Ein Was?

Today for lunch I went down to my local market's cheese stand (actually more of a delicatessen) where they also serve up fresh home made soup and other yummy dishes.

All the ordering is in German and while I often order an Eintopf (stew) today I decided I wanted to order the Nudelauflauf (a kind of pasta and vegetable gratin). Unfortunately for me, what I actually said was Einlauf -which literally means enema.


so to recap:
Eintopf : stew
Auflauf : gratin
Einlauf : enema

Phew!

Lovely laughter

I just love hearing him laugh!

Sleepless in Vienna - 3

Today William is seven months old. 7 months. 7-months-of-sleeplessness. Ouch. My head hurts a little more when I actually say it.

After a fantastic night on Tuesday (he actually slept the whole night waking only for his 3am feed and I actually had to wake him at 7 am!!! oh, what a dream!) last night was the worst it has been in months.
He slept from 7pm-9pm and then from around 10h30-12h20 and then from around 3-5am. I am exhausted! I am fed up! I want him, need him to sleep. He needs to sleep.

To make matters worse, he seems to be preparing for another tooth (or two) to come out, as he is dribbling galore and has a bit of a fever.

On Tuesday we saw the cranio-sacral osteopath (just before the fantastic night's sleep) and she said he was a little tense and so she "tuned him down a little". We go back next Tuesday.

I have not yet started him on the baby consultant's plan as I think we need to do that when things have settled a bit and I want to give the osteopathic treatment a chance.

On the positive side, the workmen who were re-doing the bathrooms of the flat above ours seem to have vanished. I so hope they are done!

On the positive side 2: we have finally managed to remove the swaddle from William (or William from the swaddle?); it was becoming really dangerous as he could unswaddle himself and then there was this big bit of cloth he could get all knotted up in with him in the cot.

my little treasures

William has so far tried and liked mushed apples and bananas and today some baby crackers.

William trying a baby cracker for the first time

Emma peeled her first hard boiled egg today - it took aaaaages!- and ended up telling me
"I don't like the yellow" and "this boiled egg was the best!" she only ate the white...

I think she looks great with short hair! It suits her face so well!

A picture of Emma's face on the way to becoming Tiger is posted in the window of the hairdresser where we had her face painted for Halloween!

These days she can look so grown up!

Sleepless in Vienna update

Well, the full night was, it seems, a one off.

Last night William woke at least once an hour from 11h30 pm to 2h30 (when I fed him) and then from 5h onwards.
Today, he had apples for breakfast and bananas for lunch (on top of breast milk) and his naps were not great (totaling to just under 3 hours) but I managed to extend two of them.

We'll see what the night brings but I am looking even more forward to my Thursday discussion with the sleep consultant.

Tomorrow I have part of the morning off thanks to the sitter and plan to have lunch with hubs - how long has that been??!!

Sleepless in Vienna

For the past 3 months William has been waking 6 or 7 times a night. His naps have been as short as 27 minutes and very rarely (maybe about 3 times) as long as 2 hours. His average total day-time sleep is about 2,5-3 hours (way below average for his age!).

We have reached the end of our rope. No amount of routine, patience, feeding, nursing, singing, teething gel, by the minute timing and hawk like observing has seemed to improve the situation. To the point where I have hired the services of a baby sleep expert- yes you can laugh! - (she is based in Canada and our first consult will take place Thursday evening on Skype) and I'm taking William to see a osteopath (craniosacral) on Tuesday next week.

Then, last night, for a reason that remains a mystery to me, William only woke for his dream feed at 11pm (that doesn't even really count as a waking!) and then for his 3am feed. Other than that, he miraculously slept from 8pm to 6h25am. I am in awe. And I'm not even afraid of jinxing it anymore as it's probably a one-off.

The worst of it is that we have absolutely no clue as to what might have contributed to this wonderful sleep filled night.
And now, this morning, after a short 45minute nap, the banging started.
I ran up to the first floor and rang and rang a doorbell. The workman explained that he needs to demolish and reconstruct the bathroom entirely! How long will this last? Oh at least a week!
Oh nooooo!

Still, you never know, Will might actually do an encore... (oh, yes, please!!!) just so the logs I sent the baby sleep specialist are totally obsolete by Thursday (today he only did 45 minute naps and had 4 of them) and to show us that we were wrong to give up hope .

Tune in tomorrow to find out what our night was like.

Will and Emma

William is quite hilarious - a part from the fact that he is causing us to sleep about 3-4 hours a night - and so cute! He laughs at his own reflection in the mirror, smiles when he sees Emma or a picture of her, adores being tickled, loves new sounds, has absolutely no stranger anxiety - quite the contrary!

Here William munching on Sophie the giraffe while chuckling at the cow sounds another toy makes.

Emma's current favorites are "I spy with my little eye" and singing "Brown bear brown bear what do you see?"

She has also recently discovered Holly and Ben from < href=""> Little Kingdomwhich she loves and the very useful, fun and educational starfall ABC game.

The latter - and the fact that she has the letters of the alphabet stickers on her bed - means that whenever she is out and about she now spots letters in signs, tables, papers, logos, etc. and exclaims "Mummy! Look! It's Gogo! (meaning G for Gogo)" or "it's E for me (Emma)!" So funny!

Also, Emma now can swing herself on the big girl swing! Yiippeee!

Jumping William

These are Will's first jumps!

And did I mention that his 2 bottom teeth have come out? and that he can sit (although he still topples over after a while) and that he has the smelliest farts ever???