Happily enough nights are back to normal, or at least as normal as it gets as she grows and changes. My cold is finally almost gone, which means I’m actually getting sleep at night again! Hooray! Kate is back to waking me only twice while I’m sleeping, which makes me happy.

She is also, unfortunately, waking up at like 7am. I am not a 7am kind of person, I’m more of a 9am person. I compromised with her and moved our wake-up time to 8am but this 7 thing? So not happening. So I shove toys at her and let her play in her crib beside me while I doze and then half an hour later she gets tired and crawls over to me for more sleep. And then we sleep until 10 or 11. Which I totally needed while I was sick, but I need to get up at a decent hour now.

She is also napping a ton this past week. She took a 3 hour nap one day this weekend! 3 hours!! That’s unheard of! That doesn’t happen often, but she sleeps on and off all morning. If we’re up at 8 she’s down for a nap at 9, up at 10, down again before noon. And if I don’t put her down when she’s rubbing her eyes she’s whiny.

Our little struggle right now is that she seems bored with the living room. Even though I swap out her toys. Even though I just bought her some new ones. Doesn’t matter, I put her down in the living room on the area rug and she whines and cries and crawls over to me. Any other room is fine. And of course any other room doesn’t have a TV for me to watch or a computer or anything, so I get to sit in a room for hours. Just sit. While my small person alternates ignoring me with climbing on me. And I am apparently not allowed to: put on loads of laundry, clean the fridge, load the dishwasher, prepare food… just to name a few. If I get up and leave a room she cries until I come back. She crawls after me, head down, sobbing. (And then she’s even clingier than usual afterwards, because she suspects I might try it again.) Much of the day she’s not even letting me put her down at all, unless I’m on the floor with her. But of course she doesn’t want to sit on my lap either, that’s boring.

I can’t say that 9 months is my favorite age. It has some really great parts, like her laughter and her ability to get around and play… but the separation anxiety and whining is exhausting. I’ve been trying to get out of the house once a day now that I feel better, it certainly helps both of us! She loves to just people watch and I like not hearing whining… it’s a win-win! Plus she tends to stay awake longer and thus nap longer when we get home. It’s hard because I try to enjoy my days, enjoy what I have at this moment in time, but I still find I’m counting down to nap time and that makes me feel majorly guilty. Sad, too, when I realize she’s 9 months old already.