21 Weeks

It has been an awesome week!

Isla's sleep schedule is rocking my world. Our new approach of getting her down before she shows signs of being tired is working wonders! She wakes up between 7:30 and 8:30 AM, goes down for a nap between 9 and 10 AM (pretty much exactly an hour after she wakes up) for about an hour and 15 to 2 hours and then again between noon and 1 PM for another 1-2 hours (yesterday, she had a 2 hr and 15 min nap--her personal best!) She'll often take a short snooze (30 min) at around 4 PM and then I try and keep her awake after 5 PM. She goes down for the night between 6:30 and 7:30 PM (on the earlier end if she doesn't have a late afternoon snooze) and then doesn't wake until 4:30 or 5 AM. I'll change her diaper, feed her and put her back to bed until 7:30 or 8:30 AM. I know this lovely routine will not last, but I'm going to enjoy it while it is here!

I created a homemade white noise machine (courtesy of I-tunes and a CD player with a "repeat" function) that we started using this week while Isla sleeps. Our place is small and so she was waking up at 5 AM to the sounds of me getting ready for work. I'm hoping this will fix that! 

We have a good routine for puting Isla to sleep now. She likes her room dark and we've gone back to swaddling both her arms (she wasn't using the unswaddled had to soothe herself which was our intent). I'll give her a binkie, hold her for about a minute, sing or hum to her and then lay her down. She falls asleep quietly on her own (without crying!) on most occasions now. Sometimes she'll let out a couple cries a few minutes after puting her down (because she spit out her pacifier). Sneak in and give her the binkie and she's out. I've also learned that if she cries 40 min to an hour into a nap, not to get her up! Most of the time if she is given her binkie again, she'll sleep for another hour. 

Isla successfully reached out, grabbed and pulled her elephant toy that hangs from her carseat yesterday (it bounces around and makes a humming/vibrating noise when pulled). She did it repeatedly so I'm pretty sure it was intentional.

She just loves looking at herself in the mirror, case in point.

Isla is also really getting into books, even ones that are written in German! And no, she is not flipping you off, despite appearances (wish I would have noticed that BEFORE I finished our photo shoot and she got cranky...)

Other favorite forms of entertainment include toys that make sounds and/or light up.