Last night was horrible. I was so tired and so frustrated and was willing to do anything to get Kate to sleep so I could sleep. I even brought her into bed with me – and it FAILED! She got up and started playing with the window shade. (Since the crib used to be side-carred next to the bed, now that it’s in her room our bed is pushed against a wall under a window.) She crawled over Den and I. She babbled. She fidgeted and wiggled and slapped me in the face. So back to the crib we went, and she was none too pleased. She wouldn’t sleep in my arms, wouldn’t sleep holding my hand, she wouldn’t even stay laying down.

Today she had a runny nose and was drooling, then I put two and two together and realized her teeth are bothering her. Duh. Can’t she just stay gummy forever? I really, really have a huge loathing for teeth.

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Last night I was having a huge temper tantrum about the door to her room. You see, our house is an older house – not old, but built in the 50’s. It has a lot of cheap construction and creaky floors and doors that don’t quite close well. They close better when you lift the handle, but wood still scrapes wood. We never really thought much about it before we had a baby. It was just how the house was. In fact, when we were doing the floors and baseboards we decided to paint the doors to make them look nicer, seeing how they were an ugly, cheap-looking wood laminate. And they do look nicer, being a crisp white. But we didn’t take into account the effect paint would have on those doors that were already too tight for the door frames. Now not only do they scrape more, but the paint on the door and the paint on the frame stick together and make a lovely “pop” sound when you tug them apart. All of these seems kind of silly in a busy household with dogs and cats and babies running around. But in the dark of night when all is silent suddenly that POP-SCRAAAPPEEEE sounds like you just rung a giant gong right beside Kate’s crib. Even though she has white noise going in her room. At this point I’m fairly sure she has attuned her hearing to that sound of the door because she knows it means mommy is trying to sneak out. She sits bolt-upright and lets out a wail along the lines of someone pulling her arm off.

I wait what seems like an eternity in the dark, trying to ensure she’s asleep before trying to leave. On good nights it works just fine. I am starting to realize that teething makes her either not sleep very deeply or take roughly three hours to reach the “deep sleep” stage. Late last night at 2am I had spent hours trying to get her to fall asleep and for the third time I attempted to go to bed only to have have her wake up freaking out yet again I started to lose my shit just a little. I finally grabbed my droid and settled in for the night. Except she’s also light-sensitive and though there was silence I looked up to see two little fists gripping the crib slats and two tired eyes peering at me over the crib bumper.

This is why, had you walked into my house last night at roughly 3am, you would have found me in Kate’s room beside the crib with the comforter pulled over my head, posting curseword-laden angry posts on facebook from my droid.

This weekend we are taking a chisel and sander to that door because if it continues to wake her up several times a night it will not be pretty.

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I’ve been ranting a lot about the frustrations of her sleep transition, but in reality when I look at it she’s doing remarkably well. She has three nights in a row of waking only twice at night, which is amazing for her. It’s still hard on me sleeping alone, but I look at her wiggling around and snuggling into her crib and I realize that she needed this. A friend today mentioned that her daughter moved to the crib at the same age for the same reason – they just needed their own space and stopped being cuddly and comfortable next to mom. Tonight when I put Kate down for bedtime she played with my fingers for a minute and then she let go, rolled over, and drifted off to sleep. Just like that. I watched her and felt so proud of her.

Of all the baby blankets we got in my two pregnancies (why do you always end with ten million baby blankets?) there were actually very few good ones for using in her crib. I have light flannel receiving blankets, which were well-used last summer when she was a newborn and just needed small something to keep the sun off; cotton thermal stretch receiving blankets, which were my favorites for wrapping her up (NOT swaddling, which she hated, but tucking around her for sleep); a couple fuzzy warm blankets which weren’t so much as touched until this winter when I was running around looking for something to keep her warm amidst all the snow and ice; and a couple of knit blankets which are excellent at being fur collectors. Her crib bedding did come with a pretty quilt, but it’s not exactly a soft snuggly kind of blanket. So I hopped on Etsy and found her a lovely pink and brown minky blanket. It arrived two days ago and I love it! It’s so soft and snuggly, and just the right size for her. I immediately wrapped her up in it and danced through the house with her. I’m using it throughout the bedtime routine, to keep her snuggled while we read her books and sway and sing a lullaby. She seems to like it. In fact the first night I saw her laying in her crib, touching it with her hands. Dare I have hope? (And if she ends up not wanting the blanket, I will steal it. I like it that much.)