Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Happy Birthday Elise!

Elise had a wonderful first birthday! She was so happy through her party and loved eating her cake! We had a great group of friends and family celebrating with us (though she missed the Aunts and Uncles who couldn't be there). Enjoy the pictures and video of her starting into her cake. I meant to upload the video of her getting sung to, but I must have selected the wrong one.

On another note, the weaning is going much better. I made a few adjustments that worked well. I stopped trying to give her the bottle where I normally nursed her. I also started giving her the bottle earlier rather than right before she was going to sleep. She cries herself to sleep now - about 10-15 minutes of crying - hopefully that amount of crying will get less and less as she gets used to a new routine.




















Monday, November 10, 2008

Arg.

Well, the weaning process continues to be a frustrating one. The last two days, Elise has taken the bottle fine, but then just refuses to go to sleep for her afternoon nap afterwards. Today, after letting her "cry it out" for almost a whole hour, I broke down and nursed her. Ten minutes later, she was asleep. Was she not full? Or did she just really want to nurse? I don't know.... Tomorrow she is at daycare in the afternoon - she usually takes a shorter nap there, but they manage to get her asleep somehow. We'll pick back up trying on Wednesday.

Anyway, here are some cute pix from this weekend. Elise has also taken to waking up earlier than she should be up, so on Sunday, Wes took her to the couch and slept with her. I guess she is just having some separation anxiety issues or something. Anyway, it resulted in an adorable picture. And, I realized I can turn my pictures to black and white on my camera, which I thought was pretty cute for this particular shot.

The next two pictures are Elise in her winter coat/hat/gloves for the first time this fall. We were getting ready to take the dogs for a short walk.

The last pictures are before church on Sunday.




Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Weaning

So this is a little more personal than my usual post, but I need help from any of the more experienced moms out there. I decided that this was the week to start weaning Elise. I really didn't think she'd have a problem because she takes a bottle regularly. However, I was wrong.

I started replacing her afternoon feeding with a bottle. She'll take the bottle to a point, then she starts screaming and rooting. I've tried just putting her in her crib and letting her cry to sleep, but she's not full, so she just cries and cries.

I wasn't prepared for weaning to be this emotional struggle, but it is!

Anyone have any successful weaning tips?