Couple of things about this... Nothing will help a baby "sleep through the night" except maturity. Giving them cereal to try to do this is a well-worn wive's tale. Solids are discouraged by the AAP before six months because avoiding them decreases the incidence of allergies. Babies have very sensitive GI tracts. They're not meant to eat solids this early. As someone already mentioned, give solids before they're ready and sometimes this can backfire, cause GI upset/gas/hard stools and they (and you) will be up more. (But with number one child, I tried it early anyway. Didn't do a darn thing.) Babies wake a lot during the first months/year because of many things...First, their sleep cycles are not like adults (takes years to get to that point). Their's last only 45 minutes long. And "sleeping through the night", MEDICALLY-speaking is considered a single five hour stretch. So if you put Junior down at ten, and he sleeps until 3am, THAT is considered sleeping through the night. And it can be YEARS before you see them do the 8-10 hour thing (and even then, they don't necessarily do it consistantly..might do it one night and then won't again for weeks...). Every child is different in this area. (Some do it very early, but I always tell new moms, don't count on it.) Growth spurts will wake them (they'll want to eat more)..teething...gas or GI discomfort..something you ate (if you're breastfeeding)..reflux...illness...and all of the developmental leaps they go through. If they are about to 'do' something new, THAT will also inevitably increase night-waking. This would be things like rolling over, sitting up, crawling, standing/walking..language development, you name it. (*If you watch them closely, you might see them acting some of this out in their sleep.) Too much stimulation during the day (like lots of family activity)..changes in their routine because of other family needs (like having them out during naptime). Basically you name it, it can cause them to wake up. And if it's not one thing, it's another..My 7 month old ds started to crawl, a few days later pulled himself, caught his sister's mild cold, and just cut two teeth..All in a two week period! Lemme tell you, we've had a lot of late-night partying these past couple of weeks! LOL! And it will end when he's done with it. So, sometimes it can be more than one thing going on at the same time. With two kids, this is my only advice about sleep. You can make it conducive for baby to sleep, but you can't MAKE EM sleep. A calming routine, a calm household, a warm bath, cuddling, eating, rocking (whatever) can lull him down IF he's ready to go. If they don't want to go, ain't going to happen. Not like they have a sleep switch (and trust me, if they have one, I would've found it! I looked! LOL!). That's the bad news (if there's any bad news with babies). The GOOD news is that this time period doesn't last forever. Blink, and they're crawling. Blink twice and they're walking. Blink several more times and they're riding a tricycle and sleeping like a log. That first year goes by in a flash...but yes, you will have some year-long nights. And then all of a sudden it hits you that your 'baby' is not a baby anymore..they're a KID. Running, climbing, laughing, talking up a storm, playing...And then something weird happens. The woman that wished that her baby would go to sleep, now wonders where her baby went? And would he/she please slow down enough for a lap cuddle? :)) I'm 40 years old and this is my last baby. Although the sleep deprivation is really kicking my behind, I'm ever mindful that I'm not going to do this again. And considering that my first baby is going to start kindergarten in the Fall (how did THAT happen so fast??), I already know how quickly this part of motherhood is over...The baby that woke up every two hours for almost a YEAR (I'm not kidding), and currently sleeps like a rock, came up to me the other night and said "Mom, when will it OFFICIALLY be my bedtime?" I told her and she said "fine, thanks for letting me know"..and trotted upstairs, got into bed, snuggled down and went to sleep (She turns five in March). My how things change! LOL! So hang in there ladies, you'll do fine whether or not they sleep when you want them to. And cherish the baby time. It's amazingly fleeting...

Ouch! My head is spinning. As of this morning, DH & have a tentative plan, but it certainly is subject to change: - Use 6'8" doors and do faux transoms above the main passage type doors (into the master suite, guest suite, etc.) - Use 6'8" doors w/o transoms for doors that are skinny or we want to de-emphasize like the closets and a door to the garage on a short, angled hallway near the barrel arch to the dining room. We're up in the air as to whether the faux transoms should be glass or solid. A very kind GardenWebber sent me pictures of her 6'8" doors with glass transoms and 10' ceilings. They looked great. Then, gobruno reminded me to lookup what they are doing with solid transoms. I sent that link to DH & he now gets it. Oddly enough, even though he is older than I, he doesn't remember any houses with high ceilings and solid transoms. BTW - this is our door style. I'm not sure what they have in the picture, but ours will be shaker style with straight sticking: roseabbey - did you do glass or solid transoms & what did your decorative panels look like? tracey_b - our rope lighting will be hard-wired and on a dimmer. I'm pretty sure you can buy them at Lowes all year long that plug into an outlet. I'm trying to figure out where to put it in the master bath so that is all we need to turn on when we get up in the middle of the night. I did look at the linen closet door in my current master bath and then used a yardstick to see where 8' would be. I don't like the look so the broom closet will definitely be 6'8". If y'all have any other thoughts I would appreciate hearing them. Thanks - Jo Ann P.S. OK, the "Wall Words" ... here's the deal ... Somewhere in my kitchen will be the quote ascribed to Beethoven, "Only the pure in heart can make a good soup." I can paint it on the wall or make it into a placard or frame it as a poster or even glue it onto my fridge with alphabet magnets, but that is going to be in my kitchen. It goes right to my heart and how I feel about cooking for my family & friends.

@ aputernut Was that a stream-of-consciousness moment ? There's like about a 100 words there, with no punctuation, no sentence capitalization, nothing . . . How are we supposed to parse something like that ? lol Btw, the way that link was made, it only goes to ehow.com . I did take a look though . . . as you probably know, ehow.com is by no means a tech site. They have people employed to dream up things to write "how-to" articles about, a lot of it being almost copy & paste. They may be correct on some points, but it's hardly a definitive or authoritative site for tech info.

The plug of the cord goes into a wall plug in the dining room, family room, bedroom a, then b, etc. upstairs, with notations of the plug on the west wall of bedroom a, adding on the south end of that wall if there is more than one outlet on that wall. etc. If things are plugged in, if there are two plugs at that location leave the device plugged in if you so choose, as it'll just stop when the power gets cut off but if there's only one plug at that location, you'll have to pull the plug of the device, whether dishwasher, freezer, floor lamp, tv or whatever, so you can plug the cord in. The light at the other end of the cord is within sight of the main box with all of the switches, so you can turn them (not yet labelled ones) off one by one till one turns the light off. One more switch to label. But don't write too large, for often one switch serves several plugs/lights. Where there are devices not plugged in, e.g. ceiling lights, pumps, furnaces, etc., the cord, no matter how long, can't help - sorry, you'll have to count on a friend with a loud voice to help (or do the walking yourself). Over 40 years ago when a major ice storm caused a widespread power outage for several days and I hauled a borrowed generator to that area to help save food in freezers, many wanted me to hook up the furnace as well but most have an unbreakable line from the service box and I was afraid to even attempt it, for fear, should the master switch get turned on, we might feed power out into the local line that the repair people believed to be dead. I think that it would be well to have a furnace connected by a plugged connection, maybe one with push and twist capability, to help in such a circumstance. When the hired man left Dad's large farm in World War II to go into the army, Dad and this preteen/teen son and a couple of younger sons had a lot more work than they'd planned on for several years. Dad used to say that if you can let your brain help your hands and feet get the job done properly and more easily, more work gets done in that precious time, it makes you feel good and often is a bit more fun. Hope you're having a happy spring, folks. Signed up tonight for my first jab in about ten days. ole joyfuelled