Peace - jaylor story (peace book 1)

some time alone

-Taylors pov- 

Ellie is 20 weeks, or five months if you want to say it like that, today. For the last two weeks we have tried to sleep train her which has been a nightmare, but it's paid off. At one point I had to spend a night in another room because her crying made me cry and that made Ellie even more upset, thankfully joe has been really good on that front. 

The first several times she would cry a lot and need soothing a lot, but we did everything we could to not pick her up at all. The only times we picked her up was for the two feedings she gets during the night, we have timed it so that she gets one as joe and I go to bed, I think they call it dream feeding, and then one more around 3-4am depending on when we went to bed and if she wants one. Now we are trying to cut down to one feeding though. Eventually, probably by her 6month cheek up we will ask the doctor if it's alright to wean her completely off night feeds. Apparently it's safe to do that around this time. 

Now she has thankfully caught onto the sleeping arrangements, clearly consistency has worked for her. There have been several times where I've wanted to cave when she was crying, but we stuck with it, and it paid off. We have also completely gotten her to sleep in the crib now, so the basinets are gone. It was about time because she was getting too big for them, and she is rolling over from her tummy to her back all the time and wiggle a lot if she doesn't want to sleep. I don't know how much lover it would have been safe for her in the basinet, but now she is safely transitioned to the crib. 

When it comes to introducing food, we have decided to wait until this week. Originally, we wanted to start right away but we figured it would be too many things at once and would just be too much on all of us. 

Joe is mixing some baby cereal with some breastmilk while I get Ellie ready in her highchair. She thankfully loves sitting in it now because she can see so much better what's going on around her. I put on her bib and sit down next to her. 

Holding my hands in front of my face I pull them away "peekaboo" I say playfully, and she has started to say "boo" back which is adorable and then she laughs. There is nothing about her that I don't like. She is just the cutest tiny human in the world, I'm absolutely obsessed with everything about her. Now her little personality is slowly shining through more and I'm so excited to get to know everything there is to know about her. 

Joe comes over and hand me her food and I get ready to feed her. It's not about eating for nutrition at this point, it's more of just practicing eating at all. We have only done this yesterday and today so it's fairly new at this point. Yesterday I don't know if she swallowed much, it mostly got in her mouth and then ended up sliding down her face and making a mess everywhere, but we got some in her mouth at least. 

"Can you do like mommy; can you open up" I say and dramatically open my mouth which causes her to do so slightly too. She obviously hasn't caught onto the whole eating concept, that takes time. I get some into her little mouth and she is trying to figure out what to do with it which is funny to look at. "Swallow my little munchkin" I say. 

It takes us about 10 minutes before she is bored and turn away so that means it's time to let it go for now, we will try again in the evening. "Ok my little Ellie, let's get you cleaned up and we will play some" I say and get some wet wipes to clean her up. Thankfully the bib caught most of it but she is dirty under her chin slightly. She is still so little that she doesn't feed herself yet, so thankfully it's not as messy as it will be one day. 

"You know my little Ellie. Aunty Blake was telling me about how betty, your future best friend, is now feeding herself and yesterday they found food all down her back, and no one knows how it got there. That will be you too sooner than later" I say and pick her up from the highchair.