22 weeks: On the Town

General recipe for getting Harper to sleep: cool, dark room, swaddle, bouncing or walking in Bjorn facing in (course good luck getting her to stay asleep when you're transferring her out), humming or singing softly, ocean waves to drown out the A/C, the construction, ambient noise. Creaky floors optional.

We've found the 'sleep begets sleep' adage is pretty true with Harper. If you get her to nap around an hour & a half to two hours after she gets up, right when she starts rubbing her eyes and yawning, she's pretty easy to get to sleep. She'll even stay asleep after you put her in her crib if you wait till she's dropped off a bit. She might even ignore startling noises early on...after an hour though anything will wake her, even though she needs to nap at least a half hour more.

It's definitely true that no-sleep begets no-sleep. If she doesn't get at least two hours of solid napping in a day, it can take up to three hours to get her to sleep. The bedtime routine is good, but it's not THAT good.

So now that we have the ground rules laid out...let's break 'em! (We all need to get out!)

Harper has been to her first rock concert!
She got the whole director's row to herself. She went back stage. She even passed out. So...technically she didn't meet the band, but they met her.

The Laurie Berkner Band played Town Hall here in NYC. It's an amazing venue. The band has expanded to 4 with Laurie singing and playing guitar, Susie on keys, Adam on bass and Bobby on Drums. It's such a great show. They have a sweet set that has a scrim which incorporates art-work from all of LB's repertoire. After working with Laurie and the gang for 8 years now it was pretty trippy being there with my own daughter. The woman in front of us joked that we were there more for me than for her. I suppose that was true.
Shannon, Corinne and Katie really took care of us; made us feel like VIPs. It's something that I will treasure for a long time.
Hopefully we'll go to another once Harper can sing for herself.

That day Harper also experienced her first picnic in Prospect Park to celebrate Andy's 30-something birthday. Happy Birthday, Andy! Andy and Elizabeth have just decided to move to Denver. Yet another amazing couple leaving us for more affordable housing and an easier life-style. It was a spectacular day in the Park. But we had to get home to get H to sleep by her bedtime. No fair keeping her up while we're trying to work her sleep schedule out.

Since one must take advantage of every sunny day (there have been so few!), we've been getting out a lot more. Harper and I met two new baby friends this week: Dori, 3 weeks old, belongs to Mary & Gene (who used to be a band with me) and Lincoln, 10 weeks old (& survivor of congenital diaphragmatic hernia), belongs to Ashlee (friend from High School) & Jeremy. We also got to meet my mom's tap teacher and good friend, Deb & her husband, Lee.

Dori & Mary

Left: Lee & Deb, Me & Harper (hitting), Lincoln & Ashlee
Right: Lee, Ashlee, Jeremy, Lincoln & Deb

That was an interesting afternoon. Harper sat up by herself for quite a bit. She started to fall forward and held herself up with her hand. She did well being passed around, but started fussing and reaching when I was holding Lincoln. She followed that up with a swat at poor Lincoln when we took the picture. I couldn't believe she could be that possessive!

Aside from that, Harper did very well on her outtings. We always let her get in a good morning nap before we leave for the day. She's not so good at napping on the go, but we try to bump up her bedtime if she's had a particularly busy day. It is still time-intensive to get her to sleep (and recently to stay asleep). I'd say we're about 1/2 way there. But she's definitely getting more sleep and it shows. She's so much happier and can focus on playing and learning.

Now that she's mastered the sitting thing, she's loving to stand and walk the length of the couch (of course, holding on to our hands). She's reaching for toys, hair, anything really (child-proofing starts now!). Her feet actually touch the ground of her exersaucer. She's really wheeling around in the thing; turning herself to whatever toy she wants to play with. She does love to purposely rock the exersaucer back and forth though she doesn't have ultimate control over that big dome of hers. 'Weebles wobble but they don't fall down' springs to mind.