Happy New Year!

December 31, 2006 ~ The end of a spectacular year for our family and the beginning of a whole new life. We started this morning with Grandparents 101. We went over Hadarya's schedule, feeding amounts, (6 oz!) how she likes to nap (cuddled close to your chest), and practicing the car seat. We had a wonderful time laughing and giggling as the Grandma's practiced with a huge teddy bear strapping her into the seat, carrying it to the car, and trying to make light of the nervousness that I was feeling going back to work full time on Tuesday.

Hadarya must know something is up or realized that she is now 12 weeks old and decided to stick to a great schedule all day and into the new year. She played as usual in the AM after eating and took a 30 minute cat nap at 8:40 AM. She ate again at the 3.5 hour mark and then cuddled into Grandpa's chest at noon, sleeping for just over 2 hours. (She allowed us to put her down too!) She then ate at 2:00 PM and played and ate again at 5:00 PM. We thought that'd be it for awhile and we'd have plenty of time to make it to our friends for a get together and then she'd eat and go down for a longer stretch.

After her luxurious bath she decided she neeeded to eat again and scarfed 4 oz at 7 PM. This made us late to the party but she fell asleep on the way there and stayed out until just after midnight! We had a huge stretch of time. She woke up happy and ate again at 12:30 AM. We got on the road shortly after that in hopes that we would not be in for a long night. Our beautiful daughter did not miss a beat and proved again to us how amazing she is! She hung out until we got home at 1:30 AM and then laid down in her crib. Within 15 minutes she had fallen asleep and stayed there until 7:30 AM. YEP... we got 6 hours straight. It was delicious!

She then repeated her patterns all day today with a long 2.5 hour nap in the middle of the day, (in which we joined her for some extra zzzz's) and has now been asleep since 7 PM. We are hoping that this lovely pattern stays and we have ourselves a great night again.

Tomorrow I am off to my first day of teaching since October 1st. I am excited, nervous, and anxious. She's going to have so much fun with the Grandma's and I am going to love being back in a structure and routine... but now that she has begun to really settle into a pattern, I am going to miss being part of it and miss playgroups. It will be an adjustment and balancing act that will take some time to figure out.