The days are warming up and that means one thing for Rylie! Trips to the park!!! I love taking Rylie there and riding the swing with her. On this particular day Youkeun was able to come with us, so he whipped out his camera to take some shots.
Rylie is an observer and I love this shot because it captures that very essence of her personality.
I love her feet and how she curls in her toes.
I love that her toe nails are cut crooked because she didn’t want to sit still.
I love that she finds joy in sucking on her big toe.
I love that she likes to scratch the wall with her toe nails and makes hair raising noise, except it’s music to my ears.
but man… those little suckers smell at the end of the day
I love how her feet smell after a nice bubble bath.
Although Rylie likes playing with her toys, she soon becomes bored of them. While I was drinking water one day, she became very interested in my cup and didn’t want to let go of it. I didn’t want her to play with a glass cup, so I gave her a paper cup to see if she would show the same interest in it. Well, from that day forward, she plays with a paper cup once a day and it’ll keep her company for a good 30 minutes! Youkeun and I like to spice things up a little bit for Rylie, hence the video clip.
Youkeun told me yesterday that Rylie wouldn’t let him drink his YoCool and gave an angry growl when he tried to take it away. We tested it today and boy did Rylie let her growls be heard…
Rylie is definitely being more vocal these days. When she wants us to help her stand and walk, sleep, just plain bored, or want to be held, we hear her “Ugggh’s!!!” loud and clear.
We can’t wait until Rylie is better, so that she and daddy can ride on the swing together. I was able to take her to the park last week and she absolutely loved it. Another place that she enjoyed was the playground inside the mall. She was smiling the whole time and wanted to be near the other kids. When they came near her, she would smile and want to touch them. We even practiced walking on the turtle and surfboard. I tried to sit her in the boat, but her legs were too short to touch the ground. We’ll have to wait a few more months for that to happen.
Our Rylie is sick right now and it’s the saddest thing seeing your little one trying to breathe through a stuffy nose. I noticed that something was wrong on the night that Youkeun came back. I was so thankful that she was ok while I was taking care of her solo for 6 days because I would have had a breakdown. That night she kept waking up crying and I wasn’t sure why. When I put up the monitor’s volume, I could tell that she was trying to breathe through her stuffy nose and started coughing. She wasn’t able to settle herself down, so I went in and used the saline spray and aspirator to take out the snot. When Youkeun came back from Hawaii, the first thing he had to do was take a trip to Walgreens and purchase a Vicks Warm Steam Vaporizor. We put it in her room, but we thought the smell was too strong and ended up taking it out after an hour. I think I only got 2 hours of sleep that night just monitoring her.
The second night went well after we purchased Vicks Soothing Vapor Plug-in and it seemed to work it’s magic. Rylie slept much better than the night before. When I went in the morning to get her, I was shocked at what I saw and did a double take. Her left nostril was completely plugged with hardened snot. Luckily, she was able to get in some air because the hardened snot was somehow loosened and was flapping away whenever she took a breath. She also had hardened snot on the side of her face, her hair, her eyelid, her forehead… basically everywhere imagineable on her face. I then checked her mattress cover and I wasn’t suprised to find hardened snot all over.
This morning, Rylie woke up at 4:30am with a pretty bad plugged nose and wasn’t able to go back to sleep. I wasn’t able to suck out the snoth with the aspirator, so I called Youkeun in for our last resort. Johanna once told me that her brother in law had to suck out the snot with his mouth, so I asked Youkeun if he could try it. He was a little hesitant and scared, but he finally did it for Rylie. Unfortunately, nothing came out, but I could tell Rylie was little shocked that daddy had his mouth over her tiny nostrils. She was so still and her eyes looked so big looking at him. Our doctor advised that we can use baby rub on her, so I think we’ll try that tonight.
How have you helped your baby get through the night with a stuffy nose?
I recently came upon this site called, How Fast They Grow and have been creating digital scrapbook pages for Rylie. It’s so convenient and the best part of it is they allow you to share your pages with your family and friends! Here’s what I have made so far.
We took this picture right before leaving for church on Sunday and I love Rylie’s expression. It looks as though she is in deep thought and her tiny little fingers are so cute 
! Her hair is slowly growing out and I can’t wait to start putting ribbons in her hair. It’s funny how I look forward to doing girlie things with Rylie and how Youkeun looks forward to playing sports with her. It’ll be interesting to see if she’ll grow up to be more of a girlie girl or a tomboy. So far, she’s physically strong (like me), but I can also tell that she has a senstivie side (like daddy).
We finally did it!!!
Thanks to all the encouragement from moms and also mustering up all the courage inside of us, we started sleep training Rylie yesterday. We originally planned to start after our Hawaii trip, but that meant a few more weeks of me carrying our 17 pounder to sleep. The determining factor was when I had to carry Rylie for her afternoon nap for one hour and I just couldn’t do it anymore (physically, mentally, or emotionally). It just happened that Youkeun purchased a video monitor yesterday, so out of my exhaustion I suggested that we start. We did our whole night time routine and as I put her to bed, the crying already began. I kept reminding myself to look at the bigger picture. As Youkeun and I looked at the monitor we couldn’t help but giggle a little. Before the video monitor, we only imagined what she was doing in her crib and sometimes used our own imagination. Now, we saw her tossing and turning, sticking her fist into her mouth, her legs kicking every which way, and fingers scratching the bumper to soothe herself.
We did our first check in 5 min after the crying began, then 10 min,… then before the 15 min check in time, she magically fell asleep!!! I was prepared to go for an hour, but she fell asleep in just 24 minutes! Youkeun and I looked at each other shocked and asked, “You think she’s still breathing?” We started hearing her heavy breathing, so we knew we were in the clear.
We were also successful in all our naps today and I’m currently writing my post after putting Rylie to sleep (it only took 9 minutes tonight.. wow!!!). I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m a proud and relieved mama!
I was also thinking about starting to wean her off of her 2 night feedings, but last night, she slept for 12 hours straight with no feeding. Maybe I can finally get my ZZzzz’s.
Today I got an hour massage from James because my back has been killing me. The main reason is probably because Rylie likes me to hold her while walking to fall asleep. I have to do this for all her three naps plus when she goes down for the night. I’ve tried semi-tried sleep training, but found it almost impossible to let her cry it out, so I’ve given up. As a result, James had to work on all the knots in my back. I felt so bad, but it was such a treat for me.
To any parents out there with advice:
1) If I keep holding Rylie to sleep, will that be the only way she will go to sleep? How long does this last? (I don’t mind, but I’m just afraid my back won’t be able to take it as she gets heavier and heavier.)
2) Did anyone experience their child fighting sleep when it’s their nap time? Rylie tries to fight it in my arms which involves squirming and crying. What kind of methods did you use that seemed to help lessen the sleep fighting?
3) Is there any other method that worked for you in putting your child to sleep without letting them cry it out?
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