Miss Isabelle

 haven’t written about Isabelle in awhile and that seems weird to me since she takes up 90% of my life most days.

First off, she is huge. Seriously, she has really chunked up the last couple of months, which is great. Her little legs are actually chubby! Part of that is due to her obsession of solid food- her EIGHT teeth can chomp through almost everything. (Eight teeth!)

It is really nice to just toss her some snackies when she is fussy or chuck a steak at her while I cook. We often share salads when we’re out- she loves the avocado, chicken, and egg whites. She is totally a share-er. Not a word, but whatever. We caught this cute moment on film the other night, Jazz was feeding her while she was trying to feed him. Cuuuute.

I have purposely left out discussing Isabelle’s sleeping as of late- mostly because I had to just let it go for awhile. I felt like every post was me whining about the middle of the night sessions with Izzie. I’ll admit, I let myself get frustrated and upset and it was consuming me. A lot of my friends had babies who slept through the night early on- and only improved from there. I felt guilty, like it was my fault, like I had done something wrong. It was killing me that we weren’t even CLOSE to achieving “through the night” status- we were still on a three to four hour schedule. I could not imagine a time when Isabelle would sleep for ten or twelve hours straight. Anyway, I finally had to just embrace it and learn to go with the flow. I had tried all sorts of books and tricks and tips and everything I could think of, and Isabelle just wasn’t having any of it. I talked to my pediatrician, who was very kind and understanding but told me simply that this may be how she is for awhile- up to two years. Of course, I wanted to stab my doctor at the time. I also met some women in a playgroup- and they too had babies that didn’t sleep “through the night.” I felt a little vindicated. I finally realized that it was out of my control, so I let it go.
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I have to interrupt this monologue for a minute to say that the main reason that I was able to function like a human and partly why I could “go with the flow” night after night with Isabelle waking up is because of Jazz. He has faithfully gotten up with her almost every night for months, even now, he takes one night feeding. Sometimes more. He naturally runs on less sleep and has not complained ONCE about getting up to comfort her. How many men do you know who would do that? Point being, Jazz is the reason why I am sane, why I have not lost my marbles. (yet.)

So how is it going? Well, she is doing so much better. Last night she slept from 7:30 to 5:30 in one straight shot, something I don’t think has ever happened before.We both woke up and said, “uhhh did YOU feed her?”  Glorious morning! Of course, once she was awake, she was up for the day, but HEY IT IS IMPROVEMENT. She eats more during the day, and she is more mobile now so I think she wears herself out more. Normally, she goes down at 7:30, eats once in the night, and wakes up at 6:30. She takes two good naps during the day- usually two hours in the morning and one hour in the afternoon. I can’t tell you how thankful I am that she is sleeping better. I’m sure many of you know how taxing it is, day after day, to sleep in short spurts. One thing that she has excelled at for many months now is the art of falling asleep on her own. We put her down with a couple of favorite soft toys and she plays and makes sleepy noises until she passes out. Good job, Isabelle. Now that she is crawling super fast, she is getting into e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.