12 hours of sleep!

We are truly blessed as Isabel is such a big girl now. Since we have freed her from her swaddle and her sleep blanket, she is actually sleeping better - 12 hours of sleep straight without any crying! Wow. I guess she has been trying to tell us she can do it now and it took us a week to understand her.

She looks so at peace and cute in her crib when she sleeps. She loves sleeping on her stomach and sometimes with her butt up. It looks so comfortable for her. I am so happy and can't believe how grown up she is now. In the middle of the night if she wakes up, she doesn't cry and simply crawl a little to another spot and sleep again. She also doesn't cry when she wakes up in the morning. She just simply start climbing the sides to stand up and either look to see if Agnes is up and look towards the door to see when we will come in to say good morning.

How lucky we are! Morale of the story is don't fret and let sleep happen naturally. Eventually they figure it out.

- Lei

8 months old and unswaddled

Happy New Year! Isabel turned 8 months old yesterday. She is almost 18 pounds and about 28.5 inches tall. It's so fun to watch her grow, play, and make sounds right now. Everything to her is a delight - especially anything electronic like remotes, cell phones, clocks. I guess she will be a geek like me. :-)

Also she has finally broken free of her swaddle at night. We had modified her swaddle two months ago to be on a larger sleep sack. That worked well for awhile, but for the last week, she has been breaking free of it and waking up screaming. She is so strong now that she can flip over with her arms swaddled or she would just break free and start standing up on the crib even though her feet are in the sleep sack blanket. We got scared that she would trip over her own sleep sack while trying to stand up, so we bit the bullet yesterday and took out her swaddle and her sleep sack.

We were bracing for a rough night, but I guess she has gotten old enough to sleep without help. Of course she cried for 20 min, but she was able to stand up and then sit down and then go back and forth without falling and finally fall asleep on her tummy until 8:30 this morning. We just hope this will repeat again tonight. Keeping our fingers acrossed.

I guess there is a reason people say a baby can be swaddled up until 8 months old, because after that they are so strong, it's no use to keep restraining them anymore. We hope this time the sleep training will not take two weeks. will keep you posted.

- Lei

Good Morning Isabel

Isabel slept 11 hours last night from 9:30pm to 8:30am and she is 12 weeks old today. Wow. Time flies. Every morning when Isabel wakes up, I say "Good Morning Isabel" and she smiles at me. Jaime and I both love loosening her swaddle as she immediately raises her arms to stretch. It's so adorable. See for yourself ... :-)

-Lei