It's very busy tonight over here in Sawyer's World, so not much time to write.

But I did want to note that there's been a flurry of activity here for the last couple of days -- a sudden surgence of rolling over in both directions, spontaneously napping on her tummy, sitting up (quite straight!) unsupported, and my favorite, out-of-the-blue giggling!

She's a hoot. A deeply adorable mercurial smiley little hoot of a girl.

In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the bunny sleeps tonight

I've been going back and forth over whether writing about our adventures in trying to improve Sawyer's sleep habits would somehow jinx the entire process. Though I may regret the decision, I have decided to brave it.

If you google "ferberization" or "ferberizing," you'll get all sorts of manifestos decrying the Evil of letting a baby cry for any amount of time. Basically, the theory seems to be that any sort of parentally sanctioned crying will result in a deeply troubled child who will be unable to free herself from the shackles of this parental cruelty for the rest of her days. Our pediatrician, not sharing this view, gave us the go-ahead to "let her cry" when Sawyer turned four months old -- feeling that was a little premature, we decided to wait until now, when we felt that she was ready for some self-comforting.

And guess what? This might actually work!

(As soon as I finished typing that sentence, she woke up! See? I'm jinxed already.)

The basic idea is that, rather than zooming to Sawyer's side the minute she starts crying in her crib, we give her a predetermined period of time to settle herself before we go into the room. If she's still crying by the end of that time, we go into her room and pat her and smile at her for a couple of minutes, then leave again. If she's still crying by the time the next predetermined interval elapses, we go back in again. And so on.

Everyone seems to handle this process a little differently. I have one friend who basically adopted the "put the baby in the crib and go take a long shower" approach, which strikes me as a little, well, excessive. Some people cut all nighttime feedings before starting the process, others don't; some people cut out use of the pacifier beforehand, others don't. The variations are unlimited.

Us? If you think we were going to make this kid go cold turkey on her pacifier -- her favorite item in the universe -- and make her cry herself to sleep, you clearly don't know Sawyer's parents terribly well. We decided to find every pacifier in the apartment (about 10 of them) and strew them throughout her crib, so that when she wakes up, she won't be able to avoid finding a pacifier to pop into her mouth. Of course, the problem with this approach has been that half the time, the thing causing her to wake up has been a pacifier lodged under her armpit or something, but we can live with that.

As for the feedings, we're using the Ferber sanctioned approach of gradually cutting down the amount of milk in her late-night bottle. Last night was 2 1/2 ounces, and tonight will be 2. So far, we've alternated between good nights and mediocre nights. Last night was pretty darned fabulous: she went to sleep around 7:30, didn't wake up once until 2:30 am, when she had her dinky little bottle, and went back to sleep until 5:30, when she woke briefly but went right back to sleep until 6:45. This from the baby who the prior week woke up every 45 minutes or so all night!

We did decrease the intervals that the Ferber book suggests: we started out waiting three minutes before going into her room, then upped it to five, then seven, rather than the five/ten/fifteen that the book recommends. But even the book says that the length of the wait doesn't really matter, so long as you continually increase it. Tonight, we're starting with twelve minutes. (And, by the way, twelve minutes have elapsed since Sawyer started crying -- I haven't heard a peep in about eight minutes.)

And while it's not terribly fun to listen to one's baby cry, we feel pretty comfortable that she'll end up sleeping better ultimately as a result. Besides, how miserable could she possibly be, given that she was doing this the next morning?



I think it'll take a little while to get all the kinks out, but I'm feeling good about where this is all going.

Oh, and one quick other note: I haven't seen a raspberry in days. The speed with which she picks up and then drops new quirks is mindboggling. It's like she has a mental checklist: "Raspberries? Check. Ok, enough of that. Rolling from tummy to back? Check. No more of that. Grabbing the diaper wipes container, which is as big as I am, while Mommy is trying to change my diaper? Ok, let's work on that one for the next 48-72 hours, then move on." The attention span of a gnat, that baby. Actually, that's not true -- she has a very impressive attention span on a moment-by-moment basis. It's like an infatuation: all-encompassing for a while, then entirely forgotten.

Out of curiosity . . .

How much cuter does this baby need to be for you people out there to comment?

We've got pouts. We've got bananas. We've got raspberries. We've got froggy towels. How cynical and jaded have you all become??

Hmph.

(10/17 clarification -- I don't need reassurance that she's cute, but just that people are out there reading!)

To Pout the Impossible Pout

Quite some time ago (see June 10, 2003), I promised to continue the quest for the Perfect Pout.

We are no longer tilting at windmills. We have achieved pouting perfection! Voila!



Just look at that lip! Those cheeks! Those big grey eyes filled with tears!

Because I am a rotten person, I sent that picture to Paul at work last night with the subject line: "Daddy come home to meeeeeeeee!" Daddy was not pleased with Mommy. Hee hee.

Oh -- and by the way -- bananas? Wow. Sawyer digs the bananas in a big way. In a spoon-grabbing, lip-licking, mouth-opening-wide-like-a-baby-bird kind of way. I don't know what kind of bananas Earth's Best uses (other than, apparently, the best ones on Earth), but even by my own standards, these are some seriously delicious bananas.



Way yummilicious.

On Raspberries and Bubbles

So the raspberry blowing continues, and boy is it hilarious.

About half the time, she sticks her tongue out the right side of her mouth when she blows, which is just the cutest, dopiest looking thing ever. The rest of the time, there's no tongue involved -- just a lot of bubble blowing. She's started doing it as a crying predecessor, also. She starts getting squirmy and fussy, and then starts blowing bubbles. Which is rather counterproductive, because we all start laughing rather than attending to her fussiness.

We haven't managed to get a picture of her with the tongue going, but here's a general raspberry picture:



She also had some rice cereal yesterday for the first time in a week, and did much better with it than she had been. We'll see if that sticks. I think we'll take a crack at some bananas or something this week.

And Sawyer has been having a magnificent time with her Grandma and Grandpa this weekend. Here she is right after her bath last night:

Signs of the Apocalypse?

This is strange.

After a series of weird crying fits over the course of the evening, Sawyer slept uninterrupted from 11:30 pm to 5:30 am. Not a squirm. Not a sob. Just sleep -- like the proverbial baby who doesn't actually exist -- for six straight hours. Go figure.

Not to detract from the niftyness (when you create nouns of your own, you don't need to abide by spelling rules that change "y"s to "i"s) of the whole thing, but boy, was she nuts during the evening prior to the Six Hours of Sleep! She had zero desire to go to sleep at her normal bedtime -- all she wanted to do was sit on my lap and blow raspberries in my face. For an hour. It was pretty cute. She finally went to sleep around 8, and after a bunch of random awakenings, woke up screaming around 10:50. I gave her a toy to munch on, and went to go warm her bottle. Paul went to check on her a few minutes later and discovered that she'd rolled onto her tummy and was hanging out there. She rolls over pretty frequently these days (although only for Susan, as best I can tell), but this was the first time she'd done it unsolicitedly in her crib. We were amused. She was amused, too, for a couple of minutes, then decided that she'd had enough of all this amusement and it was now time to scream for her bottle. Loudly. And with gusto.

And then she slept for six straight hours!

Grandma Marlo and Grandpa Bob arrive this afternoon for their first visit since early August -- although they've obviously been following Sawyer's progress here on Sawyer's World, I think they're going to be blown out of the water by the changes in her over the last couple of months! (The addition of five pounds being the most obvious one.) It should be an entertaining weekend.

Oh Baby Please Give a Little Respect to Me

Yaaaaaawn. I am very very tired, so will post in list format instead of crafting finely executed transitions.

1. Sawyer's growth chart has been updated with new photo and stats for her five-month birthday -- take a look! (I know, it's not the greatest picture of her ever taken, but give me a break -- it was early in the morning before we trundled off to Sawyer's bucolic Bucks County country home -- read on.)

2. We spent our second weekend in a row in Philadelphia -- this time for my cousin's commitment ceremony. Definitely the best wedding I've attended in a long time. (And the wedding cake was made of Tastykake Peanut Butter Kandy Kakes -- what could be better?) Sawyer was extremely popular with the Philadelphia lesbian population. Although, now that I think about it: who doesn't love a pink ruffled baby in a Bjorn bopping around to Erasure's Respect?

3. No more travelling on the weekends for a while. It's hard to spend the week getting up at 5:30 in the morning for work and then to spend the weekend schlepping a baby and her ancillary paraphernalia off to someone else's house, trying to get the schlepped baby to conform to some skeletal form of her normal schedule (such as it is), all while trying to work in a little quality time with baby and husband. We are just wiped out.

4. I think we may also put the food thing on hold for a while. After a fantastic start, Sawyer's become far more interested in blowing bubbles in the sweet potatoes/oatmeal/rice cereal than in actually eating any of it. Of course, she's also been blowing raspberries on her pacifier, my thumb, and anything else she can get her mouth on -- this seems to be a standard five-month-old-baby kind of thing to do. (By the way, when she blows raspberries on the pacifier, she tends to accidentally launch it across the room. Frustrating for her -- not to mention for her poor hapless parents who need to chase down the pacifier and reload it into the catapault that is her mouth -- but funny as hell to watch.) Anyway, we may put solid food into a holding pattern for a week or two and then give it another shot. Or maybe I'll just give her some bananas tomorrow and see if they manage to capture her imagination sufficiently to warrant some actual munching rather than bubble blowing.

5. We here at Sawyer's World have gotten a lot of hits this weekend courtesy of a very nice shoutout from a fellow U of C Law School blogger, JCA of Sua Sponte. It's always nice to know that people who aren't related to us occasionally get a kick out of reading my ruminations.

6. And finally, here's this weekend's photo -- posted partially because I know that you all like to see pictures and partially because I know it'll send Paul through the roof . . .

For the last couple of days, Sawyer has been underwhelmed with her cereal. Whereas she had been slurping it down like mad, she's been nibbling a couple of spoonfuls and then turning her head away -- that classic "get that spoon out of my face" gesture. So we called the pediatrician just to check in, and she suggested that perhaps Sawyer was bored with the cereal.

Gee, you think that my daughter might be easily bored?

So she suggested that we try something in the fruit/veggies family. And Susan-the-nanny suggested that we try out her highchair, as she's been increasingly dissatisfied with her bouncy seat lately.

Thus we proudly present to the world Miss Sawyer "Sweet Potato Face" Niehaus!

Bomp!

The world is now a better place. Why? Because Alias is back.

There's really only one person who's a more skillful master of disguise than Sydney Bristow. And we all know who that is: Sawyer Niehaus.

Don't Know What You've Got Until It's Done . . . I Had No Idea How Much I Cared

Our internet is back! Our internet is back! Nothing much to say tonight except that our internet is back! To reward you all for reading a whole lot of text with no pictures over the last several days, here's a Sawyer montage:

We lead off with Sawyer in her Phillies hat -- remember, the battle for her soul continues:



Then, of course, we turn to her first experience with the previously discussed gummy liquified rice cereal:



And the requisite Exersaucer shot, complete with flag munching:



And thumbsucking. Have I mentioned the advent of thumb sucking?



And ultimately, Paul and I just have a really scrumptious daughter:

Food Glorious Food

Our internet has been down intermittently all weekend, so I've been unable to post anything until now, and won't be able to put any new photos on until we get our service restored (which will involve Paul getting on the phone with Time Warner to figure out what the problem is, as I have a tendency to get frustrated and shout at the hapless service staff). So you'll all have to wait to see the pictures of Sawyer's first efforts to eat solid food!

(Well, "solid" is sort of an overstatement. What she ate was more of a gummy liquid gunk bearing some vague resemblance to liquified rice. But it counts.)

She's now had two meals of rice cereal -- Saturday and Sunday evenings. The first foray into rice cereal land was rather precarious. Picture, if you will, the following: Daddy holding down Sawyer's right arm, Bubbie holding down the left, Popsie standing in the corner filming, and Mommy doing her best to pour the ricey goop into Sawyer's mouth from a teenytiny little spoon. Sawyer alternately blowing bubbles into the spoon, trying to grab the contents of the spoon with her hands (hence the need for Daddy and Bubbie to be holding her arms down), and slurping away at the stuff, occasionally swallowing and more often dribbling and burbling.

By the second meal, she kinda got the hang of the whole thing. Paul and I were actually pretty surprised at how well she seems to get the concept of eating from a spoon. She opened her mouth when she saw the spoon coming, closed her little lips around the spoon, and swallowed about 50% of the time. I think she'll have a grand old time when we actually feed her something that tastes good.

Speaking of which, the first delivery of baby food has arrived: about a thousand cunning little jars of organic pureed-within-an-inch-of-their-lives apples, pears, bananas, peas, and sweet potatoes. This is going to be fun.

And sleep. Did I mention sleep? Inexplicably, on both Friday and Saturday nights, Sawyer slept from her midnight-1 am feeding straight through until 6 am on Saturday morning and 7 am Sunday morning. This has never happened before. I kinda feel like this was her statement of "Yeah, yeah, Ferberize this!!" I haven't gotten the full report yet as to how last night went (as Paul was the parent on duty), but I gather it went only slightly less swimmingly. A weekend of milestones!

And finally, toys. Sawyer and I spent yesterday afternoon bumming around the flagship Toys R Us store in Times Square. That place is the Mecca of baby toys. To my credit, I had decided ahead of time to limit my purchases to whatever would fit in a single bag underneath the stroller. More to my credit, I actually stuck by that decision. So we came home with a bag full of neat stuff for Sawyer to play with. (Who am I kidding? "Play with" in Sawyer parlance = "eat.")

Feeding her in Toys R Us was a riot: we sat down on one of the handy dandy Dutailier gliders and I pulled out a bottle. What with all the bleeping and buzzing and ringing and lights flashing and humming and whirring of the toys and the wailing and howling and giggling and screaming and laughing of the 9 billion kids whose parents had come up with the innovative idea of spending Sunday afternoon bumming around Toys R Us, Sawyer was distracted into, well, distraction. It took 40 minutes for the kid to slurp down 5 ounces of milk. She spent the whole time craning her neck to see what was going on and smiling at everyone who came to admire her (which, I am proud to say, was pretty much everyone). I tried throwing a little blanket over her head to avoid the distractions (sort of the same theory as putting a towel over a birdcage to convince the hapless parakeet that it's night time), but all she did was stop eating and yank the blanket off her head so that she could continue watching the world go by. It's not just a job -- it's an adventure.

All in all, an exciting weekend in Sawyer's World.

Test Tube Mommy

Lots of people have been asking about my return to the workforce. Some of you are asking just because you're curious and want to make sure we're all doing okay. Some of you have ulterior motives: either (1) you're hoping one day to be able to have kids and successfully go back to work, and are looking to me as a test tube workingmommy of sorts, or (2) you're hoping I'll see the error of my ways, quit my job, and dedicate myself 100% fulltime to the care and feeding of Sawyer Niehaus.

The short answer to the question of how it's going is: So Far So Good.

Right now, the whole return to work has a very first-day-of-eighth-grade kind of vibe about it. You remember the feeling: you go and buy your new pens, pencils, and notebooks, you lay out your first-day-of-school outfit the night before, and you spend the day in school running around looking for your friends, comparing schedules (Oh my God!!!!! We have Social Studies class together!!!!!!), and catching up on everything that's happened since June. Same general concept.

Things are starting to settle down now, and I'm beginning to get some work done. Fortunately, I seem not to have forgotten how to do my job. So that's reassuring. I still don't have a perfect sense of what I'll be doing all day every day -- plugging me back into the system after a 4 1/2 month absence takes a little bit of time. But it's going as well as could be expected.

How does it feel? Surprisingly normal. The only real differences are that I have baby pictures shamelessly plastered all around my computer, and that I try to get done my work and go home as early as I can. But I didn't have a big bawlfest my first day back, and I'm not spending every minute feeling guilty that I'm not shaking a rattle or a stuffed duck (of which there are many -- quack!) in Sawyer's face. I do miss her, but it's also a lot of fun to come home and see her little face light up in recognition. (I have to say, if there was no lighting-up-in-recognition, I'd have to reconsider this whole working thing.) And we had a great weekend, totally dedicated to Sawyer, in a way that I didn't when I was here 24/7.

So -- overall? It's going well. It'll be better when she learns to understand the concept of the telephone, so that I can talk to her during the day rather than just calling in 2 or 3 times a day to get an update from her nanny. But like I said: so far so good.

Hey Everybody, Take a Look at Me: I'm the Cutest Bunny that You Ever Did See . . .

Every once in a while Sawyer has a particularly photogenic day. Today was one of them.

We spent the afternoon at our friends' daughter Dahlia's first birthday party. (As a side note, the trends in babynaming these days are really astonishing. Among the 8 or so babies at this party were Walker, Quinn (a boy -- like the Mighty Quinn rather than Quinn Cummings), Simon, Lauryn-with-a-y, and Owen.) Sawyer wore a beautiful party dress and graced us with the following pensive portrait:



Earlier in the day, in a perkier mood, she gave me my favorite type of Sawyersmile, which is often bestowed upon us but rarely captured on film:



(I have some fun Exersaucer pictures also, but I'll save them for a less photogenic day.)

Rolling Over Is For the Weak of Spirit

So you'll all recall that for about a week, Sawyer was doing a lot of rolling over from tummy to back. That has come to a crashing halt. No rolling. Not from tummy to back, not from back to tummy -- nada.

It's not that there's suddenly been a lack of developmental progress: every day, she holds herself up a little more sturdily, she grabs at things a little more dexterously, she munches on toys a little more exuberantly. She just doesn't roll over anymore.

I have three potential theories as to why this might be the case:

1. She has forgotten how to do it. (Theoretically possible, I suppose.)

2. She's gained so much weight over the last few weeks that she can't do it. (Unlikely, given that she's doing all sorts of holding-herself-up type things, but boy, is she growing like crazy!)

3. She's gotten bored of it: yeah yeah, been there, done that, now give me some more toys to munch and help me sit up.

From everything we've learned about her personality so far, #3 seems like the clear winner. It's no problem if she elects not to roll over, as it's not a necessary prerequisite for any other critical skill. It's just amusing that she dropped it cold turkey.

Who Are You?

We're curious: who's out there?

We've been getting a lot of hits lately, but we're not sure who's reading about Sawyer's escapades. Let us know who you are -- leave a comment! Thanks!

Horsies and Sawyerspeak

So this is it -- my last day of maternity leave!

I spent it in a nice relaxing manner. Paul and I went out for a yummy last-day-of-leave lunch, then I went to buy a back-to-work bag, to accompany the back-to-work shoes I bought over the weekend. (A girl can't go back to work after a four-and-a-half-month hiatus in the same old shoes and carrying the same old bag she left in, right?) Incidentally, here's a picture of Daddy and Sawyer playing horsie -- which she's nuts about -- in the Saks shoe department while Mommy was buying her back-to-work shoes.



Following an hour of post-bag-buying pilates, I came home and chatted with Sawyer for a while. "Chatting" consists of Sawyer jabbering away in Sawyerspeak, and me imitating whatever she says (to the best of my ability). I am curious, though, whether her various voicings actually mean something to her. If so, then it must be really annoying for her to have Mommy imitate everything she says.

Hi Mommy!
Hi Mommy!
I would like some milk.
I would like some milk.
Well, you seem to have mastered walking, so why don't you get us both some milk?
Well, you seem to have mastered walking, so why don't you get us both some milk?
Huh?
Huh?
Ok, forget that. How about you tickle my toes? Or maybe some of that kissy stuff on my tummy and rapidly expanding thighs?
Ok, forget that. How about you tickle my toes? Or maybe some of that kissy stuff on my tummy and rapidly expanding thighs?
Sigh. I'm so confused.

It's tough to be a baby.

It's Good to Be the Princess

Meanwhile, my parents were here fawning over Sawyer today (sans Phanatic), and my dad took one of the best pictures of Sawyer ever. Which is saying a lot, given that we have taken more than 1200 pictures of her since she was born! (Yay for digital cameras and sequential numbering.)

Here it is:



And just to make it a really Bubbie and Popsie experience, I should note that the hat is part of an adorable hat and sweater set that my mother knitted for Das Moose and brought to New York today. It's a cryin' shame that my parents are so unexcited about Sawyer.

Photo session completed and growth chart updated! Click here to have a look.

Lip Smacking Yumminess

Happy four month birthday to Sawyer! New growth portrait coming as soon as I get her into a dress and take some pictures.

So I've now been on maternity leave for four months and one week -- I go back to work on Wednesday. In some ways it's blown by, and in others, I feel like I've been home forever. In any event, I go back to work in six days. I only have about a dozen unfinished projects to get through before Wednesday -- clearly, this isn't going to happen. (Although I did make some good progress on Sawyer's photo album last night, and I'm in the home stretch on thank-you notes.)

Susan and Sawyer are getting along great -- I have a lot of respect for someone who has the patience to play with a baby all day. And Sawyer seems to be enjoying herself as well.

I think she's more or less ready to start eating some solid food (to the extent that extremely runny rice cereal can be deemed "solid," that is). Yesterday, I was eating an English muffin while watching her play. She stopped her activity entirely and watched me eat every single bite. As I finished, she started licking and smacking her lips. It was pretty funny, actually! The plan is to start her on solids somewhere around the five-month mark, but it may be sooner if she keeps up with this lip-smacking yumminess.

Off to pose the bunny for her closeup . . .

And So It Begins

I knew this day would come.

The day when Paul would put Sawyer into a Cardinals cap without warning. And so it has arrived, on a day when I was sleeping in and Paul had full discretion over Sawyer's wardrobe:



I have a feeling my parents may show up with the Phanatic in tow sometime this week in recognition of the fact that the battle for Sawyer's soul has begun.

We're just finishing up a very enjoyable five-day weekend. First, two days of Kim & Paul time spent at the movies, making us perhaps the last mommy and daddy in America to see Finding Nemo (we speak whale!), out for a spectacular breakfast and a lovely tea (it's impossible to be in anything other than a great mood when we're out for tea), and just generally hanging out getting rejuvenated. Second, three days of hanging out with Her Moosiness, watching her roll over and almost-clock-herself-in-the-head-but-not-quite with the totally luxe monogrammed silver Tiffany rattle that our friend Jamie sent from Atlanta.



Not at all surprisingly for a whole host of reasons, this has become Sawyer's favorite toy. But glamorousness of the rattle notwithstanding, as with any other toy, all things considered, Sawyer would rather try to eat it:



(Wow. I just realized: this post is about baseball and the rattle. If this doesn't make Jamie happy and willing to overcome the oogies he got from reading the various nursing crisis posts, I don't know what will.)