September 17

Babies have strange sleep habits. Just when I think Rebekah's put herself on a schedule, she'll surprise me and wake up 2 hours before (or after) I thought she would. This morning she took only a 1 hour nap (when it's normally 3 hours) and then insisted on nursing for an hour. When we tired of that, I gave her another ounce or so of milk from the bottle and tried to get her to sleep. By this time, Joe was home for lunch...which I had been desperately yet unsuccessfully trying to pull together. Rebekah wimpered while we ate, and only after I fed her still more expressed milk, she allowed me to rock and lull her to sleep.

Then this evening, when she was supposed to wake up for dinner, she had plans of her own and slept right through it, not waking up for another 2 hours.

Rebekah has been desperately trying to suck her thumb. She gets her hand to her mouth, usually clenched in a fist. Occasionally, she'll get her pointer finger in her mouth and suck on it. When she clenches her fist, she usually places her thumb between her pointer and index fingers, making it quite difficult to suck her thumb if she gets her fist to her mouth. With her hand unfurled, she can get her thumb into her mouth, but then it looks like one of her other fingers is about to poke her eye out!

Tonight, while Rebekah was quite wakeful, I placed her in her crib with her little jungle play set we bought for her before she was born. While I folded laundry, I watched out of the corner of my eye as she displayed her fascination with the stuffed zebra rattle in the play set. She is really starting to reach out to try and grab things, though she is not yet coordinated enough to grab most items. Nevertheless, I watched her push the little rattle around and make noise with it. I think that the combination of the contrasting colors and her ability to manipulate the toy so that it made noise made it far more interesting to her than the crinkling monkey or the squeaking hippo which were also in the set. While she was happily occupied with the play set, Joe and I took time out for some much-needed snuggling together, though at every wimpery-like sound from Rebekah, I had to fight my motherly instinct to go pick her up. For the most part, she was really enjoying herself with that little zebra!