Committed

Yesterday, my little family and I participated in the Parent Commitment service at our church. The service is designed to be a time where parents can publicly commit to raising their children in a Godly home and teaching them about Christ. It turned out to be a really nice evening. The following was read by our Pastor when my family was introduced to everyone:

Jayla Tamia, meaning Ascending Spirit, born August 24, 2005

Her verse:
Isaiah 40:13 - but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

The verse was actually chosen for Jayla by the church. We were given an option to change it but, I really, really like that one for her, especially in light of her initial hospital stay.

So, in leiu of a baptism for babies, our church has this service. My husband is still very adamant about getting Jayla baptized soon. He hasn't figured out when or where or what in the world we will tell Jayla when our church basically teaches against baptizing babies that "cannot make a choice for themselves".

In other news, my parents were here this weekend to attend the service with us. We also went to Fogo de Chao to celebrate my mom's 50th birthday, which is coming up on Thursday. We had an AWESOME time!! Jayla slept through the entire dinner - has no idea that we ever even went.

Routines

To get home from work, I take one of the major Houston freeways out of downtown. When I exit the freeway, I turn left to get to my house. Since I've been back to work, I've had to turn right after exiting the freeway to go pick up Jayla. Every afternoon when I leave work, I think of nothing but her until I get to her. Well, yesterday was slightly different. For the first time since I've been back, I exited the freeway and turned left to go straight home. Of course, as I was actually making the turn through a yellow light, it dawned on me that I had forgotten by baby for the first time. I immediately turned around to go get her. I think that must mean that I am finally comfortable back at work and getting back into the groove. So much so that for that brief moment while I was turning left, I had forgotten how drastically my life has changed in the past 4.5 months. I don't feel bad about it, rather excited that I do have the ability to have a life that is separate from my child. As a special treat, when I walked into the room to pick up Jayla, she looked up and made eye contact with me and broke into the absolutely biggest grin I've ever seen:



Speaking of routines, Ms. Jayla woke up last night at 3:19am. That made about the 5th night in a row that she has woken betwen 3:00am and 3:30am. The routine goes something like this:

1. Jayla screams
2. Mommy kicks Daddy to wake him up
3. Daddy goes to Jayla's room, shoves a pacifier in her mouth, holds her head down (because otherwise she flings the pacifier out so that she can continue to scream), and she immediately falls asleep within 30 seconds.
4. Daddy comes back to bed
5. Jayla awakes at 6:00am (as she is supposed to) for breakfast

Well, last night I decided to help Daddy out because he is noticably more tired than I am this week. So, I did the routine this morning. She woke up at 3:19am and I was back in bed with her fully asleep by 3:25am.

But, I'm thinking that we are going to have to break her of this. I don't know why she feels the need to do that. I'm wondering if we should let her cry through it a little bit to see if she can put herself back to sleep. We haven't done it on a weekday just because it's easier to go to her room for 6 minutes then go back to sleep. But, maybe tonight. We haven't had to make her cry for anything yet in her life but, this is obviously an issue because she does it like clockwork...hmmm...

A Lifesaver...

Thank you Orajel!

Just for Lucy

Today I returned to work after being off since December 22 for the holidays. After my morning pumping session, my friend/co-worker, Lucy, gave me a hard time about not doing a better job of updating my blog. So, since I'm back at work, I guess I have no excuse. I promise to do a better job of updating.

Now, where were we? Yes - we left for Christmas in Mississippi on Friday, December 23. We drove (~7.5 hours) and I must say that Jayla did a good job in the car. I wasn't really too worried about it because I knew there was no way that the trip could be any worse than our attempts to escape Houston and Hurricane Rita back in September. We stopped to change Jayla's diaper and let her look around at different scenery twice. When we got to my parents house, we saw Jayla's first gift. My mom bought Jayla a swing and repainted the ancient (circa 1950's) bars in her yard and hung it on there. My mom was raised in that house and the swing has always been there. But, the bars had been empty since my parents moved there back in 1998. I loved seeing a new swing there - brought back so many memories of when we used to go to Mississippi when I was growing up (we lived in North Carolina then and would just go to MS on holidays). We would hang all over the bars and the existing swing and now Jayla's going to get to do the same thing!...eventually...



Jayla had a huge Christmas. Gifts galore.



She also finally rolled over on Christmas day. We put her on her tummy (which, by the way, she does not scream bloody murder anymore when we do it) and she just rolled over as if she had been doing it all of her life. She also discovered her thumb while we were at my parents house. It has not yet replaced the pacifier but, it did help her go to sleep on her own at least 3 times over the holidays.

The day after Christmas, we headed to Hot Springs, Arkansas for the rest of the week. It was another long car ride for Jayla but, she handled it well again. Hot Springs really is a cute little place.



We generally just hung out. But, my mom and I did go get a bath on Wednesday morning. It was an awesome experience. We headed back to MS on Friday and then back to TX on Saturday. That was the limit to Jayla's patience in the car. I think she would have gone crazy had there been another road trip in her future.

We brought in the New Year with a bunch of friends from our Sunday School class. Jayla was a doll at the party.



Around 11:00pm, we shut her in a room by herself and kept listening for her to scream - she never did. After staring around at the strange room for about 45 minutes, she put herself to sleep with no fuss. That was a welcome event as Jayla had some difficulty sleeping while we were in Arkansas last week. I'm pretty sure it was just because she was in a strange place - oh, and had her grandparents spoiling her 24 hours a day. So, everytime she woke up, she screamed for someone to pick her up instead of trying to put herself back to sleep.

Okay, I think that brings us to the present. I have made several goals for this year. But, I don't think I'll post them here yet. This post is already long enough!

Working Mom

Go ahead and label me because I've been doing it for a full week already. I started back to work last Monday. The transition has not been nearly as hard as I imagined it would be. Jayla's ability to basically sleep through the night now has done wonders for making this an easy transition. Plus, her day care is absolutely awesome! I am loving it and she seems to really like it too. Of course, the day care teachers absolutely adore her which leads me to believe that she must be behaving herself nicely throughout the day...which can only mean that they are meeting her needs - who could ask for anything more? On top of all that, I am pumping adequate milk during the day at work and leaving about 45 minutes early to nurse her in the afternoon/evening. It's almost too good to be true.

I noticed a few changes in Jayla during her first week of day care.

1. As I've mentioned before, her sleep habits are great. She had a hard time napping at the day care at the beginning of last week so, she passed out in the evenings. But, I think she's doing a better job of sleeping during the day now even with so much going on around her. At night, she's going down pretty easily between 10 and 11, usually. Then she wakes around 6:00 - 6:15 in the morning. It's not even a biggy if she wakes a little before that. For instance, this morning, she woke up at 5:30, I swaddled her, gave her a pacifier, and we slept together for another hour before I got up to feed her.

2. She's decided that she can sleep just fine without being swaddled, thank you very much! When I dropped her off at the day care last Monday morning, I was worried about her ability to nap without being swaddled and was giving the day care teacher instructions on how she needed to be swaddled. Ummm...maybe not...that night, we decided to try to put her down without swaddling (mainly because she punched out of it as soon as we did it and her daddy was tired of wrestling with her). She slept fine for 4-5 hours and then swaddled to finish out the night. So, we've been putting her down unswaddled for a week and she is doing great. She basically shows major displeasure if we try to swaddle her now (unless it 4:00am - if she happens to wake in the middle of the night, she loves it and drifts immediately back to sleep). We thought we were going to go through some major drama when it came time to stop swadding her. The little girl weaned herself.

3. She basically feels the need to chew and suck on anything in view except for a teether!!! She needs to have something in her mouth...her fist, my finger, the little bumble bees on her carseat straps...anything!! I think this has alot to do with not being swaddled anymore. She seems to want to suck on her hands all the time and she apparently realized that this impossible if she's swaddled. On Thursday night, she finally discovered her thumb. But, just that once - it hasn't made it into her mouth since then. She's sticking to the full fist for now. At the day care on Friday, she spent all day sucking/chewing on a doll's arm. So, Saturday, we went and bought her a lovey. I think we'll give it to her for Christmas and see what she thinks of it.

4. I think Jayla is learning/has learned her name!! She used to not respond to her name EVER. Then on Wednesday night, she responded in three different instances. I guess it's because the day care teachers use it. I usually call her, "mama's baby, pretty girl, girly, etc..." So, a couple of days of hearing her name and she's starting to recognize it, I think.

So, last week was full of developments. I was so worried about how all of this would play out but, it has just been absolutely perfect so far...

Jayla has her 4-month appointment tomorrow. I'm anxious to see how big she has gotten. I guess we'll also be talking about starting to introduce her to solid foods soon. I'm thinking sometime in January as she's approaching 5 months old!!