E.A.S.Y. as Pie

I bought The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems based on the reviews of the book and also because Baby Dufour said it was working for her Ethan.

Now, the whole premise of the book is to get the baby on a routine, not really a schedule, since we aren't locked into time slots here, and it's basically a 3-hr rotation (sounds like a schedule to me, but I'm open minded). Basically, the baby follows a pattern.

E- Eat (~30 minutes)
A- Activity (20-45 minutes)
S- Sleep (1.5-2 hours)
Y- You (parent) time during the sleep cycle

It says the earlier you start, the better the results will be. Today was the first day of monitoring Drake's current habits. Man, what a terrible day to pick! He has been fussy ALL day. He slept pretty much all of Tuesday (Dad was home) and from 5 am on- he would not allow me to do anything. I couldn't feed him, change him, or get him to sleep. Finally I managed to grab a cat nap around 2 pm and then my grandma came over around 4:30 and let me sleep until 9:30. When I woke up, Drake wanted a bottle and then he fell asleep, grandma left, and I fell asleep too. Bliss.

We will try again tomorrow. Part of this whole E.A.S.Y. thing is I am not sure if he is getting enough to eat now, we discovered one bottle nipple he couldn't get it fast enough and the other type it was too fast. The Goldilocks nipples we had before were disposable, so I may have to go on a hunt for other nipples. Also, I'm out of diaper creme, and now his ass is red. Fantastic. I've been using Vaseline. But tomorrow, Brian is off, and I am soooo getting out of the house and going grocery shopping/errands. Grandma said she would come over to baby sit while we get some "us" time. I am so thankful to her for wanting to come over so often, it's a bitch of a drive from her house to mine.

Ugh what a terribly long and exhausting day.

Brian took the car in to the auto shop and they ran an estimate. $2,000 to fix it- or it's totaled- depending on how the insurance company chooses to look at it. If they decide to fix it, we pay our deductible. If not, well we hope they give us enough money from it being totaled to pay off my car loan. I owe just over $2,200 on it. Then we would need enough money to buy a new car. Ugh. I don't really know what to do. We have a few options of course, but it all depends on what the insurance company says. We will know in two days.

Brian's on Dragon Duty now- Drake was screaming all day and finally, mercifully, passed out and seems to be in a deep sleep. Brian fully undressed/changed diaper/scrubbed poo off of legs & bum/redressed and moved the baby with out him waking. I can't help but be slightly jealous- why couldn't the baby do that for ME?- but mostly I am just relieved to have some peace and quiet. Poor Brian, he worked 8 hours today and when he comes home, I'm passed out on the futon and only woke up because I had a few hours of work.

We tried to do a "dream feed", where you don't wake the baby, but feed them while they are mostly asleep... and that didn't work out so well. Drake started sputtering and coughing and spitting up the milk (but not waking, of course) and then once he figured out it was a nipple, started sucking but not swallowing... basically using it as a pacifier.

Clearly, I need to read the rest of the book first before I try to put the practices into play, but it certainly doesn't hurt to chart his behaviors.

And that's all the exciting news from baby land. I was so flustered today, I didn't even take any pictures. Also, my iPad battery died.