Dear Della Plum,
You turned five months old on July 28th. Since then you've been checking off one milestone after the other on your to-do list. Some things you've done only once and decided that’s enough. Some things you do obsessively and compulsively.
Rolling from front to back was one of those one-time things for you. I'm pretty sure you only did it to get us to shut up about it too. We keep trying to tell you, that as a baby with little mobility, rolling is a good way to get to where you want to go. But you seem content with staying put.
You started to sit at four months, and now you have perfected this skill. You like to sit and you do it well. I'm not surprised; sitting was the only trick we could successfully teach the dogs too. We are a family of sitters I guess. Rolling over is for suckers and poodles.
You are noticing everything these days. You noticed things before, but now things are not just things anymore. Everything is something to you. Everything is important. Everything must be touched, tasted, inspected. You must touch every button, salt shaker, ear, shadow, sponge, and dog whisker you can. I envy you, as you can find value in an empty carton of ice cream. Whereas, I cannot.
At the end of this month we wanted to help you kick your swaddle habit, so we planned an intervention. We set your arms free and tried sleep training. "They" say sleep training is important in order for you to learn to "self-soothe".
“They” are idiots. And they obviously haven’t met you.
When you started to cry we had to wait two minutes before going to soothe you. When you cried again, we would increase the wait time by two more minutes before intervening. The first night it only took twenty minutes for you to fall asleep. The next night you caught on to our operation, and you staged an intervention for us. You cried, nay, SCREAMED, inconsolably for over an hour. After five continuous days of screaming LONGER and LOUDER, we decided to nix the sleep training idea.
You've never acted that crazy before. Sure, you’re a not-so-great sleeper. Sure, our whole lives revolve around that dreaded five-letter word. But usually, as long as you were swaddled and pacifiered correctly, you went to sleep (eventually) (without teetering on the edge of insanity at least). Then we go and take away the swaddle and tell you to just deal with it.
We are bad people.
We learned some very valuable lessons that week though: Don’t fix something that isn't hopelessly broken. And don’t try to change multiple things at once.
It took awhile, but we eventually gained your trust back and you stopped screaming at us like we were a colossal threat. You went back to your normal fuss, reinsert pacifier, fuss, reinsert pacifier, then finally fall asleep routine. And we are totally okay with that!
After all that you did learn to sleep with your arms free. We have been a swaddleless household ever since. This is by far mine and your dad’s greatest accomplishment-to-date, besides, you know, creating life.
Here are some other things you’ve been up to this month:
- The week before you turned 6 months old we introduced you to solids. That was the same week we tried sleep training and removing the swaddle. Again, I think we changed too much too fast. No wonder your system malfunctioned. Fortunately, you took to solids pretty well. You love sweet potatoes. Avocadoes not so much. You obviously don’t understand the gloriousness of guacamole yet.
-We were quite busy this month. We went to the county fair, Valleyfair, the splash pool, a waterpark. One good thing about a baby that doesn’t nap is that we can take you anywhere, and we don’t have to worry about your nap scheduled. Because you don’t have one.
- You weigh about 14 lbs, and are in 3-6 month or 6 month clothing. Size 2 diapers.
You’ve taken the biggest leaps forward this month. So many huge changes for one little girl, but you handled it well considering. We love you and are so proud of you!
