Cora's First Christmas

And now on a cheerier note for all you grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends who want to see pictures and video of baby's first Christmas.....here you are.

Yes the angry elf (James) made a comeback this year.  Less angry, no wrestling.

                           Cora's first Christmas morning.  A bit anti-climatic. :)

              Cora opening her first Christmas present.  Well, James really.

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I'm pretty sure she did not get the present concept, or appreciate all our wonderful food...BUT...she certainly loves staring at her Christmas tree.  I knew it was worth it.  Two, Zero, Zero and worth every penny.

We're Not Going to Take it Anymore (Signed, The Parents)

Sleep Training.
I asked all of you.  I stressed about it.  I wavered.  I discussed with James.  I decided to do it.  I decided to wait.  I cannot tell you how stressful the decision is.  But I probably don't have to because most of you know.

So why did it finally happen?  I had 12 hours with her alone that made me insane.  It involved 2 hours driving up and down a street by our house to give her a decent nap + lunch of 1 bag of cinnamon bears in car during that two hours and no other food all day + no sopo to look forward to in the afternoon + james calling and saying he isn't coming home at 6, but going to an event until 9:30.  I think the cinnamon bears were the proverbial straw in the camel story.  But really it was the attempt to put her down three times with no success from 7-8 that really did me in.  Here's how it all went down if you're interested.  This is mostly for my records in case I forget in a sleepless blur.

Night 1:
I put her down 3 times and each time she woke up on crib contact.  The third time I was done.  I left the room to her crying, threw myself on the bed and said I am not going near her - sleep training starts now.  Well, I said I would try it for 5 minutes.  Then decide.

She cried for exactly 4 minutes.  And then she stopped and just started talking to herself.  I went downstairs and let her talk.  She did this for about 15 or 20 minutes and when it got quiet I looked up and she was asleep.

Cue choir noises and heavenly light beaming down on me.  Miracle! Wonderful!  Oh wait...what would happen next?

She woke up about 20 minutes later, but I left her alone, she fussed a few minutes and went back to sleep.

During the night she did this at 12 and 1.  Fussed for a few minutes and went to sleep.  At two she cried more forcefully and we figured we would feed her once at about the 7-8 hour mark because we didn't know if it was too soon to cut out food.  So I fed her and she went back to sleep.

She did the fuss and sleep thing at 4, and 5, and at 6 James went in to feed her.  She went down again until about 8:30 am.

This was much more successful than I thought.  But we decided we should shoot for a little more.  The next night we planned to do just one feeding and to push her to wait to eat until at least 3am to make sure we hit the 8 hour mark.


Night 2:
We put her down asleep at 7:30.  She slept 30 minutes and when she woke up we didn't go in.  She did her fuss and talk thing for a while and went back to sleep.  I kept thinking - we should have done this a long time ago!  Mom said Peter cried for 2 hours at a time when she trained him.  5 minutes of fussing is a-ok.  Hmmm....

11, and 12pm - fuss, back to sleep.
1:15am - Cry.  I think wants food.  We stick to our guns of the 3am feeding time.
She cries off and on until sometime around 3am.  I think when it got quiet finally I fell asleep.  If she only knew she just had to cry until 3:05 and she would have had food.
3:30am - wakes and cries, goes back to sleep.
4am - wakes and starts crying again. For real.  We get up and feed her.  She is a little harder to get back to sleep.  Took about an hour for feeding and going back to bed.

She sleeps until 7:45 - our perfect time for her to wake up.

This was a much harder night...but we did actually push her past her comfort zone for eating.  Am scared of what tomorrow may bring, but feel good about our progress and not pushing her for more than we think she is ready for.


Night 3:
We feed her and try to rock her to sleep (she gets rocked to sleep once - that is the first time we put her down.  It helps us to make sure she is tired enough when she hits the sheets to sleep.  If she wakes up as soon as she hits the crib, we don't pick her up again - but she gets a chance to go to bed asleep.)
James is up rocking her for 30 minutes and can't get her down.  He puts her in the crib finally and she sneezes, wakes herself up and fusses.  Her blanket is over her face, so I go up and re-swaddle her body (not arms), rock her til she is asleep.  Put her down and of course she wakes up.  I leave the room and it's 8:05.  At 8:25 she finally stops talking and hitting herself and falls asleep.  But she is a bit restless.  8:30 - awake again and restless.  8:32 - asleep again.  WHY???  Let go Cora, just let go.  (Words I often tell myself.)

36 hours later I'm finishing the record for this night...it was hard.  Maybe the hardest yet.  She started crying around 11pm and cried on and off until around 2am.  Slept until 3:30 (or at least I did) and then I got up to feed her.  She was super hungry, ate fast, and went right back to sleep and slept until 7:30am. 

Night 4:
I dreaded this night.  Because it seemed like the crying got progressively worse each night instead of better.  Also because day 4 was horrible.  Scratch that, Horrible.  Definitely deserves a capital H.  She was exhausted from not sleeping much the last two nights and she didn't take any long naps.  Some naps she literally laid down for 5 minutes and woke up screaming in pain.  She was miserable all day and so tired.  I put her down every 30 minutes.

I figured the night would be more of the same.  Because it seemed like she forgot how to self-soothe and put herself back to sleep.  We fed her at 7, put her down by 7:30 and she was out cold.  However she woke up 20 minutes later.  The good news is she fussed quietly and talked and put herself back to sleep.  She was really restless though and did this several times until she finally went back to sleep at 8:20 and then she stayed down.

And boy did she stay down.  Not one movement until 4:30am.  I know because I kept waiting and watching for the crying.  Crazy, I know.  But by 3 when nothing had happened, the waiting and watching for crying turned in to..."I think she is dead."  Just like everyone said it would.  But I mean she was out.  And we had been "training her" for 3am feedings.

She fussed a couple minutes at 4:30 and went back to sleep until around 5:45.  Then she fussed off and on until about 6:30 when we finally let her get up and fed her.  So pretty much- she slept through the night with no feedings!

I think the experts say sleep begets more sleep, but I also think exhaustion doesn't hurt.  I hope she can repeat this sleep performance tonight...minus the total exhaustion and no naps.  I don't know if it will happen again, but I will bask in the miracle of one night of sleeping for almost 11 hours straight with very little fussing.


Night 5, 6, 7....whatever:
I'm stopping now.  There is no rhyme or reason to what is happening.  The dream of 2 nights of really bad and then the third night of magically sleeping through the night is clearly not happening here.  The only pattern is that she does usually start waking up around 1-1:30, fusses and goes back to sleep.  Repeat at sometime in the 2 hour and then in the 3-4 hour we get up and feed her and she seems to be able to sleep until 7 or 8. 

She wakes up still tired though - probably because she still isn't sleeping through the night and wakes up regularly.  She still has trouble napping and actually the last couple of days her long morning naps have stopped and gone back to 30 minute naps. 

I have never known her - before or during sleep training- to be well rested during the day.  Whether we feed her or don't at night.  She can't stay up longer than an hour w/o getting fussy and tired for a nap and she screams when she is getting put down for naps until she collapses.

The positive?  I do think she is learning to put herself back to sleep better.  At night when I put her down now we just leave her and after her 30 minute wake up she eventually goes back to sleep for the night.  This is our one true success.  I think.  Speaking it tends to change it, so let's just say - this past week it was our one true success.  

I guess we'll keep doing what we are doing at night (one feeding around 3) and re-visit full sleep training around 6 months.  I won't say I have high hopes.  Why is she so tired all the time???

Hope you enjoyed reading this long and boring log as much as I enjoyed living it.  I'm sure someone out there found it while scouring for sleep answers for their own baby.  Keep looking sister.

O Christmas Tree

I love a real, live Christmas tree.  That yummy pine smell does not come in a bottle, contrary to some opinions.  And there is no way a fake tree is going to coat you with sticky stuff or get needles all over your house.  No way.

To my surprise and chagrin it is nearly impossible to get a real tree here in Georgia.  Apparently they all got chopped down for firewood during the Soviet invasion and they are in very short supply.  And also, they don't put trees in their homes here for Christmas - real or fake.  Odd, I know.  I mean, why wouldn't you put a TREE in your HOUSE?  Regardless, I was determined for Cora to have a proper tree for her first Christmas.

My trusty nanny, Sopo, went on the hunt with me and put her whole family to work scouting out trees around the country.  They are amazing.  It was no easy task. 

Finally we found a guy who sells trees largely to diplomats like ourselves and basically tries to take you for all you've got in the process.  $300 lari for a 2 meter tall tree.  To put it in perspective, that's about 1/2 a month's salary for most people here.  About $180 dollars. 

It was pricey, and ridiculous, but I really, really, really wanted a tree to make us feel a little more at home.  I was waffling on spending the money, and had Sopo call this guy (David) to see if he could negotiate a smaller tree for cheaper.  Turns out he did have smaller trees, but he charged the same rate.  Period.  She told him we'd have to think about it. 

David called back the next morning to follow up.  Of course his English is spotty at best (we are in Georgia) and my Georgian is worse.  He asked me if I decided if I want the tree in broken English and the following is our conversation:

David:  Christmas tree?
Me:  It's too expensive.  My husband says too much.
David: You speak Russian?
Me: No
David:  Christmas tree?
Me:  Too expensive.
David:  Christmas tree.  Three, Zero, Zero, Lari.

I pause.  This guy is maybe a little desperate - after all he's calling me.  He said no negotiating yesterday, but why not?  I can say numbers too.

Me:  Um...Two, Zero, Zero Lari.

I wait for him to get angry and hang up. 
Pause.
Pause.

David:  Two Five Zero lari.

Cash money!  Turns out you can negotiate even when you don't understand each other's language.

Me:  Two, zero, zero.
David:  Tell Georgian person call me.

So, Sopo calls him and tells him two hundred lari is my final offer (although now I think I should have gone lower) and next thing I know there is a tree being delivered. 

A 2 meter tree, right?

I can only laugh and silently congratulate David for his victory when the tree rolls up to our house and about 1 meter of it is bough-filled pine tree and the other (top) meter is basically a long, bare trunk.  Turns out David gets the last laugh after all.

But, it's OK, I love my Christmas tree and it's piney delicious smell. 

We had to trim it to get it in the house, so this picture doesn't do the long, bare top justice.  But you can still see it is a rather odd shaped tree with strange and mismatched boughs.  Sopo tells us it is "original."  

Merry Christmas Charlie Brown!



p.s. Sleep training "Georgian style" started two days ago.  More to come.

Date Night

My mother (and others) have always told me it is important to set aside a date night with your husband every week.  I didn't really get that in my first two years of marriage since it kind of felt like every night was date night.  I mean - we spent a LOT of quality time together.  This year, I get it.

Life gets hard with a baby and you are rarely alone, and when you are alone it's usually in bed at night when all you want to do is roll over and die sleep.  You are stretched thin trying to juggle work, and stresses of home and baby and conversations can get short and a little terse at times.

Friday night date night means you can both breathe.  No one has to take care of the baby, no one at work can bug you (if you turn off your blackberry), and you can just have a couple hours to talk like adults to each other about something besides poopy diapers and schedules.  Yeah, that stuff is real - who knew?

I LOVE Friday date night.  It is currently keeping our marriage together.  Especially when it come right after texts with the F-bomb, or texts that may have been sent this week like, "hope you're having fun at that event, it's been fun here for me too." and "Sorry doesn't cut it."  Yes, I am a monster.  I mean I would be if I had sent texts like that.

Anyway, last night we went to dinner at a restaurant that promised a "European potpourri of delights".  How could we resist?

They sat us in their no-smoking section, which basically consisted of four tables, right next to all of the smoking tables.  Good thinking.  But hey, that's progress for Georgia.  To even call a section that.

We had a nice time together, although we both were sort of zombies, and we were mostly amused by some of the English in the menu.

Items like this one below:  "Breakfast fitness"- Read and be surprised.

 First we were impressed that there was a "fitness menu."  I'm not sure what they mean by it, I had sort of assumed it meant healthy.  But then some of the offerings were....

 

 Perhaps my favorite was the ironic, "Fasting Menu".  All I can say is, "I do not think that word means what they think it means."  There is quite an extensive fasting selection.  I lied.  I can say one more thing.  I wish this is what fasting meant in our church.

The Great Escape

Where does the time go?  Oh yes, in counting hours to nap time and eating time. 

It's hard to believe that Christmas is almost here.  I see pictures of everyone back home sledding and having snow days and buying Christmas trees....and here I have to keep reminding myself that it is almost Christmas.  How did I get to December?  The last month I can remember is August.

James' mother came to visit us for a couple of weeks and just left this past Sunday.  It was nice to have her and to have extra hands and company.  Not that Cora isn't great company, but you know, just when I get tired of sticking my tongue out and making consonant sounds and stuff, it's nice to have someone to use my words on.

Teresa helped us in many ways, but perhaps the most important and treasured one occurred last Friday.  She agreed to spend the night alone with Cora.  Terrifying.  For her, because Cora had been waking up about 100 times a night and never with a smile.  For me, because I had never left my precious child all night long.

But.

This was our only chance to do a night away from baby for perhaps a year or more.  Since there really is no one here to leave her with.  This was my only chance to sleep one full and complete night without hearing any crying from any part of the house.  Sleep without interruption.  Oh blessed thought. 

And ultimately my fear was overcome by the too-good-to-resist-ness of this offer.

We had big plans to go to a nice dinner and have a night on the town before going to the hotel, but after checking in at 7:30 pm we realized all we wanted to do was go to bed.  So we walked across the street to Wendys, got burgers, chili cheese fries, and frostys and laughed and laughed and laughed with glee.  Complete and utter freedom has no price my friends.

We finished our meal (oh and I have to throw in this little side story, so bear with me.  We saw about 10 little urchins outside before eating who were begging for money and SMOKING.  Oh Georgia, why the smoke?  They were maybe 7 or 8 yrs old.  James in his infinite generosity, insisted we buy them a couple bags of nuggets and fries.  So we stood in line again and waited for about 15 minutes to get 30 nuggets and a few large fries.  We exit with food in hand and what do we find?  No ragamuffin children.  Gone-zo.  And now we have two large bags of nuggets and fries.  Luckily we ran in to a teenager selling cards and James gave him the bag 'o nuggets, and the lucky front desk lady scored 3 large fries.  The best intentions...) and walked back to the hotel.  Yes, I did just finish a sentence after a huge paranthetical story.  And I'll do it again.

We took hot showers and hopped in to the most luscious, soft, warm, QUIET bed by about 9pm.  And slept approximately 11 hours.  Oh sweet heaven.

And I found that I did not think of my sweet little cherub until 8am the next morning when I realized my cell phone battery had died and I panicked that Teresa might have tried to reach us all night to no avail.

But still, I did it.  I left her and we both survived.  Even thrived.  Now we just have to hold on to that blessed memory for another year or so until we get another visitor we can con into giving us a night away.  Want to come?