The McClure's: Randomness

Yep, that's right folks, just a bunch of randomness in this post. Since it's been so long, I'll try to give a quick (well, maybe not so quick) update and then share some recent pictures. Let me just say up front, that we seriously slacked off on taking pictures over the last couple of months - we don't really have a good excuse for that, we just got busy! So, on to the update. I think it's going to be easier to just do a list for Ryleigh instead of typing it all out.

Ryleigh's List:

She's sitting up by herself now (with pillows behind her, just in case!)
She was eating all vegetables, until we tried fruit, now we don't like veggies!
She's gotten her first ear infection
She's moved to all formula (this should be on my list I guess as it affected me more than her!)
She is now 14 lbs, 13oz and 25 3/4 inches long
She regressed back to not sleeping all night
She went through 1 week of sleep training and is now back to sleeping all night again! (more about this below)
She's not crawling and shows zero interest in doing so
She's not interested much in table food either, so we're still doing baby food on occasion, although many times, she just wants her bottle

So, just a couple of things that are blog worthy other than the list (which admittedly is the info that most of you come here to see anyways!) So, feel free to skip this next section! The last month or so has been rough at times for Kyle and I. We went from Ryleigh being sick, to not sleeping through the night, to being sick again. So through all that I was getting less than an adequate amount of sleep to function each day. Then Ryleigh decided for some reason that she was tired of nursing. That was rough - shouldn't have been as hard as it was, but I was still trying to hold on to that part of our "ritual" and it was clearly not working. So, we pretty much just quit cold turkey, not much of weaning process at all - again kind of rough on me. Ryleigh did great until we realized that she was allergic to milk based formula. We'd been mixing in a couple ounces of formula with her breast milk each day to get her ready for the transition, but she did not handle even 2 oz. of that stuff well. So, we went from brand to brand before finally switching to a soy formula. Thankfully she likes it and is having no reactions at all now. Hopefully she'll grow out of this by her birthday so we can switch to regular milk. Once that problem was solved, we tried to tackle the sleeping issue. I seriously felt like I was losing my mind, it was horrible. We couldn't get the sleep we needed and then neither of us could function at work like we needed to. I mean with today's economy, this is the worst time possible to appear less than your best at work. Thankfully I have a boss with 2 little children of her own, so she understands, but something had to change. After much research and some serious discussions with some women at church, Kyle and I decided to try the "cry it out method" again. I didn't want to, but everyone I talked to said within about 4 to 5 days, their child got it and stopped getting up in the middle of the night. So we picked a weekend and got started. I'm not about sugar coating anything, so let me me tell you, it was horrible. I mean, the first night we got lucky and she was so tired, it wasn't too bad. The next 3 or 4 nights were horrible. I'm not even going to go into more details here, but it was rough. If you're a mom who has done this - you don't need my details, you already know what I'm talking about. If you're a mom who thinks she might ever consider this method, I'd be glad to share our experience in more details. It was definitely rough b/c of the crying. The other dimension of this method is the "what does everyone else think about what I'm doing here" dimension. I have this weakness where somewhere deep inside I feel the need to seek the approval of others - big surprise right? Well, as I had to explain to people what we were doing, I got a variety of reactions. Some agreed completely that this was our final option, others disagreed completely. So, Kyle and I had to finally come to grips with the fact that God gave us Ryleigh and entrusted her upbringing to us - not anyone else. So, although we are eager to get the opinions of those more experienced in raising children, ultimately, this decision had to be what we thought was best not only for Ryleigh but us as well. Talk about difficult! :) The good news is that on day 4 - she all of sudden went into her crib awake without crying and stayed that way all night (well she didn't stay awake of course!). It was the most glorious night of sleep that I can remember since before I was pregnant! Since then she's been doing good, other than we she got her ear infection...which is to be expected. That is now healed up, but the antibiotics caused her to develop a yeast infection which has also awakened her a few nights. However, this is nothing like before, so we are convinced that our sleep training worked!

That's about it in the way of updates I think. Below are some random pictures of the last month or so - hope you enjoy!