Kate will play happily with her toys for a few minutes at least – unless I sit down with her. Then she takes one look at me, leans towards me, puts out her hands, and vocally demands to stand up.

Today when I checked on dinner I left her in her bedroom for a few minutes, playing with a book on the floor. There was silence. Den went down to peek in the room and found out that she’d abandoned her book and was inch-worming for the door. Quietly and peacefully, mind you. Well she looked up, saw Den, and then started squalling as if she couldn’t possibly go another inch, she’s stuck, she’s helpless, pick me up! It most definitely was not the cry of sadness, it was a cry of frustration. As soon as Den put her on her feet she grinned at him as if nothing whatsoever had just happened.

Oh yes, the temper tantrums are starting. Due to her whole sleep schedule being out of whack sometimes we go to bed when she thinks it’s playtime. Or, like a few of the last couple nights, she wakes up from her “nap” at 2am and decides it’s no longer time for sleep. Which is frustrating enough on its own, but the way she lets us know this is by throwing the biggest damn fit. I usually cuddle her to get her to go to sleep, but when I do that when she’s in that mood she arches her back, throws her arms wide, and screams in fury. Last night when it happened Den and I just looked at each other with eyebrows raised. It’s not like 2am is the peak of my patience, either.

I feel like the nights are getting a tiny bit better, but every time I think that to myself she does another wide-awake-in-the-middle-of-the-night tantrum. Plus I don’t think she’s slept for longer than a 2 hour stretch at night in about a month. WTF. As a newborn she was doing 3 hours, and at 2 months old she was doing 3-5 hours, and now it’s 1-2. Plus instead of nursing for 2 seconds and falling back to sleep she’s squirming, whining, and waking up every time I so much as twitch my little finger. Which means instead of barely waking up, I am coming wide awake every time, shushing her, rocking her, gently moving away again… I’m so tired! And then I woke up again when Den’s alarm went off and couldn’t go back to sleep. I probably had maybe 4-5 hours of broken sleep. I know I said we’d wait to move her until the time shift was sorted out, but that was it for me, I’m done, toast, if I get woken up at 6am one more time I may go on an alarm clock murderous rage. Or if the dogs bark, or if my husband snores… dude, I am just a pissy person at night right now.

So. Kate now has a mattress on the floor in her completely cleaned out and babyproofed room. She is currently asleep on it, in fact. Problem is, I don’t know what to do now. Part of me thinks if we’re making a change we should make it all the way and I use this opportunity to gently show her that she is fully capable of sleeping by herself for longer than 2 hours. But then part of me thinks that she’s in a new bed in a new room, maybe I should stay with her so that it’s not a rough transition. And philosophical questions aside, my current dilemma is this: do I go to bed and try to sleep, knowing that she will probably wake up and cry .2 seconds after I fall asleep? Is that even worth it? Because really, that’s what’s on my mind. My plan is to try to get sleep in my own bed, then move to hers when she wakes up and I’m really tired. That way I get some sleep alllll by myself, but in the morning I’ll be safely ensconced in her room so Den won’t wake me. Good plan. No idea how it’ll work. Probably very poorly if she only sleeps for 1 hour chunks, which is my worry. Oh dear child, I love you and I have no problems with where you and I sleep, if we’re together or apart, but for the love of the internets please sleep longer than 2 hours at a time.

Mommy necklaces ROCK. Kate has been scratching my face so bad while trying to fall asleep, her fingers digging at my nose and pulling on my lip. It hurt! While away I finally got frustrated enough to order one I’ve been eying from Mommy Necklaces – they’re pretty enough to wear out, but they’re strong enough for baby. And it works!! Her fingers still do drift up to my face but I can distract her with the necklace, and most of the time I don’t have to do anything at all. Sweet, sweet bliss to be able to rock my baby to sleep without me pinning her arms down and her shrieking in frustration.

It is becoming apparent to me that cosleeping is no longer working. It makes me so sad! I have no problems keeping her in our bed, but things are changing. She and I used to both sleep so well all snuggled up together, I was so tired and it certainly made sense to keep her close by. Now we are starting to sleep apart, which sounds like a good thing but is just very frustrating. Even though we have a king size bed Kate always ends up rolling into the middle of “my” half, pinning me up against my snoring husband in the middle of the bed and unable to stretch my arm out for fear of disturbing the finally-sleeping baby. Also I have realized that I am a very light, fidgety sleeper, especially when trying to fall asleep. I have always struggled with night time insomnia (except when I have a newborn, apparently) and my trying to find a comfortable position to fall asleep in is disturbing Kate. I keep waking her up, which means I have to scoot over and comfort her and get her back to sleep, and by that point I’ve lost whatever sleepiness I had. I’ve spent a lot of sleepless nights these past three weeks, staring at the wall. (And no, I can’t use my droid because that either wakes up the baby or the husband. Gah.)

And furthermore, Den getting up for work at 6am is now consistently waking her up. Every morning when his alarm goes off she squirms, I have to hold and rock her for the next hour while he’s getting ready because he’s in and out of the bedroom. He’s really quiet about it and we both used to sleep through it all without a problem, but not anymore.

With Kate now sleeping well on her own for naps it’s looking like it’s time to move her into her own room at night. We thought about the logistics of it and we just can’t see any way to get her to sleep in her crib, as putting her down almost always wakes her up. So we’re going to be putting a full-size mattress on the floor in her room so that I can lay down with her and yet she has only 5″ if she does happen to roll or crawl off. I think it hits all the necessary marks: I can go sleep in my own bed without fear of disturbing her if she’s sleeping well on her own, I can join her if she needs me, and it’s in a quiet room where no one will be going in and out.

It sounds like a good plan, I just hope it works as well in practice as it sounds in theory. We’re going to wait until this time-shift thing is sorted out before trying it, though. One thing at a time. For right now I’m working on cleaning up and baby-proofing the room, since she’s never used it before except for diaper changes.

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.

The flights home went far better than the trip out, with Kate succeeding in napping when she needed to so there was no post-trip meltdown as I was expecting. It went as well as could be hoped for with a small child, especially a child being of monkey-like age. The poor thing got so frustrated at being stuck on our laps and not being allowed to eat everything in sight.

On the way out I was a little paranoid about the pressure on her ears so I kept trying to force her to nurse while going up and down, which I don’t recommend doing. My little piggie finishes nursing in like 2 minutes flat and of course she’d always decide she was hungry as we were taxiing out, meaning she was done before we ever took off. Trying to cajole her into continuing only resulted in her getting very irritated and grouchy. But regardless she didn’t have any crying that seemed to be connected with discomfort. So this time I figured she’d let me know if she was unhappy and if her ears did bother her she’d probably want to comfort-nurse anyways. And you know what? She was fine. Maybe the paci was enough. Our second flight she actually fell asleep on me in the airport, I carried her into the plane, sat down, Den strapped me in, and she continued sleeping for the next hour and a half. On the descent she started getting fussy, which I belatedly realized was probably her ears as well as hunger, and a quick nurse seemed to solve that.

Kate stared when we walked into our house, I could imagine her thinking, Wait, I recognize this… Then I put her on the floor where she proceeded to play quietly with her toys for an hour – a feat unheard of at my parents’ house. She was especially thrilled to be reacquainted with her leap frog music table, where she could stand and play, though that required me sitting with her to spot. (She topples very infrequently now… amazing change in just 2 weeks!) I also noted that she laughed and played through her diaper change in her room, whereas at my parents’ she would cry every single time we put her down on the changing pad. I really don’t know why it’s so much more fun in her bedroom, but I’ll take it.

Kate is getting to know my parents and is having a lot of fun with them. She has greatly reduced the crying when she is alone with them and doesn’t even freak out when she sees me walk out of the room. Today I came home from a dinner to find her watching some videos on youtube with my mom, and when she saw me there was no major event. It was more like, “oh, hey mama. Just chillin with nana here.” Freakin amazing.

And of course we leave in 2 days.

I am so torn this year. Part of me just wants to go home and get Kate back into our routine, back to feeling less stressed and wrung out. But, as usual, part of me is so utterly sad to leave. I love my family. There is nothing like sitting in a room with them, talking and laughing and just being together. And now seeing Kate get to know them, watching them blow raspberries at her and walk her around… watching them fall in love with her. It’s just not easy to leave, knowing it will be a long time before she will see them again.

Family is so important, and nothing makes you as aware of that as a child.

Our vacation is almost over now and I think we are all looking forward to getting home. I will miss my family terribly, but it is really hard not being in our house with our routines. It just seems like every day here takes more energy and patience than I am used to expending daily. I’m quite tired and need to rest after my vacation!

At home I can put her down to sleep and then get my hours of free time but here than is one thing that I cannot do. She is napping great on her own, but at night for some reason the same rules do not apply – I have to stay with her, close to her, or she wakes up constantly. So no free time in the evenings. I think that, above everything else, is hardest right now. I depend on that time. Plus when I am visiting I like to hang out with my brother in the evenings. I have been compromising by bringing her with me and having her sleep on me while we watch movies. Out sort-of works.

Kate is working on crawling still – she’s very close, but trends to fits of pique rather than actually practicing – but her main joy in life is standing up. When we arrived here she could stand and step while holding tightly to our hands. She moved – and fell – like a drunk. Now she is much more solid on her feet, she’s pulling to her feet using toys and furniture, and she’s letting go with some frequency, standing by herself while holding on with just one hand. Unfortunately she then lets go with the other hand and promptly falls over. Given that she is so prone to toppling over and can’t go anywhere without helping hands I pretty much can’t leave her side. It is exhausting. She can be momentarily distracted with a toy, but quickly remembers that siting down is totally lame. From sitting she crawls forward until she remembers that half-crawling is also totally lame, then she simply disintegrates into whiny cries and flailing about and dramatic inching towards me and my hands. I find myself looking forward to her walking, a thought I am sure I will regret shortly.

After living here for over a week Kate has really adapted well to all of the people. Den and I even went out to see a movie, leaving her with my parents for a few hours. When we walked in the door I could hear her babbling and laughing, but of course as soon as she saw my face appear above the stairwell she put out her arms and wailed pathetically. Drama queen. I was unconcerned, as that is the same response I get when I return from ducking downstairs to put on the laundry. My mom said she was quite exhausted trying to keep Kate entertained, but it went well. I may get another night out tomorrow.

Well we had two terrible nights and two terrible days and that was apparently the worst of it. She and I both felt much better and once she was sleeping well at night again her mood during the day improved greatly. Suddenly the vacation feels more like a vacation and less like a torture device.

In fact, Kate is napping better than she ever has at home. She is at the age where she is rolling while sleeping so we have started putting her to sleep on her belly. Best. Thing. Ever. We knew from the time she was 2 months old that she was a belly sleeper, but we followed the rules mostly out of pure paranoia that she would somehow suffocate while sleeping. The child hates sleeping on her back, has from the first week we brought her home. She flails about and cries, searching for comfort, searching for something warm and safe-feeling. And so she always slept with me. Since 4 months old I could put her to sleep on her side, carefully prop her there with her leg bent just-so, and creep away. I have been getting 30-minute naps out of her ever since. Oh once in a while she’d surprise me and sleep for an hour, or on memorable occasions for an hour and a half (at which time we would poke our head in just to make sure she was still in fact breathing). But 30 minutes was her standard. Now on her belly? Hour long naps, three times a day. Now granted she has much more input, more need for sleep here, but she’s much more able to self-soothe now. She moves around a little, wiggles, turns her head from side to side, falls back asleep. That just doesn’t happen any other time. Much less in a strange room in a strange bed with strange noises going on everywhere. (How I would get her to nap during the day was my biggest worry in planning this vacation. It is a huge relief!)

My brother – my surly, tattooed, doesn’t-like-people-in-general younger brother – seems to be quite enamored with his niece. He tickles her, he lays on the floor with her, he offers his fingers and walks her around. He calls her “Monkey.” Kate liked him right from the start, and every time he walks into a room she smiles big and squeals at him. I wonder if he looks and sounds familiar, mommy-like. Or maybe he’s just a funny guy. (I happen to like him a lot, myself. I love my brother, and I miss him while I’m gone. He was always my best friend growing up. We can and do spend hours talking.)

My dad, who doesn’t like children much other than his own, also seems quite taken by his granddaughter. Dad keeps commenting on what a happy, funny kid she is, how cute she is, how smart. It’s pretty funny to witness. Kate sits on the floor and plays with the toys he offers to her, she chucks them off the edge of the exersaucer for him to retrieve and blows raspberries at him. He taught her how to work some of the toys and was pleased as punch when she started imitating him and using the toys herself.

My mom has been harder. There was never any question of how much my mom would love Kate, she’s a grandma through and through. She’s been looking forward to this visit for months. But the problem is that Kate has just recently hit the stranger-fear stage, the I-want-Mommy crying. So every time my mom eagerly reached for Kate to hold her and kiss her and hug her Kate would look at her, confused and slightly horrified, then put her arms out for me and try diving out of her nana’s arms. Utterly frustrating, for all of us. My mom has tried to be patient but I know it must be so disappointing and frustrating for her. Meanwhile my child is upset and confused as hell. And I’m caught in the middle, constantly having to soothe my child and reassure my mom. I foolishly thought I would have free time on vacation, since there were plenty of willing arms to hold Kate. And as recently as 3 weeks ago that would have been true, as long as they held her the way she wanted. It was just pure bad timing that this trip coincided with the stranger-fear stage. So instead of the free arms I was envisioning instead she wants to be held more than ever. But this second week things have improved, I think she’s getting used to my family a little bit. She’s certainly more willing to sit and play with them for a little while, though I try to duck into the next room and stay out of sight.

I can’t say this was the Christmas I pictured – it was far from ideal, especially with the sickies we all got (Den now has it, though Kate and I are feeling much better). But I still think it was worth it. Watching Kate get to know my family, and watching my family get to know Kate, has been truly heartwarming. It is hard living so far away, though I try my best with pictures and videos to keep everyone connected. There is nothing quite like being here, with all its little frustrations. People were right: the older you get, the more you appreciate family. (I hope one day my brother figures that out.)

Mother, O Mother, come shake out your cloth,
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing, make up the bed,
Sew on a button and butter the bread.

Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I’ve grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,
Lullabye, rockabye, lullabye loo.
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo

The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew
And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo
But I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo
Look! Aren’t his eyes the most wonderful hue?
Lullabye, rockaby lullabye loo.

The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow
But children grow up as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.

— Ruth Hulburt Hamilton

I have to say, traveling with Kate has been exhausting. Travel day itself was rough simply because of the lack of naps and then being thrust into an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people. But after a good night’s sleep she was doing tremendously well – napping well by herself, sleeping 12 hours at night, and being her usual, happy, outgoing self.

And then it all went to hell.

I started feeling sick on the plane. There is something about flying that inevitably gets me sick – usually I pick something up on the plane, but this time I obviously had it beforehand and the stress and dry air made me more susceptible to it. I can deal with me sick, though – it wasn’t bad, just clogged sinuses. I’ve been doing sinus rinses and taking naps with Kate.

Then Christmas Day Kate utterly melted down. She is not a whiny, crying baby, she’s just not. So for her to melt down crying every half an hour is highly unusual and very frustrating. We thought at first she must be teething, since there was nothing else wrong with her and she seemed to be chewing on everything in sight, amidst big crocodile tears. But then Boxing Day brought a runny, stuffed up nose.

She now refuses to lay down with me at all, even when she’s tired. Two days ago when she was tired I’d take her into the bedroom, lay down with her, give her her paci, and she’d roll over and fall asleep for an hour. It was awesome. Now as soon as I lay down she is thrashing around crying, spitting out the paci and snorting through clogged nostrils. We have to jiggle her to sleep standing up, then gently lay her down. And don’t even talk to me about sleeping at night. She wakes roughly every 30-60 minutes, crying, fights me, rolls around flailing, falls back asleep. Rinse and repeat until 7 or 8 in the morning when I blearily hand her over to Denis and crash for 3 hours.

She was adjusting to all these new people. But being sick and not being at home? She’s cranky. I can’t walk more than 2 feet away without her putting her arms up and crying for me. She will barely sit with Den for a while, and she definitely will not sit with anyone else. Grandma’s upset. We were going to go out to see a movie, maybe eat out… that won’t be happening at all unless she’s feeling better.

This sucks. This sucks great big monkey balls. I just want my happy baby back. :(