Wonder of wonder, Miracle of miracles!

And now it's 2012....as one can imagine - the time from November to December is so busy and flies by. On top of that, I had all kinds of lovely morning sickness to deal with! Luckily, that has mostly subsided by now. Our little family is getting a little bit Fuller with another baby! Anyway - it's time for an update. One of amazement!

One of our biggest struggles with you, my dear Maya-bear, has been sleep. The specifics of the struggles have changed over the last 2 years (yup, in 2 months, you'll be 2!!!). You're a fantastic child and I have often felt like we get some sort of child swap every time we hit sleep time.

1 week ago, I was pulling my hair out about sleep. Nap and bedtime were taking forever! I kept falling asleep trying to get you to sleep at night which messed with all sorts of things and you just couldn't seem to wind down. I was even talking about heading to the doctor to make sure we weren't missing something with allergies or your ears or something.

Then, I was chatting with another mama who said she just started leaving the room for a little bit of time at bedtime and eventually made it longer and her kiddo fell asleep on her own. I'd read this strategy before and had tried it at some point. It didn't work then. But as I thought about it, I remembered that you have been fine lately when I need to go downstairs to get your milk cup or something. So I decided to give it another go at nap time last Thursday.

IT WORKED!!

Then I tried bedtime - that didn't go so well. You definitely tried, but we just couldn't pull it off. I didn't give up though, I tried nap again on Friday, and it worked again! We tried again for bedtime - and again, it didn't work. Nap on Saturday was great again so I tried to think of what was different. For nap, our routine always starts right about the time I want you to go to sleep (often because I lose track of time). However with bedtime, we often start early (7) with the hopes that you'll go to sleep earlier, but it almost always takes you until 8, if not later to get to sleep. So I decided to try started our routine a bit later.

IT WORKED!!

Nap and bedtime today worked as well (starting bedtime pretty much right at 8, which is later than we will normally be doing I hope).

I am SO EXCITED! Getting you to sleep had been taking at least 1 1/2 hours out of my day - which wasn't all bad, in some ways I miss it a little. It was a lot of time with you, and that's never bad. But I'd much rather use that energy not trying to force you into something.

We still have some middle of the night sleep habits to tackle at some point, but right now I'm going to relax and enjoy what we've got going on because we're both getting more sleep and now you put yourself to sleep! (I've been crashing in her crazy queen mattress on the floor lately. It normally happens during your first wake up after I've gone to sleep).

I'm so proud to have listened to my instincts and your needs through this whole sleep thing. It has not been easy in any way, but I knew it was the right thing. I had a lot of people tell me that eventually we would let you cry it out, it just depended on how long it took for us to get there. I was starting to think that once your teeth were all in, maybe I would consider trying it again, but I'm so glad we never got to that point.

I really want to encourage other mamas now! You can have a baby that hates sleep and still get to this point without doing cry it out! It is hard, and it takes a long time. It takes listening hard to what your baby is trying to tell you and trying all kinds of tricks. It also takes remembering to try tricks you've already done at later points in the baby's life. It also takes talking to other moms to get ideas. And that means you'll get at least one person telling you to just "let them cry." But stick to your gut. Do it if it works for you (although read up about the potential health risks too) and don't even entertain the thought if it doesn't work for you. Every baby is so different and there is no way that there is one right answer to the sleep issue.

Boy or Girl?

One of the things you've been into lately is talking about if someone is a boy or girl. We remind you that you are a girl when you say "Maya boy." We talk about each person that you remember by name as we drive and identify them as boy or girl. You randomly spit out "Daddy boy" or "Grandma girl" through out the day as you process the differences. I'm not really sure how it started, but it sure is cute!

Another part of it is identifying who each person is. We just identified a teacher on the Clifford book. You then said "Maya teacher" and got an awfully sad face when I let you know that you had to get a lot bigger before you could go to school and have a teacher. Don't grow up so fast silly girl!!

Also, you're adorable and trouble when it comes to climbing. You eventually got actually stuck and needed help during our visit to Grandma and Papa's house yesterday.

Starting fresh...

I had really hoped to import all of the tumblr stuff over here, but I haven't  figured it out yet. So, all done procrastinating!

Oh Maya, you are 19+ months old! We have been oh so busy and enjoying filling our time with people and places. Not a lot has changed and yet everything is different. You've spent almost 2 months cutting the same couple of molars. It's been pretty rough. You're now night weaned, but still not sleeping all night long. Some nights are better than others.

You have so many words and constantly repeat random things that we say. Things like "silly mama," "whatever dude," and "I love you Daddy." Its so fun to see little sentences come out as you talk about your friends, the cats or colors.

Did I mention that you know your colors? It's kind of ridiculous! You've got the whole rainbow down as well as black, white, pink and sometimes grey. Your favorite color right now is orange.

This made pumpkin patches extra fun! Orange everywhere! We've been a couple times already and are planning on going again soon. You loved the animals more than the pumpkins, but you were definitely excited about the pumpkins. You're still talking about the goats weeks later.

I keep noting as things happen that I should be writing them down, so hopefully I can get a little bit better. One example is this:

For bedtime, you say "nigh-night" to daddy downstairs before we start our routine upstairs. It involves a huge hug with a squeeze (and your face scrunches up as you squeeze), kisses and saying "nigh-night daddy." Also some "I love you"'s are exchanged, often with fingers pointed at the person being loved. The "I love you"s and blowing kisses are continued as we walk up the stairs to your room. It's simply adorable.

You bring us so. much. joy.