Leah v the stupid Paci

So the nights have become an interesting place around here. Our little Leah has gone from being a great sleeper to an almost 'Grace Mitchener' sleeper. It all started about 7 weeks ago; she was 4 1/2 months old. She started waking constantly needing the paci put back into her mouth- literally like 15 times a night. Crazy! She doesn't use the paci in the day. We just kept holding out knowing that eventually she would be able to put it in her mouth by herself one of these days. But things just kept getting worse. She has 3 waking hours...11pm, 1am, 5am. This is fairly normal for a 6 mo old- but instead of waking, putting the paci in and the baby going back to sleep...the baby was beginning to NOT go back to sleep without lots of rocking and walking. And even then, she seemed to want her paci, but when you put it in her mouth she would get really mad and spit it out. But then she would cry for it and eventually hold it in her mouth and go back to sleep. For whatever reason things got really bad this last week. She was up for 2 hour blocks in the middle of the night just crying and sleeping on me...the mommy...because if the daddy even walked into her room the benevolent dictator would wail. And so this is how it has been. She just couldn't settle with the stupid paci in her mouth, but yet she needed it all at the same time. And she was actually tired of me holding her, but that was the only way I could keep putting the stupid paci in her mouth. So, short story long, after the worst night ever on Sunday night ( I maybe got 3 hours of sleep) I woke up Monday morning and decided that I was done with the stupid paci. I prayed all day that God would give me the strength to hear my baby cry and know that I was actually doing something good for her. Sid and I were scared, but as veteran parents we had faith that we were doing the right thing. So I put her to bed last night without the stupid paci and she cried for 26 min- we went in several times to comfort her. She woke up many times through the night and had one other long crying spell at her 1:00am waking. She woke again in the early morning to eat and then slept until 8am. She fussed a little before both of her naps today but then went to bed with no fussing tonight. I am hopeful that she will do better than last night. And so that's it. I took the stupid paci away from my 6 month old. And I know we are all better for it. Last week Leah got to sit in the front of the grocery cart for the very first time. She loved it!

Leah's first real food is a hard sourdough pretzel. I love these because they don't break down in her mouth. She just gnaws and gnaws and then drops it on the floor and it breaks into a hundred pieces. Then Isaac comes to step on and crush them into a million pieces.

I love this video of Leah. She is looking in the mirror....