Rock a Bye Baby

I mentioned in a earlier post that Ted's parents dropped off a very special item during their visit last weekend. This is the cradle that Ted and his sister slept in as babies and this is the cradle that our soon to be new addition will sleep in as well. We didn't use it for Katherine as we thought the pack n play would work just fine in our bedroom. We had less furniture in the room then and Katherine spent about one night in our room before we moved her to her crib (wow, newborn babies are loud when they sleep!). I'm guessing that this one won't last too many nights in our room either but I think the cradle will come in handy for a number of uses. First, there is the early morning (and who am I kidding, mid morning, mid afternoon, early evening...), please kid go back to sleep, I am exhausted moments. Picture me laying in bed right next to it, one arm out rocking that thing back and forth. I used the bouncy seat with Katherine, which was not at same level as the bed so not as comfortable for me to bounce and snooze. This will be better. Second, this can easily be moved in our guest room so that the person pulling the night shift can feed and snooze without disturbing the other adult who is trying to get a full night's sleep. Can you see where I'm going here? As with the purchase of the recliner, we've wised up around here with number 2 and it is all about making things smoother for us, especially at 2am. Since opportunities for good sleep will be more limited this time around due to the 3 year old, we are planning accordingly. And some of this stuff (i.e. using the guest room) I didn't even think about the first time around. Live and learn.

Ted's dad (i.e. Papa Coberly) cleaned up the cradle and I think it came out beautiful. The quilt was made by someone in my office, given to me at Katherine's baby shower. I am ashamed to say that I hardly used it with Katherine, I plan on using it plenty this time because it is just gorgeous. I moved it into our room this weekend to take the pictures and Katherine noticed this right away. She mentioned that "my baby brother is going to sleep with you?" and I explained to her that babies wake up a lot during the night because they get hungry and that is why he may stay in our room sometimes. Her response? "This is going to be fun!" Um, yeah...