THE WEEK THAT WAS | 2018 – Week 4: January 22-28
I am a few days late in posting this because Laddoo hasn’t let me touch the computer when she’s awake and somehow manages to wake up from her sleep the minute I touch my computer. But if I let this one slide, then I will do the same next week, and the week after that, and then the week after that too, and now, at least I am blogging once a week. I don’t want to put a stop to that too. So no matter how belated, this is going up.
SLEEP
I’d had it with figuring out her sleep patterns and every day began with one very important parenting question, the only question I’d ask myself all day, every day. If you’ve ever wondered why parents made such a big deal about arithmetic, or when would you use complex equations in real life or why, in a practical life scenario, would you ever have to figure out what the value of “x” is, you’re about to find out.
Figuring out my child’s sleep schedule basically meant figuring out how much she NEEDED to nap during the day. That was a simple equation:
Nap hours = x-y
where…
x = the total number of hours of sleep in a 24 hour period
y = the total number of hours slept in the night.
That sounds simple, right?
WRONG! Because there are so many what-ifs!! 🤦🏻♀️
CONDITIONAL CALCULATION 1 | Number of Day Naps
1. If nap hours =< 2, then no. of Day Naps = 1
2. If nap hours >2, then no. of Day Naps = 2
However, if…
Nap 1 is one long stretch of >2 hours, OR…
Nap 2 is after 4 PM, Nap 2 shall be avoided at all costs, unless we have no plans to sleep until midnight at least.
CONDITIONAL CALCULATION 2 | Timing of First Nap
1. If total number of hours slept in the night >=10 hours, then first nap shall not occur until at least 3 hours of waking up. Sometimes, it might occur after 4 hours of waking up.
2. If total number of hours slept in the night <10 hours, then first nap shall be anywhere between 2-3 hours of waking up, maybe even earlier.
CONDITIONAL CALCULATION 3 | Bed Time.
Baby’s bed time shall be >= 6 hours since waking up from the final nap.
Now figuring out x and y was the hardest part because even though I remembered the previous day’s schedule pretty well and would be able to for another 24 hours, any information required to be retained for more than 48 hours results in an information overload and said information being jumbled in my head and a minor panic for not having written it down.
So to save my sanity, I made a BuJo style time tracker where I started tracking almost all of her activites other than pee and poop schedule because I figured it would have nothing to do with her sleep. So far, I don’t think it does.
Anyway, here’s the tracker and oh my god, her schedule is all over the place. I try to follow a strict schedule – strict enough to not make me feel overwhelmed or her, pressured into sleeping or eating when she doesn’t want to, but I try. But this HAS to be some kind of a regression, right? Because sometimes she sleeps for a good 11-12 hours at night, sometimes 8 or 9 hours are enough.
On Monday, when she napped for 3 hours straight after eating Oats, I decided she’d eat oats every day for breakfast until she was ready to go to school. But the Universe laughed at me the very next day and I changed my mind immediately. And those 3 hours were also the most under utilised unproductive hours I had because: a) I didn’t know she was going to be asleep for so long, b) the maid came during that time and I spent around 45 minutes moving the furniture so she could clean properly, and giving her other instructions, and c) Cooking because obviously, she’d be hungry when she woke up. Never happened again since that day.
Her ‘let’s wake up and play in the middle of the night’ time also happens at a different time each night and thankfully, she skips it once every few nights. And she’s woken up even on nights when we DID TAKE HER OUT the previous evening.
Or maybe there IS a pattern that I am unable to see; rustry brains and whatnot. If you can analyse this complicated data and tell if there’s a pattern, do point it out.
Or maybe this isn’t enough data. Maybe I need to track this for a few more days to see if it makes more sense.
Or maybe this is just a colossal WASTE OF TIME, and it will all sort itself in a few days or weeks because Sleep Regression is a PAIN IN THE ASS! And yes, I’m screaming. 🙄🙄🙄
SPEECH & OTHER MILESTONES
The new words/sounds in her vocabulary this week are:
- Bye. She used to say “ta ta” and even wave her hands, but now she can say bye and everyone gets a nice “bye” from her when they take her leave. Even her friend on the phone.
- Titika or Tikaka (for Kritika, my sister.) So now she can name two of my sisters.
- She now hums. One morning, when she was up around 4:30 AM, she just sat on the bed and hummed. Now if it weren’t for the ungodly hour, it would have been quite entertaining.
- Over the weekend she learnt to say ‘bow bow’ – dog sounds, ‘baaaa’ – sheep sounds, ‘elooooo’ – for meow.
- She came to me and said, “Husha…” That was an indication to play Ringa Ringa with her.
- She can sing some of the phonetic sounds from the Alphabet song that comes on Baby TV. Video coming up on my Instagram soon.
- Her third tooth (front upper right of her mouth) finally cut through this week and we can see that her gums are still swollen so maybe the next one will cut through this week too. And once they’re both out, it seems like her sleep will be much better. At least I cam hope.
- In addition to pointing out to the fan, her teddy bear, and other things, she can now also point to herself when we ask her where the baby is.
- During meal times, if there’s a spoon involved, she wants to hold it. And she will not be fed. And she will make a mess.
PERSONALITY
This week she has been extra clingy, and the tooth cutting through explains why, but she’s also the perfect baby. She reminds me so much of myself when she does things like these and I just forget the shitty day I’ve had.
Maybe she knows I’ve been upset and this is her way of making it up to me, but in addition to getting up from the bed while I was breastfeeding her only to give me a kiss, she has also given me ten kisses back to back for no reason at all.
We were all sitting on the floor in our living room and watching Young Sheldon whereas she was just walking around the living room, playing with her toys and such and every few minutes, she would come to me, plant a huge kiss with a big, stretched out ‘muuuuaaaah’ sound and walk away but walk right back to me to do just that, and she repeated this around eight to ten times at least I felt like I was in paradise. 😍
PLAYTIME & BOOKS
This week, books have been objects that she can throw around and step on. As much as I try to teach her that we don’t put our feet on books, she doesn’t really get it. But yeah, this week, play time has been about spreading things around.
But when Maasi was here, Laddoo sat with her and they both looked at some books.
OTHER STUFF THAT HAPPENED THIS WEEK
- Laddoo now likes to hold things in her hands even if she’s not doing anything with them. And out of the two of us, her father is the weaker parent – as in the kind who will give in just so she wouldn’t be upset anymore. So he let her hold the tube of facewash while he was giving her a bath. Which she refused to let go once she was out. So she fell asleep holding that tube. Another day she held on to a “Munch” which he’d purchased while he took her out. Which she refused to let go once they were back home. So she had her bath with it. And then she brought it to bed, and fell asleep holding on to it. Now the facewash I didn’t care about, but I was really craving that chocolate. It was a task to pry it out of her hands without waking her, but I did it. This week, she fell asleep with her father’s watch in her hand. I think he will stop giving her things now. 🤷
- Cookie and Cookie’s Mamma took a detour on their way back home from shopping and came to visit us. And to see these two interacting was a milestone in itself. They’re still not ‘friends’ yet, and that’s okay, but at least there were fewer tears.
- Maasi and Nani visited on Thursday and Laddoo was so excited to see them. She hadn’t met them for a long time because they were busy setting up the new house and we didn’t visit because they still had some unpacking to do, some drilling work left to be done and we couldn’t let Laddoo loose in such a scenario. 😜
- We started the long weekend at Nana-Nani’s new house and Mamma got to work on her Funny Friday post in peace. She spent time with grandparents, went downstairs for multiple strolls and of course, scared the cats. She seemed so tired when we came back home, as if she would just drop into the bed and fall asleep. But was up in 2 hours (around midnight) and stayed awake for almost as long as she had (barely) slept.
- On Saturday, I decided to not step out for a walk with my husband and baby and Laddoo wanted to either be carried or sit on our shoulders, but refused to walk for more than a few seconds. But we did go to CCD and, for a change, I had someone make coffee for me (not such a great one, by the way) and then we came back home.
- On Sunday, we went to the Mall to buy some stuff. We took full advantage of the 50% off sale to get Laddoo a new set of night suits, a few summer dresses for our holiday, and even a swim suit. She ran around the mall, went inside every shop and by the time it was 2:00 PM, her usual nap time for the whole week, she was tired. And because we were out for so long and we had to check things off our shopping list, I wore her in our lovely Kairav SSC from Anmol Baby Carriers and after a long, long time, she fell asleep in the carrier. She has been comfortable in it, obviously, but she has always been awake. It was a pleasant surprise to have her fall asleep while cuddling with me.
- In the Baby Care room at the mall, we met another baby – a boy around 2 years old and he said “daddy, daddy” and “lo, lo, lo” just like Laddoo and I happened to mention that to the baby’s mom. This led to Laddoo chatting with the baby boy in their own secret baby-code and they even blew kisses at each other when we went our separate ways. Ahh, the first flirtation. 😜
ON SOCIAL MEDIA
On the Blog
On Being Mamma Bear
Here are details of the previous week that was.
On Mrs. Writes-a-Latte
A-Z in 100 Words Challenge – Week 4 – D for Dark
On Instagram
That’s all for now. I’ll see you all again, soon.
Being Mamma Bear 