I am STILL sick. This is three weeks now. I’m so over it and I’m really in quite a foul mood about it. Not being able to get good sleep at night – even if Kate lets me I’m coughing and blowing my nose – is apparently really not good for your mood.

Kate is no longer sick, which is a relief, but she is still teething. Or something. She’s hit this phase, and nursing mamas will nod sagely when I explain: she wants to nurse 24/7. And I don’t mean she’s hungry, I mean she just wants my boob out and accessible for her to suck here and there. If it’s not, god forbid, then she is whining like there is no tomorrow. She follows me around tugging at my pants and whining, and when that fails, she starts crying. When I finally give up and sit down with her on my lap and lift my shirt she sucks approximately 3 times. Then she pushes me away. If I cover up she immediately throws herself back at my chest, yanks on my shirt, and cries again. Repeat, repeat, repeat. I try to pick her up and console her but she just tugs at my shirt, puts her hand down my shirt, and cries. Over and over. All day long. It is pissing me off. I don’t like to say that, and I really try hard to have a near-endless supply of patience, but it is rapidly running out. Today while I had my shirt pulled up exposing both boobs so she could choose which one she wanted she actually started freaking out crying and trying to pull my neckline down – apparently she wanted the other boobs. WTF?

Especially since she is not actually in any sort of pain or other fragile state. If she’s on the floor with Den she happily plays with her books and blocks and crawls on him giggling. They were adorable last night. So I sat down with them to play and join in the fun. It lasted about 30 seconds before she crawled over to me and – you guessed it – cried and pulled at my shirt. WTF!

As if it could get even MORE fun, it happens at night too! She wants to nurse every single time she wakes up if I’m in the room. She will not lay down and go back to sleep. She will not be cajoled or sung or rocked to sleep. And even when I DO nurse her she tends to do the same damn thing: push at me and try crawling away. Again I say: WTF! Night time wake-ups are now a very draining fight of: crying, rocking-while-struggling-against-me, nurse for 1 minute, rocking-while-struggling-against-me-and-yelling, put paci in, she throws paci, I put paci in, she throws paci, I give her the paci and put her in the crib and try to ignore her, she chucks paci out of the crib and then screams at me for half an hour. It sounds comical. And I do laugh sometimes, a bitter, dark, I’m-losing-my-fucking-mind kind of laugh because what else is there to do?

So I got up and left the room, and went to bed. I told Den either he could get her to sleep or she could scream for an hour. And at that point I really didn’t care which it was, clearly nothing I was doing was working. She ended up falling asleep herself within 5 minutes, but woke up 20 minutes later. Den went in. He rocked her to sleep in a few minutes flat. She slept for 3 hours. When she woke up again he shushed her and patted her and she fell back asleep for another 3 hours. Peacefully. So clearly? I cannot be in the room at night right now. I apparently make it worse. It kind of sucks that he’ll be dealing with nights because he kind of has to get up and go to work. On the other hand I greedily anticipate actually sleeping a little bit. Not that I don’t wake up every time she cries anyways, but at least I can just go back to sleep.

Also, her birthday is in 2 weeks. I have no idea how I’m going to get her scrapbook done by then.