Estelle's new theme song

Mommy and daddy are so excited about some of Estelle's most recent developments, we must share them with all (3?) of her blog readers.

Sleeping
The most exciting news (for us anyway) to share is that Estelle is sleeping in her own crib all night. After reading "The Sleep Lady," we learned how many things we were doing wrong with respect to putting Estelle to sleep -- rocking, walking, nursing, reactive co-sleeping (putting her down in her crib and taking her to our bed once she woke up) in order to soothe her to sleep. In short, she needed us (and all the sleep crutches we had given her) to fall asleep. We decided we weren't doing her any favors -- a growing baby needs uninterrupted sleep during her daytime naps and at night, not to mention establishing good sleep habits now into adulthood. We love the Sleep Lady's advice (highly recommend her book: "The Sleep Lady's Gentle Guide to Helping Your Child Go to Sleep, Stay Asleep, and Wake Up Happy") which acknowledges that Ferber's Cry It Out method feels awful for parents and awful for babies, but that pure Sear's attachment parenting might have her in our bed until she's 5 (which, if any of you know Bryan, was not an option). It also respects how smart babies are. After a few weeks of applying her gentle sleep training methods (and, I'll admit, a couple of hellish nights of no sleep for me) we now lay Estelle down in her crib at 7 pm, walk out of the room and she's asleep with nary a whimper. She greets us (as usual) with a huge smile in the morning. I'm still nursing her once in the early morning -- around 4 a.m.-- which she probably doesn't need, but we both enjoy.

Laughing
While Estelle has been giggling at us for quite some time, she's figured out that she can make us laugh by laughing first. Her newest application of this knowledge has been in the car -- she laughs in the carseat at absolutely nothing, which makes me laugh and gets her laughing ever harder. She is a joy.

New bud
I should have known not to be anxious about Estelle and Darwin (our sweet kitty) interacting. He is her new favorite friend. He seems to more than tolerate Estelle and, in fact, seeks her out. She's more interested in him when he wanders into the room than in any other activity we could supply, including toys, food, books, etc. He patiently sits while her hands awkwardly reach for him. I'm teaching her to stroke, rather than grab, and it seems to be working...she's only pulled out one whisker so far...

Music time
Now that the nursery is fully set up, we listen to music in the morning. To our delight, Estelle loves dancing around in our arms. Daddy has always been particularly skilled at making up his own lyrics (a latent desire for rap stardom, perhaps?), but the other morning we listened to "Video" by India.Arie and it's Estelle's new theme song, courtesy of mommy:

I'm not your average girl from the videos
and I ain't built like a Supermodel
But I've learned to love myself unconditionally
because I am a queen

I'm not your average girl from the videos
My worth is not determined by the price of my clothes
No matter what I'm wearing I will always be
little Estelle Marie