Busy Little Legs

Miss Etta Rose has some very active legs. Her whole body likes to be active & animated, but it is her legs that I notice the most.

She is an active nurser. Her upper leg & foot always explore the territory around them - which is mostly my shirt, bra & body.

Putting pants on her takes numerous attempts: once we successfully get one leg in, as we move on to the second she gets the first out.

Those things seem fairly normal though. What really got our attention was her Houdini like ability to work her legs out of her pants & pajamas. This first happened when she was wearing footed PJ's that had snaps instead of a zipper. We came in to find that she had kicked her legs out through a gap between the snaps. So her snap-up pajamas got retired quickly. Then she manipulated her legs out of the leg-holes of a zip-up pair or two. In the mornings (or wee hours) we found her with her knees bent & up at her stomach, legs out of leg-holes, feet criss-crossed into the  opposite leg of the pj's (not sure if you can get the mental picture based on that description). So then we made sure that we did not put her into pj's that she was still growing into. We were putting her in her most snug 2 pairs - so snug that they fit her when she is wearing a disposable diaper but not when she is wearing a cloth. No luck! Little busy legs still gets her knees up to her chest. Now I would not have a problem with this except for the fact that she is not a happy camper when she wakes partially at night and finds that her legs are stuck criss-crossed.

So last week I walked with the girls to Fred Meyer to buy new pj's for her. I could find no girl-colored two-piece pj's in less than 18 month size. There were some 12month boy 2-piece pj's on the clearance rack though, so that is what she got. She does not care what they look like. Addie likes that they have cars or alligators on them. Matt & I like that, so far, they have stayed on her body. She does look cute in them. Then again I think all babies (& toddlers) look cute in their pj's!

I am curious as to whether sleep issues in infancy are precursors of what is to come... because Etta also screams in her sleep. I am not sure what sleep-stage she is in at the time, but almost every night & almost exactly one hour after falling asleep at night, she will scream. No scream is pleasant but this is a pretty high-pitched and intense scream. Thankfully it does not last long & she requires no intervention from us. Sometimes it is just this one time, other nights it happens again an hour or two later. We are used to it, but it was quite unsettling at first. 

But in good sleep news, she is sleeping through the night!!! Before our Vancouver/Boise vacation we had tried to switch her from 2 to 1 nursings a night. This did not go well at all. There were a lot of rough nights. Probably we did a few things wrong, most importantly that we were not consistent. Some mornings she would wake at 5am and I would nurse her & put her back down just so I could attempt a little more sleep. Some nights we tried skipping the first (10pm) nursing, then when that did not go well a few nights in a row we switched to skipping the 2nd (2am or so) nursing. Being inconsistent probably confused her - she can not tell time on a clock & probably was angry that sometimes she woke & got milk but other times she does not. But switching from 2 to 1 worked for Addie as far as I can remember. So that made Matt & I wonder if she was just really strong-willed & stubborn because she knew eventually we would get exhausted & I would nurse her. So we gave up on this after a few miserable weeks. We decided vacation was not the ideal time to have her screaming for hours at night. When we returned from vacation, I was really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed. Instead I slept downstairs in the office/guest bedroom with earplugs in so that I did not hear her at night. (I still heard her, it was just much less intense) After a few nights of no night nursing she caught on quick and is now doing great (minus the pj/leg issue) at sleeping through the night. She wakes earlier now, which is annoying because I really liked the steady wake/nap schedule she was on, but as long as it is after 6am it can be morning. 

So there you have it: Miss Etta Rose is my smiley, happy, sleeping-through-the-night sweety with active little legs!