eight months is kind of kicking our butts
August 24th, 2011
This little punk is in the thick of the eight-month sleep regression. Basically, her brain and body are in overdrive, learning and perfecting new skills like waving hello,
crawling,
pulling herself up,
and standing.
Not to mention all the teething that’s been going on.
Clementines make good teethers. Also limes.
With a nod to Jen.
Her two top teeth and two more on the bottom are working on poking through her gums, too. They haven’t popped through yet but we’ve been able to feel how swollen her gums have been in those spots.
And then of course there’s the fact that we just got home from three weeks in California and Oregon, which means she’s three time zones off schedule. And we’re back at home with our cats (exciting!) and all the toys that she hasn’t seen for ages (whee!) and all this familiar furniture she’s apparently been dying to pull herself up on for ages because as soon as we set her on the floor that’s what she immediately does every time (ZOMG being vertical is AWESOME!1!!).
There are many, many reasons for her to be having trouble sleeping easily and peacefully right now, is what I’m saying. But that doesn’t make it any less frustrating to live through.
Last night, after three hours of me and Troy taking turns trying to gently parent Elliora to sleep—rocking, back-patting, nursing, walking, singing, etc.—we gave up and brought her out to the living room to play happily with her toys while we watched TV, exhausted. She went to bed with us an hour later.
Tonight she took a one-hour nap at 8 o’clock, fooling us into thinking maybe she was going to sleep better. Hahahaha, what suckers we are. She woke up at 9. Around 11 we brought her out to the living room to play while we caught up on White Collar. (Do you watch? We love that show. It seems to get better every season, doesn’t it?) She managed to keep herself awake and relatively happy till 1:30am. That would be 10:30pm PDT, which would still be at least two hours later than she ever stayed up when we were on vacation.
Babies, man. They’re so unpredictable. At least my babies are when it comes to sleep. Oh well. It won’t be too much longer and she’ll be sleeping peacefully again, I’m sure. By then I’ll probably be spending my days chasing her around and cursing our lack of child-proofing, wishing she were still trying to figure out how to stand up.
Subscribe to this blog's feed
Omg! Thanks for this post! My 8 month old who was a great sleeper until a few weeks ago started waking up at night – I will now blame the 8 month sleep regression! Thanks!
Ugh, my eldest had a similar regression period, although I think for him it hit a little earlier, around 6 months. He’s almost 18 months now and sleeps like an ANGEL, thank God, I’m so bizzy trying to soothe our new arrival (4 weeks today) that I think I’d kill myself if neither were sleeping! Hang in there! :P
Oboy. Well, I’m just going to remind myself that it’s just that somewhere in the next _seven_ months we’re going to have some mostly-unbroken nights for our new boo to regress from.
Fun times, though. Very cute.
Is that an Amby hammock? We have one that we bought for our first. She was colicky, though, and wouldn’t stay down in anything, and in our sleep-deprived state we found a Moses basket much easier to put her down in and pick her up from. By three months she was much better (and too big for the basket) and we moved her to a large cot.
I like Annalie’s tweet about the tooth. Glad to hear the earthquake didn’t cause too much havoc!
She’s getting so big! That’s such a fun age, when you are not totally sleep deprived. Hope you guys get some rest very soon.
BABIES! (Love the tooth shot.) Preston’s been a night owl lately, too, so he’s been watching 24 with us. And I’ve been nursing him to sleep for naps because of his teething (and because he’s 20 lbs and after a while rocking him to sleep HURTS!) and he’s gotten used it and now it’s hard to get him to sleep any other way (although if I sit right beside the swing as he falls asleep, he sometimes does it that way).
I can imagine that when you’re learning so many new things it would be hard to sleep! I’ve kind of just accepted that my house will be a disaster until all three kids are grown and gone (although most days it drives me near insane).
(Liliana saw the first photo of Elliora and asked, “IS THAT ME?!”)
Oh. My. God.
ADORABLE.
The sweet little pic of the budding tooth really got me.
She’s a little spit-fire, keeping you and herself on her toes!
(-:
Up til 1:30? Boy, Elliora sure knows how to party it up. I can’t even imagine… or I’ve managed to forget. Yeah. probably the second one.
I had a bad sleeper from day 1 through 4 years old, so I feel your pain on not getting any sleep! Hope it’s all back to normal soon – and also I LOVE the photo of the clementine. So sweet.
It is always something right? She is going to be a blast in college! And standing?! Really?! Already?! I am shocked that she is 8 mos. old. I know that my kids age, but don’t expect anyone else’s to. Hope you are all sleeping like newborns again soon.
Oh my goodness, so precious. I love that bassinet type thing, I think Apple would have loved that.