I may post some more serious photography to my photography site this evening. It just depends on how motivated I am. I also plan to make popcorn and watch a taped episode of CSI that was deemed, "too scary for Kara."

I have a Tivo, which makes this really easy. I don't know if you heard, but a similar company was challenged in California because the entertainment industry claimed that there is some implicit contract in watching TV, and Tivo's allow you to skip commercials and even pirate the show. Can you imagine? So they actually won a court case (overturned by a higher court) to have the Tivo-like devices monitor your viewing habits as a prelude to controlling them to make you watch commercials. When asked, the spokesperson for the industry acknowledge that it was kindof OK to make an exception to go to the bathroom.

This is really annoying, because it is another example of the entertainment industry fighting to preserve a standard that is slipping away, rather than trying to find alternative ways to deal with it. I mean, it's perfectly within my right under copyright law to make a copy of CSI for personal use, and if I personally decide to skip the commercials, well, tough luck Hollywood.

I got the latest Katherine gallery up this evening. Kara's out watching the Ya-Ya movie with friends, and so is out for a late night. It's very liberating having Katherine Ferberized, because now, after I put her to bed, I actually have time to do things.

But she was really a fussbudget tonight. Kara thought she should take a nap around 6ish. I was just going to keep her up, but I took her advice and put her down. She cried for about 10 minutes, and then slept for 45. Then she woke up in a foul mood (wonder where she gets that from?), and cried for the next hour inconsolably. Finally, I fed her about 7:30ish, even though she wasn't due until 8. She ate a little, and her mood got better. So I went through the whole routine, bath, reading, etc. She ate a bit more before bed, and went down around 8:45.

We have a house-guest tonight, so I had to spend a half hour clearing out the guest room, which had become the "junk room". It was filled with books, clothes and other miscellany from when we redid the study. Anyway, it's nice to have it done. It's one of those things where you suck it up and do the work and then say, "wow, I have a really nice guest room!"

Hey, I got pictures today.

Most of my experiments in Florida were a bust, particularly those on print film, which I got back today. But, as usual, some of the ones I thought would be unremarkable are really nice, and some of those that I thought would be brilliant are dull.

I'll post one on the home page tonight, and then put together a new gallery for Katherine hopefully tomorrow night.

Well, Kara went out to dinner with a friend, so I had Katherine all night. I fed her (or, I spooned food all over her face and bib), but she wasn't that interested in eating. Still, I went through the motions, because we want to get her in the habit of eating real food. Then we played for awhile, and she really surprised me by making some movements that are in the direction of crawling. YIKES!

She rolled over onto her stomach, and then grabbed the towel we have on the floor over the carpet with both hands, then pull her little butt up in the air, pulling her legs in, then pushed off with her legs. My, my, it's only a matter of time before she's scooting all over the house.

I also tried to give her a level 2 bath in the bathtub with a special baby chair, and that went very badly. She got very upset as soon as I plopped her in, and started screaming. This was strange, because she generally enjoys bathtime. I'm not sure what happened, but it must have been the change in environment, and maybe the fact that the faucet was facing her, and it was louder. Anyway, I'll let Kara worry about it tomorrow night. We can always go back to the kitchen sink.

Bedtime went OK. I fed her, and then we played a little bit, and I read to her. She seemed a bit more interested in the books tonight. I mean, she seemed more interested in the contents on the page, and the sound of my voice. She's always interested in stuffing the books in her mouth, and she did that too a bit. But well before 9 she got grumpy, and so I turned of the lights, and sat with her. She started to fall asleep, and I put her in her crib.

When I got in the chair, I gave her the, "lovie". This is a "transitional object" that we are using for her as a comfort device. It's a soft stuffed animal. She didn't really acknowledge it when I gave it to her, but when I put her down, a really interesting thing happened.

First, she didn't fuss or cry. She moved around a little bit. The lovie was lying at her side on top of her arm. She then grabbed it, and rolled over, and fell asleep right away. It was really, really cute. That's the first time she's shown any affectation for the lovie, and it was really sweet.

So Kara missed a big night. First inclination of crawling, and first real bond with the lovie.

Here's a few random tidbits for tonight...

Katherine update: she's taking so well to Ferber that Kara and I are practically kicking ourselves for not doing it sooner. As I mentioned, you have intervals in which you are allowed to comfort her when she's crying, but she must not fall asleep while you're standing over here. The intervals increase each day, so you start at 5/10/15, then move to 10/15/20, then 15/20/30 and so forth. Today was a 15 minute day, but she fell asleep in like four minutes. There was one other brief interval of crying before the 15 minutes was up, and she's been down ever since. In fact, she was so tired, I put her down about 10 minutes early.

Her naps have been going OK. She's been falling asleep for naps using the Ferber method, but she doesn't sleep as long as we'd like, and so she's really tired by the time 9PM rolls around.

Tomorrow night, Kara is going out, so I'm on parent duty to put her to bed. That'll be interesting. Kara's also going out Friday night, and works on Saturday, so I think I'm earning some points to do some things for myself in the upcoming weeks.

We've also booked a trip for Kara and Katherine to go to Washington State in July. My sister in law has just had a baby girl, and Kara's going out to help/commiserate and generally check it out.

On to a totally random topic. I sometimes go for a walk during lunchtime at work, and the photographer in me keeps thinking about this scene at the end of the driveway to my office park. There is a cherry red sailboat up on blocks, with a cherry red car next to it. Both don't appear to be in use, although they are not damaged, and the boat has enough gloss on it that you can see the car's reflection in the boat. To make it even more interesting, they are both right next to the railroad tracks. There's got to be a picture in there somewhere. It's an interesting opportunity to practice composition skills, I guess, I just don't know when I can actually take a picture. I guess I should bring my Nikon with fast film, so I can do it without a tripod. Yeah, that'll happen soon. We'll see.

I'm picking up Florida pictures tomorrow, so there should be many, many web site updates over the next week. I'm also having prints made from some of the more interesting of the two rolls of slide film I shot while there, and so those should be up next week. There's a couple of cool shots there too, but I'll probably put them on my photography site.

One more Katherine thing, and then I'm done for the night.

We are now done with Katherine's pacifier. I don't have a problem with pacifiers, although Kara and I both agreed that we'd prefer to wean her off it around 1 year. Although we don't want to be judgemental about it, we've seen some very old kids with them, and it just doesn't feel right. Now, there are many reasons why those kids may have had them, and I don't want to speculate. However, the way we're approaching it is that Katherine shouldn't need a pacifier as a vice, or comfort object as she grows.

With the Ferber method, we can't use a pacifier, because she can't always replace it in the middle of the night, so we stopped using it at night, and then during the day. It's very nice, actually, although it's only been a day. There were only a few situations where we used it - in the car, and when she got fussy, primarily. But it can be habit forming for the parents in that you can get into a rut of just sticking it in her mouth instead of trying to engage her in some way.

But today went fine, and we have no plans to reintroduce them.

So why did we choose Fort Lauderdale for our vacation? Well, we had a really great time in Anguilla last year, but since we now have an infant, we chose Florida for two important reasons, both of which turned out to be really good ideas. The first is quite simply that it is a direct flight from Boston, and didn't require layovers and plane changes and forth. The second is because it's the good 'ol U. S. of A., and if we needed formula, or health care, or anything like that, we'd be OK.

This turned out to be very helpful in two ways. First, at one point we needed binky clips, and some new toys, and so forth, and so we ran out to Toys 'R Us Kids on Memorial Day, and scored. We also bought a stroller umbrella, which is really cute, although not as useful as I'd like.

The second thing was that I pulled an Eldredge with my meds. I carefully put my prescriptions in one bottle, and the over the counter stuff like Advil in another, and then left the prescription meds at home. But, I was able to stop by a Walgreens in Florida, and just buy a weeks worth of meds. That's brilliant, although a bit pricy.

Tonight's Ferber episode went fantastic. I did much of the one hour bedtime routine, including a level 2 bath, the bottle, and putting her down. She cried for three minutes before she was asleep. Unbelievable. She woke about an hour later, and cried for another three or four minutes, and has been down ever since.

We still haven't gotten a handle on the naps. It's hard, especially if you have to drive anywhere, because she has a tendancy to fall asleep in the car. Kara did put her down using the Ferber method for her first nap, but she woke up halfway through because she was hungry, and her feeding time rolled around. The next time, Kara will time it better to make sure the nap doesn't collide with a feeding. But she also napped a few times in the car, and that was it. This is helping substantially, because she's very tired at bedtime. It used to be that we'd get done with dinner and a bath, and it would be 8:30 or so, and we'd have until 10 before we tried to put her down. This was problematic, because she'd be tired, and want to take a nap before 10, which is bad. Or she'd go to bed early, and then only sleep for 30 or 45 minutes. I hope it continues on like this, because it has been absolutely wonderful so far.

So how did it go last night? Brilliant. Although she woke up and cried a few more times during the night, she slept in her crib until about 7:45 AM this morning, which was a bit later than we expected. I was really exhausted, because my sleep was totally shot on Saturday night with her crying episode. It was all I could do to drag my butt out of bed this morning. Anyway, I have this fear that now she's gotten a good night's sleep, and we're screwed for tonight, and she'll be up crying for hours. Hopefully, though, it'll go OK. We have our new routine to rely on, anyway.

We start at 8PM with a bath. We have level 1 and level 2 baths. A level 1 bath is just playtime in the bath. A level 2 bath is a full bath with soap, and washing hair. We alternate.

Then, we get her dressed for bed, and give her a final bottle. At this point, it's around 8:30. Then, we take her up to her room, and play with non-noisy toys for a little while. Then, we sit with her in the rocker, turn the lights out, and sing a song or two to her. Then we put her down at 9. Even if she's screaming tonight, it feels better to have some structure around bedtime.

And why are we going through all this Ferber stuff? Because last night was a steamy ride through hell. She was really tough to put to bed, and then she woke up at 2, and Kara tried to get her to sleep for 30 or 40 minutes, then she let her cry and came back to bed. I woke up, and went in, and tried for a half hour, and did no better. However, whenever we picked her up, she'd settle down and sleep, but whenever we put her down, she'd wake up and cry. So finally, we brought her into our bed, but it was the last straw. We haven't brought her in to bed that early in a long time, and we decided then and there that we start Ferberizing tonight. We had planned to start on Friday anyway, but Kara got sick.

The crisis was not over, but it wasn't too bad.

Now, however, some background.

Dr. Richard Ferber wrote his book, Solving Your Child's Sleep Problems back in 1985, and it's become the baby sleep bible. At least, it is with most of the parents we run with. The basic premise is this: most children do not have problems sleeping, they have problems falling asleep. It's common to wake up any number of times in the middle of the night, but you and I just roll over, maybe fluff the pillow, and go right back to bed. Children can't always do this, and another strong theme of his book explains why: the conditions that existed to allow the to fall asleep are no longer present, and so they are not comfortable.

Simple premise, but it makes a huge amount of sense. Until tonight, we held Katherine, rocked her, sang to her, and so forth. When she wakes up in the night, she's not all cozy in her parents arms, and she's confused, and when she cries, we'd come in, pick her up, rock her again, and get her to sleep, then transfer her to the crib, thus teaching her to fall asleep under those conditions.

The Ferber method is a watered down version of, "just let the damn baby cry it out". You are not allowed to be in the room when the baby falls asleep, and you are not allowed to let the baby have anything as a comfort item (called a transitional item) that they cannot control. For us, this meant the pacifier, since when it drops out in the night, she can't always find it. The method is that you define a pre-bedtime routine, and overnight sleeping hours, and stick with it every night. At the end of the routine, you put the baby down and leave. If she cries, you let her, but you go in to comfort her in increasing intervals, five minutes, ten, fifteen etc. Eventually, she will fall asleep. You continue this behaviour during the day when she naps, and over the course of a week or two, she learns to fall asleep on her own.

Our first night was extremely successful. She fell alseep in 24 minutes. She cried the whole time, but we've had a night or two when she's been up for hours crying. When she woke up a moment ago, I went in to comfort her during the five minute interval, and she was asleep again before the 10 minute one. That's really lucky. I think she's going to work well with this program, but I don't want to get my hopes up too high.

Now she's stopped crying. I can't hear Kara through the baby monitor, and five minutes haven't elapsed, so maybe the crisis is over.

Well, I just sat down to tell the tale of Ferberizing Katherine, since she's been asleep since 9:25, but now she has woken up and started to cry, so off it go.