Our little girl is growing up FAST!

Not only does she now have 3.5 teeth (almost 3.75 as of this morning), but she’s also become quite a little sleeper AND eater. Wow. All it took to make all this magic happen was – guess what? – mommy got out of the way.

THE SLEEP NEWS

In the 5 days that I was in NY last week for Internet Week while Zoe was in Minnesota, she figured out how to sleep 11-12 hours a night, under the calm and watchful eyes of the Johnsons (with Bart as the ringmaster). I timidly checked in each morning to hear how the night had gone – I left her teething and not sleep trained with exactly enough breast milk to make it 5 days. To my delight, the story got better each day – in fact, the FIRST night I was away she slept 10 hours with only one wake-up to feed. Yes, I was a roadblock.

So of course I was terrified to return to Minnesota last weekend, in case my return broke the sleepy spell. Good news: it did NOT! In fact last night Zoe slept 12 hours straight WITHOUT waking to eat. I know nothing’s permanent, but just a few weeks of this will change our lives… (and hers, I hear!) Apparently sleep is a good thing for babies. Who knew?

By the way, shipping frozen breast milk across the country overnight is quite expensive. No, we clearly couldn’t find an alternative, but I can tell you for sure that 80 oz of milk (about 5 days worth) weighs around 7 lbs and requires dry ice to ship. Ouch. That’s love. So is pumping and dumping for 5 days in a public restroom… Oh, and on the flight to NY I read in Wired Magazine that you can LEGALLY sell breast milk online – without any screening or anything! In fact, business is booming and around $2.50 an ounce is a normal rate for unscreened milk (it costs $4-5 an ounce to buy it from a breast milk bank). Fascinating, right? I have about $35 of milk in the fridge right now, if you’re interested. Though you couldn’t afford the shipping, breast milk solves a lot of problems ;)

THE EATING NEWS

Speaking of eating (breast milk is eating, work with me), during our last trip to the pediatrician we were scolded for not feeding her “everything” (except honey). Honestly, we hadn’t been trying NOT to feed her “everything”, but we just haven’t had a lot of time to cook more things. For example, we wanted her first meat to be REAL meat, not squished preserved mixed-with-who-knows-what baby food meat; so she hadn’t had meat yet.

Well, now she has. And sausage lasagna, and lettuce, and lots of berries (smushed), and cheese, and even peanut butter (yes, it’s ok). She’s an omnivore. She feeds herself by picking up bite-sized bits, yet will also still let you feed her, and she’ll even drink from the “straw” of the organic baby pouches. Yum. Few things make parents look cooler than feeding their baby through the straw of an organic baby food pouch in public ;)

So she sleeps, she eats, she’s almost got 4 very important teeth, she crawls like a champ – oh, and she smiles. A lot. She in fact just loves people (eye contact, smile, wave – we’re working on “Hi”). Whatever we did right in life has landed us this incredible little girl, who Bart’s Dad referred to as “a wonderful baby” this morning. And he’s right.

Needless to say, this trip to Minnesota has been fabulous! Next post = more vacation photos (including a trip to the zoo)! In the meantime, a couple more photos taken by Bart’s brother’s girlfriend (doesn’t “my sister-in-law” sound a lot better, Donovan?) – ENJOY!