Bluebird's Nest

This post isn’t going to be the usual rainbows and buttercups that I post.

For the past 2+ weeks now, the wee babe has changed up her sleeping routine from sleeping through the night to waking 5-6 times a night.

I’m going absolutely bonkers. Last night she woke up 6 times I think between the hours of 12am – 6am.

She sleeps in her own bed/playpen. Nothing has changed about that. But what has changed is that we don’t let her cry now as much when she wakes up as we’re apartment living and we don’t want to wake up the entire building. So we let her cry for about a minute but that’s it. I’m too afraid after that that the entire building will get a letter outlining the quiet times… Aimed directly at us of course.

When she cries, I’m too tired to stand up and rock with her to try and quiet her down so the hubby picks her up and gives her to me in bed and I nurse her. Then after I’ve fallen asleep for a bit I wake up and put her (fast asleep) back into bed.

Plus she’s teething like a mad-woman. She had 6 teeth up until about 2 weeks ago and now she has 8 and I’m not totally sure if a 9th is coming in. 9 TEETH! Breastfeeding is becoming more and more dangerous by the hour. Especially since she likes to chomp down on me when she is teething.

Speaking of breastfeeding, I’m probably attached to her for 12 out of the 24 hours in a day. Come on now – she’s 8 months old!

It was a full moon here the other night so I understand that can do crazy things to people but this has gone on entirely too long (maybe not for her but definitely for me).

We’ve tried amber teething necklaces, Oragel, Tylenol, a bottle just before bed to top her up… nothing keeps her asleep.

I think what used to happen is that she would wake up in the middle of the night, put her fingers in her mouth and then go back to sleep. But for some reason, now she’s replaced her fingers with me. And I think we’ve officially started another nighttime habit.

I also have been reading that when they are trying to master a new milestone, they like to wake up and practice that. And since she has definitely been trying more and more to stand up on things, it makes sense that she wants to do this in her bed.

Ugh! I can’t take it anymore! Someone tell me this is just a phase that she’s going through and after the teething and the mastering of cruising, she will once again return to my well rested baby.

My mommy is coming soon to visit… hopefully she will have some good strategies for me. She did for the tweenager

We woke up after a lameo night with the wee babe. She nursed and nursed. I’m not sure if it was her teeth or she was too cold, or if it was because we were camping… but lame night for her means lame night for me.

Had breakfast and took off for Avonlea. We didn’t make it to the end of the book but we read enough of it to get the gist of it (Except for the hubby, he didn’t really care). It’s a little, quaint made up town with all the history of Lucy Maude Montgomery. It was pretty interesting. There was some singing in a barn and a little play out in the garden.

The tweenager and the hubby got dressed into some period clothing, checked out some shops. It was hugely over priced for what it was worth.

After that, we went for lunch to Sam’s. Sooo yummy. We had mussels, chowder and some more poutine (and you thought I was done with eating that J). It was delicious.

We then set off for the beach to check out the sandcastles.

The drive weaving through the hills and pastures of potatoes, rolls of hay and green, green, green everywhere. So beautiful. So PEI.

We stopped in at the beach to rest and recover from the day… it was the afternoon and the heat and humidity was getting to me a little. Everyone except for me went for a dip in the Atlantic. Wonderful sand beaches. It was serene but the clouds were rolling in. Dark, looming clouds.

So we headed back to the camp to get a shower and get changed for dinner. Tonight we would feast!

Some locals told us we should head to Fisherman’s wharf in North Rustico for lobster and a HUGE buffet. They weren’t wrong. We gorged on food. I felt a little sickly by all the food we put back but it wasn’t cheap so we thought we better get our money’s worth.

Man-o-man was a tired after all that food and wouldn’t you know it, a storm had started. I couldn’t believe it. Imagine what it feels like when you’re driving back to your TENT in the pouring rain and it’s blowing like a tornado. Yah, it wasn’t a nice feeling. We actually drove to the bathroom to save the drenching until later on in the night when we needed to hit the bathroom again. Too much pop and water at the feast.

We retired to bed and listened to the wind roar and the rain to pound. It was scary. I wasn’t sure we were going to make it through the night all dry. But we did. The tent faired well but it got a tear in it.

EXPENSES:

Sleeping: Camping in Cavendish $45.
Wee babe disposition: Seemed like she was teething today. A lot of spurts of crying.
Lost: Almost lost the shampoo,conditioner, soap, etc… but the tweenager saw it out of the corner of her eye.
Weather: Sunny and about 31. The turned nasty
Stress level: groovy.

Wow, what a drive. This drive was dialed in at 5.5 hours on the GPS. We arrived after 10 hours. We stopped A LOT.

Let’s see… first stop was 3 Valley Gap where we took a break and bought two ham sandwiches and a fruit cup for $13!! My god.

Roger’s Pass was our next stop where we took a photo with a fake bear and breathed the mountain air.

In Golden there was a HUGE diaper explosion. I took EVERYTHING out of the car to get at the diaper wipes stored in the wheel well and the Swiss Mister thought I was ridiculous.

Of course you can’t go to Golden and not get a some golden delicious apples so we grabbed some food at the grocery store and paid the SAME amount as 3 Valley Gap.At the ‘Welcome to Alberta’ sign we pulled over for a photo op and some other people pulled over too so I asked them to take a photo of us but it didn’t work so then I asked the tweenager to grab the baby and take another photo but the flash was up and the photo was crap so I asked her to go back and take another and the hubby thought I was ridiculous AGAIN!!

Lake Louis was a gong show with sooooo many people there. It was a little stupid for us to go just for a picture as the drive back down was a 20 minute wait.

The wee babe was really not happy for the last 2 hours of the trip so we stopped at a mosquito infest road side pull out where there was a bear gate that the hubby just had to pass through. Then a tourist decided that he wanted to pass through it too (WTF?) and the hubby thought it would be funny to growl like a bear to scare him. We all think he shit his pants because after he jumped he said “Was that some kind of joke?” I thought that the hubby was going to get punched. I think the baby saved his ass.

We continued on and the hubby was convinced that the wee babe was teething so we stopped in Canmore to get some Oragel but Shoppers was closed so I gave her some baby Tylenol. That knocked her out for an hour. Not long enough we still had a half an hour to go to get to my cousin’s house.

I realized that yesterday was too far of a drive. I couldn’t hack it when the wee babe was crying, screaming, howling… It was too much for my nerves. I begged my hubby to do whatever he could (he was sitting in the backseat) to get her to stop. All she wanted was out of the freakin carseat I think. Not sure if she was even teething because each time we stopped the car, she stopped freaking out instantly. It’s really unbearable for me to listen to her. She doesn’t cry like a whining it’s like a cat it getting murdered.

Anyway, we arrived at my cousin Lyndsey’s house and she had forgotten that we were coming. I guess I should have trusted my intuition and emailed her a few days before just to be sure. But we did call twice during the day, she just didn’t check her voice mail

But she was so hospitable and gave us left over steak and ribs. Potatoes and corn. We were so lucky and the food was devine. And then we started in on the wine.

With the time change it was still light out at 11pm. Yeah baby! But it was a bit of a shock when the wee babe and tweenager were still awake at that point. So off to bed the tweenager went.

Man oh man did we laugh. We were up to 2am talking about a bunch of dirty stuff I can’t tell you about. Oh dear. Hilarity ensued. Let’s just say Jeff is now our new BFF.

We woke up at 8am, had a wonderful coffee and some granola, rehashed in PG13 some topics from the night before, packed up and we were off. Thanks soooo much Lyndsey for putting us up. We really appreciated it.

We’re on the road now, the hubby is driving (obviously) and it’s a play by play of the things we’re seeing (not much.) but I’m content with it none-the-less. Calgary was a gorgeous day but now we’re under clouds but I can see blue skies in front of us.

Today’s destination is a little undetermined but we’re thinking Morse with a stop in Medicine Hat first (couldn’t miss it Courtney!!). Evidentially, Morse a nice little town on the side of lake. We’ve used up all my relatives and aren’t going to be mooching off anyone now until Ottawa (thanks Allison!).

EXPENSES:

Gas: $56 @ 1.11/litre
Food: $13 sandwiches and $13 groceries
Wee babe disposition: pretty stellar save for the last two hours of howling.
Wildlife seen: Coyote, gophers
Weather: averaged 22 roughly
Things that have already broken: cable for the iphone
Stress level: a solid 100% when the wee babe was howling. Back down to a normal 5% for the rest of the time.

Wow, these past few days have been a real whirlwind of activity. I said good-bye to some colleagues/friends, we attended a wonderful solstice party and father’s day wrapped it all up.

In the meantime, our wee babe has been growing by leaps and bounds and I don’t want to forget any of it so here goes:

Rolling: back, forth, in her sleep, wide awake, change table, floor, grass – you name it, she’s rolling on it.

360′s: like a spinning top, she’s doing her first break dancing on the ground. Mind you, she’s only mastered the clockwise 360. The Swiss mister likes to think she keeps time to her internal swiss clock.

Bumbo: sadly, we need to say good-bye to this unforgettable piece of furniture. It’s been a constant in our house for the past 3 months. We loved to plunk it down on the island or dining room table while we ate breakfast, lunch and dinner and the wee babe stared deeply into one of our eyes trying to win a staring contest (I know you’re not supposed to have those things on anything higher than the floor). But no more. She now does a twist like no one’s business all the way around to the back and yesterday she *almost* fell out.

Rice cereal: we’ve made the plunge into solid foods! And she is definitely ready for this. No problems eating, big open happy mouth. We’re on day 3 and it doesn’t appear to be allergy inducing. Our plan is to keep up the rice cereal all the way across Canada and then start in on home-made purees once we’re in Europe. We’ll see how that goes.

Sippy cup: along with the rice cereal, we’ve started giving her a sippy cup with water. This is not as well received but it doesn’t go horribly. We’ll keep persevering.

The plank and knees up: a few times I’ve caught her doing the plank. And other times We’ve seen her bringing her knees up and then pushing her arms up but not having the coordination and balance to putting the two together. This can only be a matter of time before she masters crawling or creeping.

Sitting up: she does this with very limited assistance. She falls over a lot still but she can keep herself up for a good 30 seconds before tumbling.

Singing: The wee babe is very vocal. She’s mastered raspberries, da da da, some sort of weird grunting sounds and an array of various other interesting noises.

First tooth: her first tooth has come through with minimal disruption to her and us. There was one night where she screamed bloody murder and I thought she had been stung or bit by a spider so I ripped off her clothes but the next day her lower left tooth came through. Hindsight is 20/20. I am an extremely proud mama.

Standing: this continues to be her favourite thing to do (besides breast feeding) and prefers this any time over sitting.

Reaching and grabbing: I think I should note here that last month she started doing this but this month she’s definitely mastered it.

It’s been a big month for our baby. Did I miss anything mister Swiss or the tweenager?

P.S. I would also like to note in this post that we had a wonderful father’s day yesterday. I think we might have started a few father’s day traditions as well. We started the morning with a delicious breaky of eggs benny, followed by a hike out to our wedding spot in East Sooke Park to plant a tree (sshhhhhh… I think its illegal to plant trees in parks so don’t tell anyone.) we named Xavier. (This was going to be the name of our wee babe if she was a boy.) We had a sugar infused Swiss desert called Vermicelles that we also shared with my father, followed by a yummy steak dinner. Happy Father’s day my Swiss mister and happy father’s day dad!