Well Kate finally coordinated her hands and knees and started crawling! She doesn’t seem to get into much yet, though, since she’s really only crawling in one direction: towards us. She’s pleased to finally have a tool to use to slingshot back to Den or I when we put her down. The funniest part is that she will crawl over to Den’s feet, use his pantleg to stand up, reach up to grab his hands, and lead him back over to her toys, where she sits down. He returns to his chair, she plays for roughly 10 seconds and then returns to his feet. LOL! It’s like we play fetch with her, and she’s the ball.

Despite figuring out how to crawl she’s all about the standing up. She can be full out crying, hold her hands and stand her up and she busts out in a huge grin and squeals. She walks us all over the house. She’s also pulling up on everything. Unfortunately she’s not too good at standing yet – plus she likes to let go. We have to keep an eye out for her or else you turn around and find her all, “Look mama, no hands!” and then down she goes. We’re hoping her balance quickly improves.

We bought her a walker, thinking she’d enjoy it, unfortunately we got it home and realized that the lowest setting was 2″ too tall for her. (Don’t get a Safety 1st walker if you have a remotely short kid.) Den modified it (cut extra notches in it… I mean, really, how hard would it have been for the manufacturer to do??) and now she’s wobbling all over. It only took her a day to figure it out. But, again, she uses it to walk over to us, bumps up against a wall or chair or our legs and then whines. Today Den said while I was at work she was figuring out how to turn it, so this bodes well.

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We tell people Kate’s sleeping in her own room now and we get, “Oh that’s GREAT!” And then we mention that she’s not in a crib and we get a very puzzled look and a subdued, “… oh. What…?” In some ways it amuses me. But mostly I think it just irritates me. I hate that the topic of baby sleep has such high expectations from everyone, like I am being judged by our arrangement and how “well” she does. If someone else has a goal of moving their baby in to their own room, then sure I’ll celebrate with them. But that was not my goal. My goal, as simply as it is, is for everyone to get sleep. We co-slept because it worked. She slept well, and I got far more sleep than if I had tried to constantly move her to another bed and deal with her waking all the time. We were peaceful, we were happy. We stopped full-time cosleeping simply because I felt that we would both get more sleep with a new arrangement. She’s doing okay with it, I’m getting sleep, it’s all good, I’m happy. If it stops working then we’ll figure something else out.

So right now what I’m doing is putting her to sleep on the mattress in her room for naps and evening bedtime. At night she will go anywhere between 1 hour and 3 hours, but typically 2-2.5 hours. When she wakes I go in and nurse her back to sleep. If I’m wide awake at that point I’ll leave and go back to what I was doing, or go try to sleep in my own bed. At some point during the night, after she’s woken me up from a sound sleep, when I nurse her back to sleep I end up falling asleep in her bed, so there I stay until morning (I keep blankets at the foot of the bed for me). This is giving me the best of both worlds, I think: I get to fidget as much as I want as I fall asleep (at least, until Den boots me), and sleep all stretched out in my favorite position. But then once I’m really tired and all I want is more sleep when she wakes up, well then I don’t give a fig what bed I’m in, as long as she stays asleep. I’m a horrible night owl…. it’s hard for me to fall asleep, but in the morning I would trade my own brother for another hour of sleep. I have to set my alarm now or we won’t get up until noon (which wastes the day and ruins her nap timing).

The thing I didn’t really expect – but should have – is that I kind of do feel sad now that she’s in her own room. I really liked having her close by. I like having a family bed, all cozy and sleepy together. We may all be sleeping better, but it’s so strange to have a baby monitor next to me instead of me being able to touch her. And yes, I have had some moments in the middle of the night when I’m very tense, wondering if she’s okay, if she’s still breathing. I thought I’d be past that at this point, but it’s hard to let go and trust that they’re okay, especially when it’s been longer than she typically sleeps in a stretch.

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I’ve mentioned the night time temper tantrums she was throwing, oh was it fun. For a good week and a half after we got home from vacation she was throwing fits at bedtime. Either she’d refuse to go to sleep at all until after 11pm, or she’d fall asleep okay at 9 but wake an hour or two later wanting to play and screaming at being put back to bed. One night she was up from 2-3am, another she was awake from 10-12 after going to bed at 9. Any attempt to get her to sleep – holding, rocking, nursing – was met with kicks, flailing, arching back, screeching and yelling. As soon as we let go she’d roll over and play with her toys and pull up on us and babble happily. If I left the room she’d cry. We ended up sitting in her room with the lights off, not looking at her, not talking to or interacting with her, just sitting there next to her ignoring her in the dark while she crawled around and played. For two hours. It was funny in a “haha if I don’t laugh I’m going to cry” kind of way. Peoples, I was so damn frustrated. I wanted to put a pillow over my head and scream. It wasn’t just that I wasn’t getting my down time in the evening, and that she was screwing with the schedule I was going to get back on track. I had this overwhelming feeling that I was supposed to fix this somehow, but I had no effing clue how.

I thought, well if she’s not tired maybe she shouldn’t be napping so late, or going to bed so early. But that resulted in an overtired baby. Overtired babies do not like to sleep. So those nights she just ended up crying and crying in a very tired voice, and fighting me tooth and nail. Fail.

After that I thought, okay, well maybe I should get her to bed sooner. Maybe she’s too tired and it’s making my life difficult. She goes down great for naps without a fuss. So I tried what I do for naps: I’d watch her in the evening for a sign that she’s tired, then whisk her off to bed and nurse her down. And she yelled and she screamed and she refused to sleep. Fail.

Everyone mentions a before-bed routine of quiet time to unwind. No exciting activity for half an hour before bed, “they” say. No practicing new skills to get them wound up. Just calm, quiet activities, dim lights, a bedtime story. That didn’t work any better. My kid was way too energetic, she didn’t want to do any of those things.

It was two days ago that a thought dawned on me. We already have a pre-bed routine. And you know what, we haven’t really been doing it lately because of our packing, then on vacation, then home and struggling with her and frustration. But it’s not what “they” say to do. It’s not a bath, it’s not a bedtime story or lullabies. What we’ve always done since she was born is we all go to bed together and lay there, playing. And I mean full on wrestling, crawling, rolling, peekaboo under the blankets, flying baby laughing hysterically… all that stuff. So two nights ago about half an hour before her bedtime I took her into her room, got her changed and ready for bed, then laid on her bed with her with the lights on… and we played. She crawled around, she played with toys, she climbed all over me, she laughed and talked and blew raspberries. I tickled her and kissed her and tackled her. We had a lot of fun. She played with her book. She rubbed her eyes. I shut off the light, nursed her for a minute, and she was out for the night. Tonight? Same thing. No crying. No kicking. No waking up wide awake an hour later. Well I’ll be damned.

In a way I feel very foolish because I clearly wasn’t listening to my child and what she needed. My child apparently needs to work off the energy before bed. It’s also our time to really connect, to give her my full attention without the cats, the TV, the laundry, the computer. Of course she needs that. I’m sure part of it was just a phase as she learns all this new stuff, too. I’m just glad I’ve figured out something that works and that the sleep thing is improving. It is hard when they fight it so much!