Stats/Size: still unchanged I think... size 3 sleep diapers fit pretty well and haven't leaked (yet- fingers crossed I am not jinxing myself!)
Sleep: Nighttime sleep still not good. Although I shouldn't complain right now- last night I was up at 3:45 and then 6:45... much better than the now usual 2am, 4am, 6am schedule or the 12am, 3am, 6am schedule, between which she alternates. Naps are going well though- so that is a huge plus! And I'm okay with sleep only because Mr. Beaver gets up at 6+ with baby and lets me stay in bed for as long as I can sleep!
Eat: eating often, still on-demand. She's healthy and gaining weight- that's all I care about. She polished of a 6 oz bottle at daycare, and has been only eating one bottle there, so I feel like that's a move in the right direction for eating less often!
Getting Around: still the same, nothing new and exciting to report!
New People: Another baby or two started the daycare, and there is a new teacher in the infant room... nobody else new this week. Next week is the big week of new people!
Best moment this week: Hearing everyone at my football draft tell me how great baby deals with being dragged to all of my stuff :) She seems to do so well when we are out and about, I've started going to work on non-daycare days. I don't get much done at all, and really spend the majority of the day on walks or on a blanket at the park, but it's a lot easier to keep baby happy and she seems to love all of the action going on!
Worst moment this week: Miami losing to OSU last night :) Mr. Beaver really needs to get his language under control during football games too... but really I think it was the exhaustion felt one night after the third feeding... I remember being in tears as I tried to get back to sleep while stressing about how much work I had to get done that day.
What I miss: I feel like a pathetic lush saying this, but I am a little sad I won't be able to drink at a huge family wedding weekend next week. Baby does not take a bottle outside of daycare (we've been trying...) so I'm not going to risk assuming that we can give her a bottle at the wedding and it not working. I know it's not really a big deal, but my siblings and cousins are all so excited about the many of hours partying ahead, so it's hard to feel like I can't really participate!
What I am looking forward to: The family wedding this weekend! Baby is finally meeting the last of her Uncles, and will get to meet TONS of my cousins, aunts, uncles, second cousins, etc. I know everyone is so excited to get to meet her, and I know we are going to have so much fun!
Weekly Wisdom: Hmm... I've got nothing... Oh- if you want a free board book or shirt for your baby, sign him or her up to participate in a research study! More below...
Infant Research (decided to write a short blurb so you don't think I'm subjecting my baby to some kind of torture!):
Baby did her first one this week and although I was supposed to not pay attention to what was going on, I did, and I'm familiar with the research and the methodology and I think she did awesome :)
It was a language learning study, so for about 3 minutes she listened to a fake language being played out loud, with syllables occurring together for different proportions of the total time they were played. "Words" were syllables paired together for 70% of the time (I'm making up that #-I don't know the exact proportions), where the baby should learn that hearing the first of these syllables predicts what comes next. It's a mechanism believed to be responsible for language acquisition, called statistical learning. Have I lost you yet? :) Baby then hears "words" or "non-words" (where the first syllable does not indicated which syllables will follow), and the researcher codes her attention to each of these stimuli using looking length. So when I say I think my baby did awesome, I mean that I observed obvious, distinct differences in her attention to the stimuli which I assume was due to hearing either "words" or "non-words", which indicates that she did learn that tiny bit of the fake language in only 3 minutes of exposure!
Anyway, there are tons of different studies with infants that use this methodology or other non-invasive, non-harmful techniques! It was fun to participate and I'm hoping there are more studies to participate in in the future. I still enjoy my own area of research and am not really tempted to switch, but it's still fun to be a part of on the participant side, and I plan to put any resulting publications from this study in Baby's baby-book :)
Some pictures from last weekend:
Meeting Curious George:
Visiting Mr. Roger's neighborhood! (should've visited a little earlier, before she passed out)
i hear you on sleep! i hope she continues to decrease night wakings and increase hours between feeds. i love her and curious george!
ReplyDeletefinn has done 3 studies at northwestern and i think they'll just keep calling us in because we are so willing. he hated one of them (backwards language w/ & w/out recognized object associations - you would know what all of it means, i didn't). this last one he got to hold objects before watching them in the study, so he really connected with that one (and, he's older now).