Night owl

No, Erin's not the night owl, that's me and I'm usually in bed by 9:00 these days. However, compared to Erin and Matt, I'm burning the midnight oil!

We continued to have some trouble with Erin and her sleep for many nights, however things seem to have taken a positive turn over the last few nights and we are all resting much better again. The weird thing is that she's started skipping her third nap of the day and that leaves her ready to call it a night at 6:00 - 6:30. This gives us lots of time in the evening to play around the house if we are quiet, but we don't have much time to play with her and it makes it downright impossible think about going anywhere for dinner. It also leaves me wondering if I should get ready to eat at 5:30, or risk cooking after she's in bed and eat at 7:30. I was telling Gramma Beth about this all tonight and she just laughed. She reminded me not to over think things too much because nothing lasts and this is likely just another passing phase. Always good advice.


Matt is recovering from Neurosurgery and seems to think that he should head to bed about an hour after Erin. You can do the math, but it means that I am spending my evenings trying to be very, very quiet.


Now that Erin is well rested again, she is the happiest baby. It is so easy to get a smile from her and she spends her days laughing at random times. We put her in her Johnny Jump-up last weekend and she loves it. She's not real sure about the jumping thing yet, but she loves to be standing upright and spinning herself around. Unfortunately the only doorway that it can hang on is the one to the bathroom, so she's spending a lot more time in that room than ever before.


Erin has finally decided that my singing is a step up from silence. It's taken awhile to convince her, but she has stopped screaming whenever I start singing. Now I'm singing to her before her naps during the day. But I'm afraid that in addition to my poor voice quality, my repertoire is very limited. We usually sing the same two verses of "you are my sunshine" and "Clementine" over and over again. Maybe we'll take this month to learn a few more songs.

Erin had a great time this weekend meeting her second cousins. Claire and Ellie are Matt's cousin Dan's kids and they are 17 month old twins. They drove up from Omaha for the weekend so Dan and Ann could go to the Vikings game while Jan, Dean and I watched the girls. Man, twins are tough. There just never seem to be enough hands and that was with a few adults around. I'm not sure how people manage it. Erin got a kick out of watching the girls toddle around her, it won't be too much longer before she'll be joining in the fray.

In other exciting news, I finished my month at St. Paul Children's. It turned out to be a great month with only a few irritations (my puke of a medical student, my constant attachment to my breast pump and Erin boycotting sleep). But while I enjoyed myself a lot, I am so glad to have a few weeks to myself now. So now I'm loving my time with Erin, catching up on sleep and tackling silly jobs like cleaning out the kitchen cabinets. I am thrilled to have the time to spend just goofing off with Erin and on insignificant jobs. Next weekend Erin and I fly out to Portland to reconnect with family and friends. I can't wait.

Erin has her 4 month check up tomorrow. This means more shots for her, but I think that she'll handle them ok. It'll be fun to see how much she weighs these days, she certainly seems to be getting big. In fact she seems downright sturdy. I saw Anders last week and he still seems so tiny and fragile. It's hard to believe that Erin was that size just a short time ago.