First Christmas
We kicked off the Christmas season by taking Lux to NRL's Holiday Party. There, Susan and Lux were able to meet Gia & Jaida for the first time after having followed them online throughout their pregnancy and beyond. Jaida was born just a couple of weeks before Lux. Then, we got to show Lux off to the rest of the people in my office, many of whom hadn't seen her since the summer.On the 20th, Grandma Paula and Grandpa John came for a short visit before heading back to LA for Christmas. They had a great time playing with Lux and even got to babysit for her while Susan and I went out shopping. This was only the third time we have used a babysitter of any kind, but it worked out very well. We will need to get a regular babysitter soon because otherwise we can't go out to dinner very easily for a couple of reasons. First, Lux sits up well now and is very grabby so anything that gets near her ends up in her mouth or on the floor which isn't really appropriate for most restaurants. Also, we are working hard at getting her on a good sleep schedule which means she needs to go to bed between 7 and 8 pm. If we take her out to a dinner or party she does OK but we then pay for it by messing up her sleep habits. We also let Grandma Paula practice putting Lux down for her naps and that went smoothly as well. With all the people around and Lux working on her schedule, we decided to stay in and cook for all of our meals instead of going out to restaurants as we often do with visitors. Having the baby really does change what you can do, but that is fine since we love to cook anyway.
Lux has outgrown her infant car seat, so we read a ton of reviews, Consumer Reports, and book and then auditioned several car seats at the store and ended up buying the Evenflo Triumph 5 which is very comfortable, fits well in our car in both size and color and costs half of what we were expecting to pay for the Britax.
For Christmas, we had Aunt Karen come over for our big Christmas Eve dinner and then sleep over so we could have our usual family Christmas in the morning. Lux and I got up early and played with her stocking in front of the tree while the older girls got to sleep in some. Lux managed to gnaw through the wrapping of one of her presents and loved grabbing for ribbons and other bits. The tree was surrounded in tons of presents. Everyone was extremely generous giving to Lux, so she had lots to open and play with. Some things were even more interesting than the box they came in! :-)
After a couple of early season snowstorms, the weather has been sunny and reasonably warm (40s to 50s) so we have gotten to take Lux's new jogging stroller out several times (thanks Grandad Dan and Grandma Janie!) I thought we might have to wait until spring, but the plastic rain enclosure on the stroller makes a perfect shield from the wind and Lux usually naps for the whole walk, except when we stop at the park to play on the swings.
Lux has become a superb eater, now having 2-3 meals per day with a grain cereal and some sort of squashed up fruit or vegetable. So far she seems to enjoy carrots, squash, and sweet potato but so far just grimaces and spits out banana, apple sauce, and avocado. We'll keep trying things as we go on. Grandma Paula and Grandpa John got us the food grinder attachment for our mixer for Christmas so we can try grinding various fresh foods for her. But so far since we don't quite know what to expect, we've been using the jars of baby food and saving the empties for later use with stuff we prepare.
The biggest issue we've been having is with sleep. Lux has been taking her 2-3 naps each day just wonderfully and going to bed very easily at around 7pm. But she is typically waking up about twice a night, and not in that groggy half-awake state that the books describe, but eyes-wide open and screaming. We think it might be a growth spurt since she seems to be very hungry each time and usually goes right back to sleep once she is fed. We're a bit conflicted because we don't want to get her in the habit of nighttime feedings but she seems totally unable to go back to sleep until she is fed, even if we let her cry or comfort her for a long time. She has even been waking up around 10pm seemingly in anticipation of her dream feed which we had normally been doing at 11pm or later. According to our measurements she is up to about 27 inches and 15.5 lbs, be we'll get the official stats at her 6 month visit on January 12th.
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