A post on Rolling, Sleeping, & Solids all in one! Oh, and with some Religion thrown in for good measure.

First of all, I want to thank everyone for the kind words you left me re: that last post. I really appreciated reading everything, from the bottom of my heart. Now let's move on to happy things, because this post will be chock full of them!

I guess I'll work my way backwards from yesterday. It's funny that we always remark on how much Gabriella seems to change a little each day, but I swear to y'all, she changed a lot yesterday, in one day! She rolled over from back to front for the first time! We were waiting on this for a while it seems like, because she was on the cusp of doing it for so long, but just not quite getting it. I figured because she sleeps swaddled all the time that it would probably take her a bit longer to reach this milestone. I missed when she did it the first few times because I was at work, but she was happy to do it again for me when I got home! I meant to get it on video, but she was all tired out by the time I got the camcorder out, so maybe today I can get her in action.

So speaking of being tired out, let's talk how she sleeps. The swaddle is officially gone as of yesterday, and she went cold turkey! Yesterday night (4 a.m., so yesterday morning for me haha) I went to check on her and she had gotten her arms out of the swaddle and looked like she was sleeping so comfortably with her arm up by her head. And yesterday, all her naps were taken in her crib, without the swaddle (well ok, she finished one of her naps in my dad's arms for a bit over an hour). So last night she slept so well in just her sleepsack. I thought for sure we'd be swaddling a preteen, so this just baffles me how she just completely gave it up overnight.

Moving on from how she sleeps, let's get into how much. I wrote before about how sleep in this house has been hard to come by. Well, the last couple nights have gotten a bit better. We just have one or maybe two wake-ups to eat and get settled back, which is such a huge improvement. The culprit may just be...

Yep, we started "solids"! After talking to her dr. some more about just how difficult of a time she was having at night he gave us the go-ahead to give her a bit of rice cereal for dinner last week. We gave her the first "meal" on October 30. Here's a little progression of how things went:

Step one - intrigue: "What's this, a bowl? A spoon? A plastic bib?"

Step two - "OK, I got a mouthful, you have my interest."

Step three - "Feeling a little underwhelmed with this soupy mush, ma!"

Step four - "Although on second thought, it's not so terrible."

"In fact, gimme more!"

"Nommmmmm"

She did a lot better than I thought she would! She only lasted a few little spoonfulls, so we then just mixed the rest in with her bottle. The second night was a lot better, as she eagerly chomped on the spoon... 

I guess she was ready! I'm definitely going to take it slow with the whole "solids" thing and leave it at this for a while. I had originally planned on waiting until closer to 6 months, so that's probably when I'll bring in the veggies and all the other fun stuff.

On a blog "housekeeping" note (I'm so overusing quotation marks in this post. I feel like Joey in that one episode of Friends. Oh and I always overuse parentheses. Heh.) I think I'll start posting my pictures larger. I may just like it better this way. Oh and her bib means "Beautiful Face" in yiddish. DH's grandma sent it. His side is Jewish and my family's Christian. Oh all right, I'll address this here. 

I've heard so much about how this can be such a huge conflict in a marriage but it works just fine for us (probably because neither of us is "hardcore" enough to go to a place of worship on the weekends) (oh and there I went with the quotations and the parentheses!). We plan on incorporating both traditions in raising Gabby, so she'll have Christmas AND she'll also get to have Hannukah as well (although we may have to figure out the whole presents thing, because she'll eventually REALLY be able to use this to her advantage!). She'll take pictures on the Easter bunny's lap and scavenge (is that a verb?) for eggs in my parents' backyard, and have passover dinner at her great-grandparents' house too. The most important thing for us is that she grows up with love, and a strong moral foundation, and that is up to us to instill in her.

Phew! I think that's enough info/updates/knowledge for one post. Dontcha "think"? (ahahaha I crack myself up!)