Sleep Training & Santa Hats

So, a few weeks ago, I was a little defeated with how our sleep training has been going. Thankfully, I have some updates on that front - and much better ones, I might add. We went cold turkey again, with Georgia in her own bedroom. There were a few tough days at first, we timed ourselves before going into the room, but most importantly, we did it together - now that hubby is working from home, we could both give it our full attention. Previously, she was very dependent on ME doing everything, and wouldn't even calm down when Jase would pick her up. After a tough week or so, she started showing signs that she was learning what to do. Victory came from every resettle that hubby did, without me there - and honestly, it's been a few weeks now, and there are days where she does so much better sleeping for him than for me! Little minx. :)

Georgia now sleeps in her cot all the time. She's in a sleeping bag with no blankets, since it's already been hitting 40o here in Sydney (celcius, folks, omg, hot) & she has a comforter bunny that she cuddles/bashes at will. She does still use a dummy, but that's not an issue for us at this stage. We give her a cuddle and a rock in the chair, look for tired signs, and pop her in the cot. I'd say we're at 50/50 for the reactions we get once she's in the cot, and it depends a lot on her mood and how tired she is. 50% of the time, she'll scream and scream and need resettling. 50% of the time, she'll roll over & get herself to sleep. We're working on being consistent, but overall, she's doing so much better. We've gone from constant wake ups, to sleep throughs. And we've gone from three-four rubbish daytime naps, to two better ones. They aren't always long, but I consider it a victory if she goes down for >1 hour. So proud of her. We are sleeping better at night, too. I didn't realise how much tiptoeing around we were doing once she'd gone to bed.

Christmas preparation has been a bit manic around here. The tree is up and gloriously REAL this year. The presents are finally all wrapped & ready to go, though they're hiding out upstairs away from the kitties {tinsel! ribbon! feral cats!} until Christmas Eve. We went to our first party last night, Georgia has opened one or two gifties from her little friends & kind relatives, and we're thoroughly excited for the next few days. Spending it with family is really important to me this year, since it's Georgia's first Christmas - but also our first Christmas without my beautiful nanna. It's going to be a very emotional few days. I miss her so much.

Her daddy picked this Santa hat out for her - her name goes up in lights! 

We haven't gone overboard with presents for the baby, and have kept it quite sensible. She will be visited by Santa & her sack will be filled up with gifties {if she's been a good girl!} and this is a tradition we'd like to continue over the years. And we've each bought her one thing, and one joint thing from both of us. Let's face it: she'll have more fun eating the bows and smashing the paper! 

All presents aside, I'm just so thrilled to be spending this Christmas as a family of three. This time last year I was pregnant, and had no idea what was in store for us. But the year before that, we were in the throes of infertility, gearing up towards our first IVF experience. My heart goes out to my friends who are struggling/will struggle this holiday season - we've been there, and no doubt will be there again in the future, and I wish you lots of joy.