Sunday night

it is sunday night...or rather monday morning. 1 a.m. and i am still awake. i'm starting to get tired, but not enough to fall asleep. so i thought i'd give an update on ari. she is sleeping in her big crib now! this is the second night there which translates into the second night since she's been home that dave and i have had the bedroom to ourselves again. she has been sleeping in a little crib, the size of a bassinet, in our room. this has been very convenient for me, since she wakes up around 5 or 6 a.m. to eat. but, she is starting to outgrow it, and i have started to teach her to be able to fall asleep on her own. without me nursing her or rocking her. it is hard. i am not a fan of the "cry it out method" of putting babies to sleep. i just don't see the benefit it has on the child. she needs comfort and soothing reassurance that mom and dad are here and she really IS ok. but she does cry and it is difficult for me listening to her. i tried it for the first time on friday afternoon for her nap. she cried on and off (in between playing with her feet, which let me know she was ok, just not happy about it) for about 2 hours. i was home alone with her and had to call dave because it was so hard for me not to pick her up, which would totally defeat the purpose. so i distracted myself by cleaning things that hadn't been cleaned in several months. and guess what? she fell asleep and stayed asleep for a few hours. so for the last 2 nights, i have been putting her to bed and letting her cry, going in every few minutes to rub her back, sing to her and fix the blankets. after a while, she's out. i am amazed. i now have ALOT more free time. i had been holding her for hours when she had a hard time sleeping and consequently stayed up very late at night. i love holding her, don't get me wrong. but she's getting heavier (almost 13 lbs.) and my arms get tired. and i knew the time would come when she would need to learn to sleep on her own. i decided i'd rather deal with the crying now, than when she got older and probably harder to handle. so my life is changing a little with that. for 5 months, every time she went to sleep, i have held her. so this is a very new experience for me, and i'm not used to it yet. i think i like it. it's just hard on my emotions hearing her cry and seeing her eyes look at me, tears running down her cheeks and a look that is so pitiful, begging me to hold her and comfort her. i am so attached to her. it's amazing how much you can love your own child. i never knew how much in love i'd be with her. i'm smitten. she's MY little girl. it's so so hard to know i'm hurting her feelings by not comforting her the way she wants to be. i had to have dave reassure me (even though i knew the truth) that she would not remember that i didn't hold her and didn't comfort her how she wanted. of course she won't remember. but the way she cries and the way she looks at me, you'd wonder how she could forget!

anyway, i thought i'd post a few pictures from tonight to end my post. enjoy!

dave and ari watching stupidvideos.com

ari asleep in her big crib tonight

dave asleep as i write this post.