Napping, teeth, and helping around the house

One thing that people seem to ask about a lot when you have a baby is how they're sleeping. I never know how to answer that question, because I think it's a bad one. Babies' sleep patterns are very different from those of adults, and it's unrealistic to assume that they ought to be able to sleep like adults. Carter sleeps like, well, a baby, and I have no complaints. I never, ever thought we would cosleep, but it just works so well for us. Some nights Carter wakes up a lot to nurse, and some nights he doesn't. Either way, I barely wake up, so as far as I'm concerned, he's sleeping great. :-)

But his daytime napping patterns are changing, and I'm still trying to decide how best to handle it. He will typically take 2 naps a day, the first now from about 11-1, and the second -- well, the second has been creeping later and later in the day. A 90-minute nap at 4:30 pm means he stays up pretty late. He currently goes to sleep around 9:30 or 10:00 pm. He wakes up around 8:00 or 8:30 am, so he gets plenty of sleep. The later bedtime is more convenient for us in some ways and less convenient in others. It's awfully convenient to have his bedtime routine coincide with our own, but of course, we lose a couple of hours of grown-up time in the evenings. He plays quietly in the evenings and isn't fussy, so we can just hang out and watch TV.

But I decided to try to move him to taking one nap a day, thinking that would help him get sleepier earlier in the evening. This is our third day of trying one nap. The first day it worked great, the second day less so, and as I type this, he is asleep on my chest -- at 5:00 pm! We'll keep trying for a few more days and see how it goes. But one thing I've learned about babies and sleep in the last year is that the best sleep plan is the one that allows everyone to get the most sleep. If Carter isn't ready to go to one nap a day, the way we do it now is fine. It works for us!

On to teeth: The top lateral incisors are starting to come in, much to my surprise. I had guessed the bottom ones would come in first! But lo and behold, those top ones are starting to cut through. We're on our way to 6 teeth!

And now for some pictures! It was really beautiful here this week, before turning off cold for the weekend. We spent some time in the yard on Friday afternoon:





And Carter's passport finally arrived! The pouty picture doesn't look as bad as I'd feared.



This is a cute video of him at lunchtime today. He's started saying a lot more syllables lately, but I've had trouble catching them on camera. He's been saying "wawawa" a lot, and there's a little of that in here. The other cute thing in this video is his head shaking. He will shake his head at us and we'll nod back at him, so it looks like "nononono", "yesyesyesyesyes", and so on.



He's become clingy lately, which is right on schedule according to the books I read. He will follow me around and pull up on me, and really likes to be carried around so he can watch what I'm doing. One of the things I've read about clingy phases is that it's important to respond, to hold and cuddle them a lot, and that helps reassure them and gets them through the clingy phase faster. I haven't done a controlled experiment, but it makes sense to me. So I've started wearing Carter around the house again, which helps me get things done while he wants to be held. I've found that I really like to wear him in a hip hold with the wrap. He likes to see what I'm doing and "help", and so that position works well. Here we are this afternoon, making lemon cheesecake muffins:



And now he's waking up... Time to finish this off for now!