once upon a time...

...there was a beautiful little girl who didn't sleep.

sleep is one of those big controversies in the baby world, right up there with breast vs. bottle, and everyone has an opinion. most people we come in contact with strongly believe children should be put on a schedule as soon as possible and that bedtime should be early. and this makes tons of sense for a variety of reasons, so we tried hard to make it happen. for a while, it worked great. molly wanted to go to sleep around 7:00p.m. and so that's what we did. then right around the time she started to crawl, she also seemed to stop sleeping all-together. it was a battle every night to try and get her down. our normal bedtime routine wasn't working anymore and we tried every trick up our sleeves...we nursed, we rocked, we took baths, we read quiet stories about other babies sleeping, we walked the neighborhood until late at night...but her eyes stayed open and her body kept moving. then when she did finally fall asleep, it wasn't for long. she'd be up again a short time later...and again, and again.

and then by chance we just let her stay up one night, and at around 10:30 - 11:00p.m. she fell asleep on her own. and she pretty much stayed asleep. heaven! so we tried it again- ditto! and even though i desperately miss the time i had in the evening to get a few things done after she went to sleep (i.e. blogging), it's no fun struggling with molly to get her to sleep before she's ready.

i have to remind myself that she's not even one yet, so trying to reason with her is near impossible and we can't make her understand bedtimes or have her read quietly in her bed till she falls asleep. so i am coming to peace with the fact that molly's got her own schedule going on here, and it may very well change again in the future. but for now, we're good. thanks for letting me vent about that, it's been on my mind as of late...

and now on to much more interesting things! molly officially has six teeth (4 on top, 2 on the bottom). she is eating more and more things and sharing many of our meals with us now, in fact last weekend the entire family had pancakes with fresh berries together, it was awesome. she has two freckles (one on her neck, one on her thigh). she is still swimming up a storm (look out Summer Olympics 2024!) and here are a couple pictures of her during her swim class last weekend. the one on the left is her whole class lined up to do "humpty dumpty sat on a wall" after which they all jump in the water. she's in pink, holding the yellow ball.

on dry land, she has moved on to a three-point crawl (both arms in motion, one leg tucked under while the other pushes her around). and when she crawls, she's lightening fast and heads straight for the things you don't want her to touch (dog bowl, phone cord, small sharp thing that came out of nowhere). zero has been doing a major purge around the house, anything he doesn't want her near he just gets rid of, so the house is starting to look a bit sparse, which is actually really nice. and she's pulling herself up to standing with much regularity and is actually playing around with "look ma, no hands!", though it usually ends with her taking a very quick seat.

and after being shamed by the pediatrician for not yet lowering the crib, we managed to do that last weekend and like the picture at the top, here is another shot of her in the crib after pulling herself up to standing. that's our girl!