Last night was a signal night for both girls.
First, we went to our friends Karyn and Ryan’s house for a Ukrainian Christmas celebration. (Ukrainian Christmas follows the Julian calendar, and this year fell on Wednesday.) Ryan is an amazing cook and prepared a 12-dish feast that left everyone stuffed to the gills.
I was nervous about taking Jade to a party with lots of people, a much less controlled environment than we’ve tried so far since starting the diet. She did great, though! At the first, she asked about the crackers and cheese and other goodies that were out, but with minor distraction, she didn’t pursue it.
We’d prepared chicken vegetable soup for Jade’s supper; it’s one of her favourite dishes right now. Michael helped her to eat up her soup and her cream as the rest of us started in on supper. Then she fell to the box of toys (Karyn has an amazing collection of Barbies, trolls, and other fascinating new toys Jade had never seen before) and played happily for a while. Halfway through supper, she wanted to sit at the table with us. I was worried, but she just took a stuffed Pooh Bear and a Sunshine Bear and proceeded to feed them “bottles” at the table. Then she made the rounds tickling everyone around the table. All the guests were great about shrieking when they got tickled, which Jade enjoyed immensely.
There was one close call when an uninformed guest tried to offer Jade a bite of a bun. Karyn and I both exclaimed, “No!” (and I think a few other people, as well) which was pretty funny. Jade didn’t really even take notice, but that poor guest was a little embarrassed. She offered Jade her bottle of water instead. Jade doens’t usually care too much for water, but she kept drinking it — I guess it’s novel when it comes from a bottle!
I am so proud of Jade! It makes life feel just a little more normal. What a relief!
Halia was a source of entertainment, as well, and she got passed around from one guest to another. But her big achievement came later. She wouldn’t go to sleep when we got home. I was working away on my laptop and trying to nurse her to sleep, but her eyes kept popping open. I finally took her down to her room, put her into her Grobag, and nursed her in the semi-dark. Her eyes drooped and she was asleep within a minute. She was in her crib somewhere between 11:30 and midnight. And then she didn’t need to be nursed again until almost 7 o’clock this morning! Folks, I think she just had her first official “sleeping through the night” night. I dont’ expect to see this pattern every night just yet, but it’s a start!
