After reading those articles, I realized that we can't do that anymore. We may be fostering bad habits for her to rely on the bottle to fall asleep and to eat more than what she needs. We’ll have to train her to fall asleep on her own. We tried it before. Sometimes it worked. But most of time it involved cries and guilt. We hadn’t really let her cry out. I secretly wished someday Emily would magically start falling asleep on her own all the time. But from what I read, it won’t happen unless we let her struggle and practice. By being over-protective, we could deprive her of the opportunities to learn a valuable, age appropriate, new skill. Sleep training might be one of the millions difficult situations that we as parents have to discern what is the best for Emily in the future. The best thing we can do is to let her know that we are with her when she struggles to grow - and jump in when she really needs our help.
So Monday was the day that we decided to stop the night feeding and put her down awake every time. Emily went to bed easily before 7:00pm. I rehearsaled many times what I was going to do if she woke up crying: pat her first, then hold her if patting doesn’t work, then 2 oz milk if nothing works (normally we gave her 6 oz at night). No wavering!! … Luckily Emily didn’t wake up until 5:30am. David got up and held Emily until she realized that nothing was going to happen. She went back to sleep. Not bad!!! Tuesday night she wouldn’t settle unless she had 2 oz of milk. I was surprised that she went to sleep contently after only 2 oz without extra holding. Wednesday night she went back to sleep after 2 oz of water instead (which told me that she didn’t need the milk). Thursday night she woke up at around 3:00am. David and I stayed in bed listening what was going on. She talked to herself on and off for about 15 minutes (that kind of cute little girl's whispering voice!). Then she went back to sleep on her own. No cry spills. Yeah!!! By Friday, we were completely confident that she can fall asleep on her own. Emily seemed to have realized that too. She used to cry when we put her down awake. Now she immediately works on putting herself to sleep and she always can within two minutes. She must have mastered the secret of falling asleep. I would asked her what it is if she could speak because I can't fall asleep that fast!!
We are so proud of her for this big milestone! What a joy to see that she gains confidence in herself too! The whole process was so smooth – actually we thought it was too easy because we expected a couple of long crying episodes. There were times that 2 minutes crying seems to be forever. But we were glad that we didn’t jump right up and pick her up. That could be harder on Emily and on us in the future. Now Emily is an even happier baby because she doesn't cry at all when we put her down in bed awake. She cries less and smile more in other situations too (which we suspect the result of her gaining confidence). We are truely blessed with such a calm, contented, smart, sweet, and beautiful daughter!! Here is a picture of Emily - As soon as she rubbed her eyes. I carried her to bed from the play station. When I checked on her two minutes later, she was sound asleep. Go Emily!!!
Emily had her first fall yesterday. I put her at the edge of the bed while I sat on the floor to pick a birthday card for Fang. She normally sat pretty well and she didn't move much. So I was flipping through the cards and asked her:"How is this card? Do you like it?" Suddenly I heard "Peng" and I realized what had happened. She fell off to the ground probably when she leaned over trying to see what was in my hand. She cried with tears. I was scared and picked her up. After much poking and twisting, she seemed to be fine. Little Angels were watching for her! No broken bones or bruises! I held her for extra love and promised her to be very careful in the future. She was as happy as she used to be.
We've been having hot tiles in the master bathroom and hearing the Siii water sound for a while. It turned out that our hot water pipe broke. We hired a plumber and it costed $1500 to fix it.Joey has been studying with David every weekday morning except Wednesday. We are constantly encouraged by how far he comes each day. Last week he asked David to teach him how to pray since he wanted to make wise life decisions. This week he told David that he talked to his girlfriend in Taiwan about Christinality and God. He is going back to Taiwan for the summer vacation. But before he leaves, he planned to read a couple of Christian books during the vacation. Yesterday he took a CFA test. He emailed us that he was much more confident after he said a prayer. He is such a nice guy with a tender heart. We know that God has special purpose for his life. We are glad that David's reader Hongyu and his wife Sandy came to church today. I wished we could go out for lunch together. But Emily looked sleepy and it was her nap time. We hurried home and she took a good two hour nap.
Summer officially starts this weekend for many families who have school kids. Several of my co-workers already mapped out the vacation plans. My boss is going to take vacation next week. Below is a picture of what happened in our group a few years ago when she took a vacation (we took a group picture and added a Miami resort background then sent it to her :-)) … I wonder what will happen this year.
Emily has been having stuffed nose for the past several days. She was so cute to sniff her little nose trying to clear the congestion ...
Here are Emily reading the Chinese-English picture book
This is a video of Emily working on her arms. She hasn't crawled yet. But it seems that she's trying.
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