After what seems like years (and actually was probably about a month), Allie has finally figured out how to crawl forward! She did it last night for the first time for us and I confirmed with our daycare provider that she just started doing it there yesterday as well (I think out of respect for the parents wanting to witness all of a child's "firsts", she sometimes doesn't bring up new things they are doing, lest the parents feel bad about missing it). Our daycare provider actually said that Allie was breaking out of the baby area to go hang out with the bigger kids, which makes me laugh. I don't think she's quite ready for that level of play, but she must think she is!
Much improvement on the eating front as well--we moved to more table food types of eats and Allie really seems to like that better. So phew--I might not have to breastfeed this kid her whole life.
In other, REALLY exciting news, Allie is finally sleeping through the night! We started trying to let her cry a bit when she woke in the night as we were pretty sure she was getting up to eat out of habit more than hunger. First night she woke a couple of times, didn't cry for more than 10 minutes (in fact, the second time I was actually going to go feed her and stopped to go the bathroom first--she was asleep by the time I was done!). Second night, more of the same. Third night was a bit rougher--she woke and cried for 25 minutes before putting herself to sleep, which was SO hard for me. My husband slept through it, that f-er. Seriously, who sleeps through almost a half hour of their child crying just down the hall?? The man I married, that's who. Anyway, it was pretty much the longest 25 minutes of my life. But since then, she's slept through the night without a peep!
An unexpected bonus to that is that not only is she sleeping better during the night, she's going down easier too. Before this, I was never sure what I would get when I nursed her and put her into her crib at night. I would always try to put her down slightly awake so she could learn to put herself to sleep, and most nights she would do so with no problem, but every once in a while she would get upset and cry a bunch. Which was so hard. But since we started doing the night waking sleep training, she's been going to bed like a dream.
Now I just need to figure out to get ME to sleep through the night--after 8+ months of not getting to sleep through the night (even more when you add in the uncomfortable last months of pregnancy--God knows I wasn't sleeping through the night then), I am still waking up half a dozen times a night, just to peek at Allie on our video monitor. It's getting better though--some day soon, every member of our family will get a full night's sleep!
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