Managing Sleep

This is our latest challenge - we have the eating under control, our little urchin seems to be absolutely famished and will eat pretty much anything she is offered. We are careful not to introduce too many new foods at one time since we must monitor for any allergies. And along with this increased appetite has come an amazing increase in what Jia is doing physically. She is crawling, standard not just commando, very well. She'll take off after her Aunt Lisa's cat and fly across the floor. Plus she can now pull herself up on almost any surface - her little legs are amazingly strong and her arm strength is clearly improving too. But in the middle of all of this little Jia (and the mom) are struggling to get a good nights sleep. Our once wonderful sleeper has had several nights over the past week (2 in a row this week) where she cries and cries and I get up of course to comfort and rock her back to sleep. It could be any number of things but we're going to back off the yogurt. She LOVES it but we've always suspected a bit of a milk problem with her. I'll be purchasing soy yogurt today to give that a try. I'll also try making some soy milk based fruit smoothies this weekend. Jia is approaching a complete rejection of baby food and only wants big girl food. She likes tuna, chicken, eggs - can we say BRAIN food!?!? Yeah! So we're keeping a food diary (thanks to Aunt Lisa) and I'll begin a sleep diary to try to figure out if her sleep issues are food related. If we can't find a pattern it might just be our baby is getting to be a little girl and may be having bad dreams, growing pains, who knows. But it's worth a try. Something has to work before the mom finds herself sleeping on the job! Happy Labor Day to all - hope you have a great weekend! Here are a few pictures taken earlier in the week - she's been tough to capture on film the past few days - maybe due to my exhaustion! And truly - Jia is pretty daggone tired when she gets home from Aunt Lisa's house - that house actually vibrates with kids and activity!