Introducing... Chaya and Anjali: April 2012

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Sewed a mei tai carrier!

Chaya and daddy

Mommy and Anjali

I've been using my wrap that my mom sewed me a lot to carry the girls.. But with all that fabric wrapped up all around me, it gets too warm to wear here in the summer time. I've heard lots of good things about the Asian-style baby carriers, called a mei tai. Found an easy sewing pattern online and decided to sew myself one and I e for Prosanta too. Got some nice fabric at the store, and got to work. Here's what mine looks like. Haven't made Prosanta's yet, but he tried mine in the back carry position. The girls sure seem to enjoy it!

Mommy and Anjali

Daddy and Chaya at the park

Halleluia we can sleep!

We finally broke down and decided to do "cry it out" with the girls.. That is, when they wake up and cry at night, after 10 minutes of crying, we go in there, pick them up for a minute to comfort them, then put them back in their bed and leave. We were always nervous about doing it before and worried about letting them cry so much. I kept hoping they would somehow start to magically sleep through the night without us having to do anything. But that sure wasn't happening, in fact they were getting worse, waking up multiple times a night, sometimes refusing to go back to their crib, therefore ending up in our bed. They almost always woke up an hour or two after going to bed too, sometimes every hour before 12am.. Which was a little draining not to mention really testing our patience! It's a lot harder to be patient at night!

After reading books and many websites about sleep, and speaking to people about it, I came to the conclusion that cry-it-out seems to always end up working, but it can be difficult on the parents, because you have to listen to your baby cry and not go to her immediately, which is basically what we had always done. But one day I just decided that I had enough of all this broken up sleep, babies in our bed, and breastfeeding numerous times a night. We gave up pacifiers a few weeks ago, so when they woke up I basically ALWAYS had to breastfeed them for them to go back to sleep, which was very draining physically and mentally! So I told Prosanta we would be letting them "cry it out" and I wasn't going to nurse them at night anymore. We knew they weren't waking because of hunger, since they sometimes did sleep all night.

So that was that. First night, Chaya woke up a few hours into the night and cried 30 minutes, we went in every 10 minutes, and she eventually went back to sleep! Anjali woke up a few hours later, we had to change her poopy diaper so it woke her up, she cried about 45 minutes. And they both slept until past 7am the next morning!!!

The second night we didn't have to go see them because they fell asleep on their own before the 10 minutes were up. Each of them has slept through the night a few times too! We are so excited about this, we can finally sleep!!! Chaya is still sleeping in a pack n play in another room, we will move her back in her crib once they don't wake up as much.. Really looking forward to both girls sleeping through the night most nights, in the SAME room!

Anjali sleeping on her new elephant pillow (early birthday present from mommy and daddy)

Chaya sleeping folded in half, resting her head on her feet.. she napped like this for over an hour!

Monday, April 23, 2012

Grand-maman visits Baton Rouge

My mom came to see us and stayed a little over 2 weeks. Prosanta was going away for 5 days, so she was partly coming to help me out while he was gone. She had a great time playing with the girls, and getting to know them better now that they're older and lot more interactive. She could definitely tell them apart after a few days, and noticed how different their little personalities already are. We had a great time together, and I really appreciated having her here to help me with the girls, to cook delicious meals, and to help around the house. My dad couldn't come, he was too busy with work.