UGH. That is pretty much it right now. The trip really messed up her sleep schedule. Funny how you don’t realize how well something is working until it breaks. She’s now on pacific standard time still, she was waking up at noon the last two days and then fighting going to sleep until after midnight. That does NOT work for me at all, and the fighting at night is involving a lot of screaming (since she wanted to get up and play and I, who was attempting to sleep, did not agree). The past two nights have SUCKED ASS. And even when I do finally get her to sleep she wakes up an hour later and does it all again. I’m friggin exhausted. After 3am she finally settles and we sleep but still waking every 2 hours-ish. I have NEVER had a problem with her not sleeping at night except when she’s sick so this is just utterly frustrating.

Then naps. While we were at my parents’ Kate started napping for at least an hour every nap, which is absolutely unheard-of. She also went down like a dream, no problems. And surprisingly when we got home she was still doing this! Sleeping on her belly is awesome. Well today I set my alarm for 9am, my first step in getting her back on EST and hopefully setting things up so that she actually goes to bed and sleeps tonight… and naps disintegrated. Today all she’s done are little 10-20 minute bursts upon which she wakes crying and I have to go back in and hold her. She’s really tired, whiny and clingy, and it sucks. I feel like I get to choose good nights or good days, but I don’t get both. I swear once the time shift is settled she’d better start napping again.

I feel like I broke my child. Obviously that doesn’t help anything, but ugh. This vacation really screwed up sleep. :(

When she isn’t whining she is really enjoying being home with her toys, especially her Leap Frog music table. She loves that thing and could – and does – stand there playing with it for over half an hour at a time. Unfortunately she’s not solid on her feet yet so we ringed the entire area with large pillows for the inevitable mis-steps when she falls down. If I sit there with her she gets distracted by me and keeps wanting to grab my hands. So I end up sitting on the other side of the room watching while she happily occupies herself. I feel guilty, like someone’s going to bust in the door and yell at me for ignoring my child, but I really really want to continue encouraging independent play when she does it. I just wish she was more solid on her feet so I didn’t have to sit there twitching the entire time.

And no she’s still not crawling, though she’s… umm, I don’t even know how to describe it. She’s inch-worming. She gets up on her hands-and-knees then throws herself forward onto her belly. Rinse, repeat. So she gets around, but she’s quite slow at it still. (But I’m realizing that the futon we’re using as a couch is just not going to work… I’m tired of fetching toys and baby from underneath it.) And she doesn’t want to crawl. It’s quite obvious that she has no interest in figuring out crawling, it’s just something she’s forced into doing when she’s stuck on the floor. She wants to walk. No, she wants to run. Now that she’s figured out how to move her feet while holding onto our hands she’s also figured out how to lean forward and get some momentum going. She’s way more solid on her feet than she was a week ago when she looked like a drunken sailor. It won’t be long until she’s walking, especially given how insistent she is on practicing all the time.