Kid Tested

After reading several articles and forums on the internet, I have tried all sorts of tricks on Marina to try to get her to sleep better.  The problem has been that I got her hooked on all these bad habits just for my survival.  First I would bring her in my bed to keep her from crying in the night (this was very bad).  Then I would feed her too many times in the night (also bad).  Now at 5 months old, she is terribly addicted to a pacifier and won't sleep without it and also must be always swaddled.  Again, I have searched the internet and found solutions to both of these problems.  And like usual, I came home yesterday and experimented on my strong-willed child once again.  Unfortunately, it was a bit of a mess for her.  She really never ended up napping because the solution was a cold turkey break of both the swaddle and pacifier.  I have actually tried this before but lost the battle when my exhaustion betrayed me.  Last night was a bad night and I felt discouraged today.  Why did these methods work on everyone else's kids and they had these miracle results but my stubborn girl could outlast me and my patience?
Today, I have decided to stick to it.

At her first nap, she started the same old fuss number when I put her in the crib.  After five minutes I went up to soothe her but she wasn't really crying that hard so I just observed her from a distance and left the room.  By the time I got downstairs, there was silence.  She had fallen asleep without a swaddle or pacifier.  And here I am, over two hours later, and she is still asleep!  Every other day, I have to run up and down the stairs multiple times just to put her pacifier in and she only ends up sleeping an hour or so.  It is such an oddity for her to have uninterrupted sleep that I actually had to go up to make sure she was breathing!
So I write this to share a rare encouragement.  It turns out I can do this after all!  And also, I found out that everything you read on the internet is true!

Here is a picture of my strong willed (though pretty cute) little turd.

In a totally unrelated story...
I just realized that I neglected to teach Eli how to cut with scissors when he came home from preschool one day with a star that he was supposed to be cut out.  Instead of cutting around the lines, he had just made fringe all around the border.  So the other day I bought him some toddler scissors and we had our first lesson.  The poor kid didn't even know how to hold them.  In his intense concentration, every time he would open the scissors with one hand, the other hand would mimic the same action and his mouth would open and close too.  It was really cute.  He wanted another try at it today so I took a picture to include here.  He is still only cutting fringe around the edges and watching him just stresses out his dad because he keeps seeming like he is about to cut off his fingers.  I guess if he does, we will have to put the scissors away for the rest of his life.  What a handicap that will be...