Last night we instituted what I call “sleep defense.” It’s a little trick that we use every now and then as a last resort when Clare is giving us several nights in a row of rough sleep. I had heard that 4 months is a hard time for sleeping, but I don’t think I fully understood how hard it would be until now. We’ve had several weeks of off-again, on-again nights – Clare was waking up to eat 2 or 3 times a night instead of her usual 1 or 2 times, crying and needing to be shushed back to sleep almost every hour, or just wanting to wake up and play after her 4 am feeding (my personal favorite). We won’t even go into what a challenge naps have been. Sometimes it’s felt like all I’ve done on a given day is try to get Clare to sleep. Well, Saturday night it came to a head and J and I maybe had 2 hours of interrupted sleep each. We were in Bend and Clare decided that the pack and play, which she had slept in fairly well the night before, was not acceptable to sleep in. Every time we tried to put her down in it she would slam her heels into the ground, wake herself up and start to cry. Three hours of this… You’d think we would have figured out the system earlier but I blame the sleep deprivation. She would sleep in bed with us, however she was tossing and turning so much that *we* didn’t sleep.

Sitting in the Bumbo seat! We’ve noticed that Clare is a ‘watcher’ and is fairly deliberate and thoughtful (for a baby). This picture pretty much sums that up.

Mom found this dress that my Nana bought for me when I was a baby. We put it on Clare and tried to get some good pictures. Clare was more interested in playing with the lace than looking at the camera. When she did look at the camera she was more worried than anything. I don’t put her in a lot of dresses, so maybe that’s what has her worried. Still, she’s about the cutest worrier I’ve ever seen.