I was going to write something last night, but then my lovely child woke back up again and I gave up on trying to get her to sleep without me. She has a very a-typical sleep schedule because of this refusal… we tend to go to bed at 10 or 11 and wake up at 9. She’s pretty consistent with the 9am thing, which I appreciate! I can tell that around 8 or 9 she’s ready to go to sleep for the night, but she will only sleep for an hour by herself before waking up cranky and either I need to lay down with her and not get back up, or she’s up just kind of hanging out until I go to bed. I have no idea why this is, because during the day she will take 2-3 hour naps sometimes. We’re working on that.

But not actively, since right now my main focus on her sleep is trying to get her to sleep peacefully again. I don’t know what is up – maybe the cold is still bugging her, maybe she’s starting to teethe, I don’t know. All I know is that she’ll nurse for a little bit, get sleepy, start drifting off, then suddenly she’s flailing around crying. She spits out both the paci and the boob – which is pretty much unheard of. I figured out how to get her to sleep, but it’s kind of ridiculous: I put her head in the crook of my arm, wrap my arms around her hugging her to me, rock back and forth, and sing a lullaby (or two or five). Then she’ll usually give in and fall asleep – but not always. She’s also waking up in the middle of the night crying – while she’s in my arms. And the boob doesn’t fix it. I’m all, “WTF?!” Very frustrating at 5am. I hate 5am. I cosleep so I never have to be conscious at 5am.

One thing I have definitely learned about babies: If they nap well, you have a good day. If they nap poorly (or not at all) you have a bad day. It really is as simple as that.

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I don’t want to post just about the frustrations, though. Everything else is going well. She remains a very happy, smiley, engaging child. She loves her toys. She loves to roll over (but doesn’t love being on her belly too much yet). She loves playing games with us. When she wakes up happy from a nap I go in and play with her on the bed, tickling her and nomming her cheeks. I also let her grab my fingers and then pull her up to sitting or standing. She now reaches for my fingers as soon as I hold them out. She stands up, thinks it is totally awesome, and then I slowly lower her back down while saying, “Craasshhhhh! You fell doowwnnnn!” and she laughs. We’re starting to play peek-a-boo, but she kinda laughs, kinda watches with narrowed eyes trying to figure out WTF you’re doing.

Den has started playing a video game again a few hours here and there. I’d love to play too, but when? It hit me this week that it is going to be many, many years before I can just flop in front of a TV and play a game for hours on end like I used to. Or sit at my computer and scrapbook, or work on my website. There’s a lot of things that change in your life when you have a child, and most of them I either don’t care or adapted to without an issue – or they’re temporary things (like how I couldn’t eat food with two hands for several months!). But I’ve always been the kind of person to throw myself at a project, to make my husband go away and sit in silence for hours on end while I did whatever I was working on. No more. It was a little bit of a shock to realize. Not unexpected, obviously, but I think it just never quite sunk in. My life will forevermore be full of interruptions.