Long days... short nights...

Boy, it seems like just a few weeks ago it was dark until almost 9am and then dark again at 3:30pm... the times they are a changin'! Today, the sun was up at about 5:45am--and so were we! It seems that Ruby has gotten into a new routine of wanting to be up earlier and earlier. Every now and again she'll go back down with some prodding, but more often than not, it's up and at 'em. This has been really hard on us lately as Jared has been working very long days (coming home just before Ruby's 8pm bedtime) and then as a result staying up too late... which in our new reality is 10:30! Okay, so seven hours of sleep would be heaven for oodles of people, but I guess I'm just not one of them! Oh well, hopefully my body will slowly adjust to this schedule.

This is a picture of Ruby's "howl like an Indian" fuss. She has developed a large repertoire of these fusses which she "practices" almost constantly. We have been hitting the sign language with renewed gusto in hopes that she will at least attempt to communicate in some other way other than fussing. If the switch doesn't happen soon, I may be having earglugs surgical inserted into my ears to cut down on the noise level. It's easy enough to watch Nanny 911 (etc.) and say, "Why, oh why, do those parents let their kids behave like that!?!?", but much harder to deal with it in real life when it's your own baby going ballistic 24-7.

On a rather odd note, we bought diapers last weekend because they were having a big sale on one of the nicer brands (90kr/50 diapers), so we thought we'd stock up. We do still do the Wonderoos about 95% of the time, but for night time and every once and a while when we're out, it's 'sposies'. Anyhoo, the funny thing was that all they had left in Ruby's size was pull-ups! So, already at the ripe old age of 10 1/2 months she's wearing big girl diapers. Jared had a hoot having her model a clean diaper on her head. I think that it almost looks like a little chef hat--too funny!

Ruby has been doing very well these past few days playing on her own. She absolutely loves playing with her sorters. She has the traditional shape sorter, a picnic basket sorter, and a Lamaze soft shape sorter. She can actually sort the Lamaze shapes, although the matching colors help a lot! Also, I suspect that she mashes the wrong shape through the wrong hole on a fairly regular basis. I'm just glad that she's having fun! It really does help for her to have the Baby Einstein music on while she plays. We now have five different CDs (all of which sound about the same to me), so we have a good rotation to go through. Anyway, it's fun to watch Ruby's little brain ticking away figuring things out and taking everything in. She's a real cutie pie-- a stinker winker bear-- but a cutie pie!