lessons from Mr. W on the iPad). I looked back on her charts to see how she eliminated her 4th nap before. It seemed to be sporadically missed until we just stopped forcing it on her, and she did fine with that extra awake period before bedtime. This was when she was doing 1-2 hours of awake periods, before she started hitting the clock-time naps every 8:30a, 11:30a, and 3:30p. That 3rd nap was always a variable “as needed” nap, anyway. Guess she didn’t really need it today.

So many changes, so little time. And with her 6-month birthday coming up in 19 days, we’ll be playing with solids soon.