Today was a first. Evelin had a one-day conference up in Pennsylvania (the same meeting as last year's Schtadtleit mit die Amischen adventure), so I took the day off from work and hung with Celeste. While I've been doing the two-afternoons-a-week thing since January, and other stray parts of days here and there, this was the first time Celeste and I have had a full waking-to-sleeping day alone.
Celeste's waking time coördinated well enough for her to get in her breakfast nursing before Evelin had to leave, but the rest of the day was up to me. To placate several friends at work, I'd agreed to bring Celeste in around 9:00 a.m. It worked out pretty well in that I remembered to bring some toys and her diaper bag. The only problem was that I forgot she usually has yoghurt, oatmeal, and some fruit (usually applesauce) around 9:00 a.m. ... and I forgot to bring food with us. I realized about half way through the commute.
While it did yield some tongue-clucking from mothers/grandmothers at the office, things worked out. Celeste and I just ran to Trader Joe's (it's across the street from my office and opened just as we were getting there) and picked up a four-pack of applesauce with berries, a small full-fat ΦΑΓΕ yoghurt, and bag of mini-bagels.
She ended up eating her breakfast in front of an audience that ranged at any given moment from three to six people, wowing them with her ability to push away the applesauce and to demand more yoghurt.
After some walking around the office to visit various people, she sat in while the marketing director and I tried to sort out some changes for the 2006 media kit. (My publisher in Italy had some changes that we we're immediately sure how to accommodate.) For the most part Celeste was pretty good, until she pulled over some files, started gnawing on a videotape, and spit water on the floor a few times.
We didn't end up getting home until later than expected, and I had to fight to keep Celeste awake. As soon as we got home, she hit the crib and was out for about an hour and a quarter. The rest of the afternoon went pretty well, but that short nap caught up with her.
Also, since she wanted sleep more than anything else, she missed her normal pre-nap dose of milk, saving it for when she woke. That meant she didn't have her (solid) lunch until around 3:45 p.m. (after we got back from making groceries), and by 4:30 p.m. she was hugging her stuffed lamb and leaning over like she wanted to go to sleep.
As we were headed from Whole Foods to Giant, Evelin called to say her meeting was breaking up early, so I was working to keep Celeste moving through the afternoon. Plus, if I'd let her go to sleep at 4:30 p.m., she'd have thought it was a nap and would have ended up staying up way too late.
In the end, she headed to the bath around 5:30 p.m., and Evelin walked in the door pretty soon thereafter. Celeste got to nurse instead of having a bottle before going to bed, which was probably a good thing, giving her her normal sleep cues.
Thinking of sleep, Evelin and I are back to trying to get her onto a better schedule/sleeping through the night or at least only waking up once. We'd been doing pretty good with her, but a fever, teething, and Montana really messed her sleep up. Since we got back on Monday night, Celeste has been waking as much as seven times a night, so starting Thursday night, we're working on letting Celeste try to self-soothe some, especially early in the evening, and I am going to be the first responder during the night. (If she sees Evelin overnight, she thinks it's time to nurse, even if she just nursed an hour ago.) Last night she did pretty good — she did need to nurse at 2:00 a.m., but otherwise she either managed to get herself back to sleep within five minutes or I was able to calm her to sleep.
Of course, since I just blogged this, we're probably in for a rough night.
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