routine

I realized the other day that I only have three weeks before I need to go back to work...and that I really need to establish some sort of schedule for Maggie now. I've been kinda hoping that things would just fall into place on its own but obviously that's just wishful thinking. Also, I was starting to get worried because waking up twice a night was starting to become the norm rather than just once in a while. So I went and got copies of these two books: Ferber's Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems and Weissbluth's Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child.

After skimming through both books, these are my conclusions so far:
1. For a five-month old, waking up once, or even twice, during the night to nurse is normal and not a problem. I guess my expectations were too high then, since she was sleeping for 10-11 hour stretches for a couple months and then stopped.
2. She needs to be taking two naps during the day of 1-1.5 hours. Right now, she probably takes one nap of that length only every once in a while. Most days she just catnaps (15 or 20 min?) a few times a day.
3. She should be sleeping around 11-12 hours at night. Right now it's more like 10-11 hours.
4. The reason she is fussy in the evening is probably because she doesn't nap.
5. Early bedtime doesn't = early wakeup and bedtime around 7pm is optimal. I've been trying to have her go to sleep at 8pm but sometimes it drags on later than that.

So hopefully, we can get her on a 2 nap, 4-hour feeding routine here pretty soon!

Dinner was pasta with chicken, tuscan kale, and chickpeas:



I realized I ran out of parmesan at the last minute so it has mozzarella on it instead.

And look, Maggie can almost sit up!



Okay, here are some pictures where you can actually see her face. These are from this week.