better together.: 24 hours with Our Two-Month-Old.

Myra is two months old today! And that means it's time for another 24 hour post. You can read the one-month version here. Again, these post aren't necessarily a "typical" day (is there such a thing?), but at least it's a random snapshot into one day at this age. Crazy how different things are now from a month ago! This day was a little more relaxed-because we didn't have to leave the house and probably because she's a month older, too. Sleep is going much better as long as our ducks are in a row (you'll see...). Some of the tenses (past tense/present tense) may not match, but I'm not going to go through and fix everything. I typed all of this into my phone as the day went and that's what you get. This time I tried to get some photos throughout the day, too.

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1:03am Myra crying, go get her, change diaper

1:10am nursing, she passes out, I try to burp her but no luck

1:26am put Myra down asleep, she tosses and turns a bit while I sneak out

1:32am me in bed waiting for Myra to stop grunting so I know I'll be able to stay asleep once I go to sleep. You may think I'm nuts for waiting up for that reason, but we have had some wild nights of constantly getting up as soon as we get comfortable back in bed, so it's worth it for me to wait a few minutes until the coast is (more) clear so I can actually relax and fall back asleep.

1:45am not sure I'm in the clear yet but I'm going for it; I'm tired.

2:24am wake up to Myra crying, give her pacifier to see if that helps. Nope, so I try again. It still doesn't help so I pick her up, burp maybe?

2:36am clearly the problem was that Myra had a big poop coming. I let her get it all out then undo her swaddle and change her giant poo diaper.

2:49am rocking Myra back to sleep even though I probably shouldn't but that poop had to have woken her up pretty well and the sooner she sleeps the sooner I sleep. I should not do these monthly posts-the last time she filled her pants in the middle of the night was for the one month post.

3:04am put Myra down, she wakes up a bit, give pacifier and she falls asleep

3:10am I'm back in bed, no grunting from the nursery this time so hopefully I can get to sleep quickly

4:58am Myra wakes up, I go nurse her.

5:07am burp her

5:12am put her down

5:15am I'm back in bed, hopefully get some more sleep, talk to Trevor for a minute-he's getting up since his alarm will go off soon.

7:43am I wake up, hear Myra making noise but leave her to entertain herself for now

8:24am we both dozed off, now I'm up listening for Myra again

9:02am I hear Myra, go in to get her, change diaper

9:14am nurse

9:28am hang out and look around for a bit, get Rowdy breakfast (late!), get my breakfast ready

10:03am pump and eat double oatmeal breakfast while Myra is in bouncy seat

10:21am Myra started to freak out while I was pumping, I tried to comfort her while connected to the pump, didn't work, finally done pumping and get her changed and down for nap

10:28am take care of pump parts and package up milk for donation (I keep some, donate most, still have 300oz in the freezer from when I was on Motrin that can't be donated)

10:38am wash my face and brush my teeth

10:44am go play frisbee with rowdy

11:03am inside, stuff diapers (cloth diaper post coming soon to explain!)

11:21am sit down to relax with iPad, water and pop tarts until Myra wakes up (probably soon?) when I should be in the shower instead

12:10pm Myra awake, nurse

12:26pm diaper change with a little naked time

12:38pm play time. Myra is getting good at stick-out-your-tongue-copy-cat. We're using as much sign language with her as we can. I just looked up how to sign "sneeze" because she does that a lot. We also use Spanish when we can. It will be fun to see how she picks up on it. We did a little tummy time but she doesn't love it so we just try to do it more frequently and hold her so she isn't always on her back.

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1:13pm put Myra down for another nap. She has the hiccups so we'll see how this goes.

1:20pm checked on Myra, she's asleep

1:26pm lunch time for me

2:04pm put laundry away

2:16pm Myra awake, diaper change

2:27pm nurse

2:42pm trevor gets home earlier than usual for a Thursday, no physics lab today!

2:49pm Myra kind of blah, plays copycat with trevor a little but acting weird

2:52pm big loud poop, that explains the mood

2:55pm done pooping I think, diaper change

3:05pm Myra dozing off during diaper change so down for another nap

3:30pm I finally decide to shower

4:05pm get the mail. I love getting mail, probably why I'm pretty good at sending it, too. We got a birth announcement from some friends today. Their littlest dude shares a birthday with me, kind of fun seeing my birthday paired with "2013."

4:10pm some quiet time before Myra wakes again (a little more of this than last month, I'll take it!). Trevor is sick so he is resting in our room.

5:34pm Myra is still asleep, but Trevor got up to do some homework. I'm geeking out on my new favorite baby sleep site (Troublesome Tots) and catching up on some blog reading.

6:27pm holy crap-wasted too much time and Myra has been asleep for over 3 hours now. Time to try for a peaceful wake up. (PS I won't beat myself up for the extra down time today-I probably should have taken a nap but didn't so we'll call it a wash.)

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6:39pm that wasn't so bad (even got some adorable yet weirdo wake up faces), diaper change and some naked time

6:47pm we FaceTimed trevor (he was downstairs doing homework) and suckered him into coming up to visit.

6:56pm nurse

7:18pm done nursing, girl was hungry, time to get bath ready

7:28pm in the tub

7:40pm out of the tub, naked time on a towel on the floor. Girl has about a thousand neck rolls, trying to get them dried out is tricky.

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7:53pm get her pajamas on then swaddled, nurse to top her off while trevor heats up leftovers. I know I said these posts may or may not represent a "typical" day, you get what you get, but I feel the need to point out we rarely eat supper this late. Myra's nap going late and trevor being sick and wanting to rest made for a little bit of an off night.

8:01pm Myra down, still awake, hoping she falls asleep while I eat, trevor has to get back to homework so he can rest up and get better! Again, not quite typical, we usually make it a point to eat supper together.

8:20pm I'm done eating. Myra's room is quiet, other than that beautiful noise machine we've got in there. No news is good news, right?

8:25pm wash my face and brush my teeth

8:40pm bedtime running around (change from sweats from the day to pajamas for the night haha, take vitamins, fill up glass of water, etc.)

9:05pm in bed putzing on iPad

9:15pm trevor done with homework woo hoo!

9:35pm sleepy time

11:26pm Myra awake, diaper change then nurse

11:46pm Myra down to sleep, but I noticed the motor on our 5 day old swing is hardly working so now I'm pissed and hoping that doesn't mean a crappy night ahead of us... It's almost midnight so you all won't get to witness the horror if that's the case ;)

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Technically, that's where the 24 hours ends, but I have a couple things to add. First, you read that correctly, Myra sleeps in her swing. Most things you read will say that's not safe, but I don't want to hear it. If you have something to say about that, you are more than welcome to come put my baby to sleep and keep her asleep. Also, there are some "experts" who say it's just fine and actually very comforting for some babies to sleep that way in the early months. And, of course, any expert will say that a baby who doesn't sleep and has a crazy mommy who can't get any sleep isn't healthy either, so we go with what works. We've tried it all, putting her down a little awake (works great in the swing though, by the way), swaddling arms out and in, the Fisher Price Rock & Play, rocking her to sleep then putting her down very slowly, I've even rubbed her head til she's asleep then taken my hand away one finger at a time as to not disrupt her. For all of these methods, she is awake within 40 minutes every single time. Trevor's mom even came and tried two nights in a row when he was gone for a week. But in the swing, I can put her down drowsy but awake and she falls asleep and stays asleep until it's time to eat again. She'll go to sleep about 8pm, up between 12-1, back down quickly, up again about 4-5, back down quickly and wakes up around 8 or 9-easy. We did get a swing that fully reclines as to prevent her from slumping over and cutting off her airway.

My second addendum here is the rest of the swing fiasco. Thank goodness the 24 hours was over or I would have said forget that very quickly. The swing we got plugs in and has batteries so even if the power goes out, Myra will be able to sleep, but we won't spend our entire savings on batteries. When I went in at 11:30 to feed her last night, I noticed the swing wasn't swinging nearly as much as it should be and the lights on top were flickering. Before we bought it, I read reviews and there were quite a few that said the motors died, but I figured people who had something to complain about were more likely to write a review and we hoped for the best and bought it anyway. So, when I saw this last night I knew it was bad news. We have only had this thing for five days and it's already happening??? Anyway, like I said above, I tried everything last night and nothing worked-I was either up with her or literally in and out of bed until 4am. There was a crying meltdown moment in there, too. I felt so helpless. The poor girl needed to sleep, so did I, but nothing else was working. I even tried pushing the swing myself until she fell asleep then slowly stopping, but she woke up every time. I could get her to sleep easily, but she would not stay asleep without that swing moving. Finally, I thought, maybe it's the power cord that's broken, so if I unplug it we can let it run on batteries for the night. I unplugged it and there was no change at all, lights still flickering, swing still barely moving. So, I thought it must not have been running on the power cord in the first place, but rather using batteries all along and they're dying. There was a shred of hope, so I woke Trevor up to help me figure it out. I meant for him to help me figure out the power cord, but he went right to changing the batteries (good move after all). We had a toy with 4 D batteries, so I got that for him to put in the swing while I pushed it to keep her sleeping. TA-DA!!!! (Side note: ALWAYS know what kind of batteries your kid crap has and ALWAYS have more on hand, we've learned that lesson twice in the last week) So, by about 5am we had everything figured out and we were all sleeping peacefully. Myra slept until about 9:30 this morning and is probably a little screwed up today from not sleeping so great last night, but we all survived. I looked at the swing instructions today and it turns out we had it plugged in wrong. There are three cords coming out of it and we had the power cord plugged into one of them and didn't think much about the other two. If we had read the instructions we would know that we had the power cord plugged into the wrong spot and the other two left needed to be plugged into each other (ridiculous, I know). So, our swing is fully functional and we're back in the sleep business!

High five if you actually read all that and are still awake...I hardly am ;)