Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Returning to a state of "normal"

Olivia is fine, Praise God. She was sore for a couple of days and probably had a headache, but the baby painkillers helped a lot. Now she's asking for "Meh-cine" because of the flavor, and I have to deal with the fallout that comes when her request is denied. But that's a small problem to have.

We haven't been back out to the playset. We were busy with church stuff all day on Sunday, and then we had a return to Winter on Monday. Temps aren't expected to rebound until tomorrow, which is our errand day this week. I'm not terribly sad to have a break from playground duty. I'm no longer afraid to try it again, but it helps to have a few days to settle from our recent trauma first. I'm sure the playset will see countless hours of safe playtime...maybe the early accident will serve to make us all a bit more cautious when we play.

Olivia has been suffering from sleep deprivation lately. Various things have contributed...the ER (of course), too-late naps, long errand days. I think the most she has slept over the past week was 8 hours. Last night was the first night that she slept a full ten-plus hours in over a week. It was also the first night in at least a week that she went to bed on time (before 8 pm). And life is easier today.

The crib is history. After her fall on Saturday, we didn't want to risk any further injury by giving her the opportunity to climb and possibly fall out of a crib while suffering soreness and disorientation from her accident. So we put her on her big bed (full-sized mattress on the floor). We lined both sides with pillows so she'd have a warning barrier if she tried to move too much. And you know what? She did great! And it was easier (and safer) for her to get up and find us in the morning. We are on day 3 of bed-only nights and naps, and I'm happy with it.

We still can't get Olivia to go to sleep on her own again. For the past three weeks, she has consistently NEEDED someone to either rock her or lay down with her. I'm not going to stress about it, though. As long as she's fairly active and doesn't nap too long, the rock-to-sleep routine doesn't take terribly long. She'll learn someday. I just don't want to fight that fight at the moment.

We dyed eggs today. Olivia was relatively well behaved as I let her stand on a chair and watch. The dye cups were out of her reach, but that didn't stop her from trying to get to them. I'm going to work on putting egg tatoos on them for the duration of Olivia's nap. I'm entitled to some anti-productive creativity, right?

1 comment:

HereWeGoAJen said...

Good! I'm so glad that Olivia has fully recovered.

That's my opinion on sleep related issues too. As long as it is working, don't stress over it.