A Mike Life – The Life of Mike!

Lyla is 10 weeks old

// February 1st, 2009 // family

Lyla turned 10 weeks old yesterday, a milestone I guess, but these days anything seems like a milestone.

It was a big week for our little girl and for Jina as well. Jina started work last week, if you recall, where she’ll be in the office Mondays and Tuesdays. That means Lyla needs a sitter for those days and we found a good one.

I worked my butt off the week before, ending up with over 60 hours, so I took Monday off instead of taking Lyla to the sitter, which turned out to be a great way for Jina to start working again. It was tough enough for her to get up, get ready, feed Lyla and go to work, so with me being at home on Monday, it helped out.

Plus, Jina wasn’t looking forward to leaving her with a sitter.

That was the first day Lyla and I had together by ourselves for the most part. We’d been on our own for 3-4 hours at a time, but not from 7:30 – 5pm. We did miss mommy though and stopped by her office at lunch where we ate Wendy’s and Jina fed Lyla. I think they both equally were glad to see each other.

But it wasn’t bad at all. Lyla is a great little girl and really starting to settle into a routine  or schedule. She gets up, eats, plays for awhile, then ends up falling asleep in her little bouncy seat. We normally feed her when she wakes up, then around 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 6pm and finally 9pm and off she goes to bed.

More or less, things follow that schedule.

On Tuesday Jina dropped her off at the sitter and she called me seconds after leaving Shanna’s house and was in tears. Not something easy for her to do after nine weeks of just her and Lyla. But Lyla did great and Jina did great the rest of the day. The sitter said she ate fine, slept fine and wasn’t any trouble. I picked her up around 2:45, took her home, fed her and all was goooood.

All in all, that first day went well. Now we’ll see how this week goes as she’ll be there two straight days.

The only hard part this week has been bedtime for Lyla. She was doing great for the first two weeks we started putting her down and allowing her to cry herself to sleep. It worked well, the crying slowly stopped and if she did cry, it wasn’t that blood-curdling scream that is unbearable for parents.

But the last few days she’s suddenly “regressed.” Bedtime has been a scream-fest. Two nights ago it was almost an hour, which was just like the first night we ever tried this. Last night it only lasted about 35 minutes. Which is good. The downside is that you sit there listening to the screaming and it just changes your entire personality for the duration.

I mean, when I hear it, all kinds of frustration flows through me. Why is she regressing? What did we do different? Please just go to sleep little baby. Once she’s done and asleep, my mental state immediately switches to normal. It’s crazy.

The funny thing is, despite the rough few bedtimes, she’s out of nowhere been sleeping much longer. Friday night she slept from around 10pm to 3am, which was a record thus far. But last night, she slept until 3:45am. So while GOING to sleep sucks, she’s starting to sleep for longer. She went back to sleep around 4:30am and is still sleeping at 8, so that’s crazy too.

I think we’re on the cusp of her really learning to fall asleep and then go through the night. She didn’t eat much this morning at 3:45 and fell asleep in Jina’s arms and didn’t evne wake up when she was put down in the crib. So I think soon enough she wont need that mid-night feeding.

Anyways…that’s the scoop for week 10. Some of you may wonder why I go into such detail with this stuff, and it’s basically just who I am. But there is also a lot of family scattered across the country who I know love to read about her so they know what’s going on. I hope when I write stuff like this that they can at least feel somewhat a part of her life despite being so many miles away.

Until next time!