I give up. I utterly give up. The last two nights I have been laying in Kate’s bed in the dark for an hour and a half trying to get her to fall back asleep. She wiggles, she cries, she tries crawling away from me, she tries crawling on to me – tonight she actually did fall asleep draped across my chest and neck, but that so does NOT work for me. I’d do the usual waiting until she was asleep and limp and then I’d get up to leave… and her head would snap up. I supposed I could have waited even longer to leave but I’d already been in there for a fucking hour.

This is not working. This is NOT working. It was working, once. We were making minuscule steps forward. And now we’re just heading in the absolute wrong direction. She’s not getting sleep, I’m not getting any time to myself, and I’m just realizing that this needs to change.

So this weekend we’re bringing in the crib, and she’s going to learn to fall asleep without me. I have no idea what that’s going to take, but I imagine no matter what we do there is going to be crying since me trying to put her beside me instead of on top of me causes her to sit up crying.

I took her in the bedroom tonight sniffling and crying because I knew it was the last time I was going to lay down and cuddle her to sleep (at least in normal circumstances). By midnight I was crying just out of frustration.

I wanted this to work. I wanted to be all cool and not use a crib, to cosleep and seamlessly transition to her own room and end up with a kid that sleeps as well as anyone. I want to continue to cosleep half the night. But clearly none of that is actually working out. I know part of being a parent is flying by the seat of your pants and adjusting your expectations. But damn it hurts.

Apparently teething made my child very anxious about going to bed. It used to be a very simple, pleasant experience, involving laying down, nursing, and falling asleep to a lullaby. She now cries when I walk into the room with her. Putting her on the bed is guaranteed to make her really wail, which doesn’t cease until I uncover the boobs, whether or not she’s actually hungry. And then the falling asleep part, after the nursing and paci-placement, now involves a lot of grabbing for mommy. Clearly I am her security blanket, and also clearly she is very anxious – this is not the pain wail of actual teething, this is the, Noooo, I don’t want to! wail. I don’t mind the cuddling; I do mind the wails and kicking and back arching when I try to cuddle her – it puts me in a pretty sour mood to start the night off. She was doing so well before the teething… we were making progress, she was calm and would lay down and fall asleep with just some back patting. These constant setbacks make me want to scream.

I constantly wonder if I’m doing this wrong… or, no, that’s the wrong word. I don’t think there is a wrong. I wonder if I will regret my choices. That’s the worst part, the self-doubt. I wish there was some manual, some foresight: if I do X, Y will happen. But babies are all different.

And of course just when I think I’ve made up my mind, that something has to change, she falls asleep and sleeps just fine. I’m sitting here scratching my head. Why did it have to take 2 hours of refusing-to-sleep and a meltdown to accomplish this today? Yesterday she went to bed no problems and stayed asleep for 2 hours, then another 2 hours.

Didn’t I mention the waking every 2 hours at 10 months old is getting, well, old? This is by far the main reason she is still in bed next to me – at least then I don’t recall how often she wakes, it’s brief and doesn’t wake me. Having to get up out of bed every 2 hours in the middle of the night? Not cool. We do have a timeline for this: when (if) I get pregnant again, she will need be able to sleep at night without my constant attention. (Daddy will be the one being sent in at that point, and we all know how well they handle broken sleep.)

But I admit that I know I sleep better when she’s next to me. Apparently she has become my security blanket. I believe this is the main reason I haven’t tried any major change that might actually solve the sleep problem… I know that whatever I do is probably going to require consistently putting her in her own bed. I’m still not ready to commit to that. Which is fine. (I think.)

Clearly sleep is our Thing We Struggle With. Some people have problems with feeding; some with illness; some with meeting milestones. Ours? Just sleep. And if the sleep thing just isn’t “great” by anyone’s standards, I wish I at least believed in my decisions enough to say, “Fuck it, I’m doing the best I can.” But I don’t. And that sucks.

My child is climbing. In general we are pretty safe since there’s not a whole lot she can climb on around here – no stairs, not much furniture, some toys. But she’s already proved to us she can climb stairs when given the opportunity (at someone else’s house), and she can climb on and off her bed mattress at will (about 6″ off the ground). Unfortunately she now thinks she can get off all furniture the same way, I caught her trying to slither off of our mattress the other day, face-first. Sweet. I need to figure out how to teach her to go feet-first. Her favorite toy, the Learning Home, has some little attached “shelves” – I don’t know how to explain it, but there’s one round part about 3 inches off the ground. She now spends a lot of time standing on that little platform, gripping the roof of the house, leaning forward and cackling with glee. Den said he nearly had a heart attack the first time he saw her doing it, but then he realized there’s not much he can do about it. Today while playing a basket turned off by her leap frog music table, so she took the opportunity to try climbing onto the table. Den caught her.

One of our nicknames for her is now “Monkey.” I also call her “Goose” pretty regularly (for “silly goose!”).

If books are one of her loves, music is another. She loves her music toys. She’s always liked things that make noise of some sort, but now it is specifically those toys that sing a little song, her favorites currently being her singing bear, camera, and the learning home. She knows exactly what buttons do songs and goes straight for them. I tend to sing along with them now, since the words get stuck in my head, and she’ll often stare at me, fascinated, as I do so. As soon as the song ends – or in many cases about 2 seconds before the song ends – she reaches over to press the button again, then turns back to watch me. Just this week she’s started swinging her arms back and forth, twisting her upper body left and right, in a kind of very primitive baby-dance. Also clapping, as we tend to clap and say, “Yaayyyy!” when a song ends. It’s so adorable! I clearly need to learn more kids songs. She loves it when I sing it to her, but we both get tired of The Itsy Bitsy Spider, Patty Cake, and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I have a very small repertoire.

Through Lost and Found I came tonight on the blog of Rainbows & Earthquakes, who just recently has lost their son to a rare metabolic illness. My eyes fill up with tears as I read her posts.

I thought to myself, I can’t imagine losing my child. Isn’t that strange; I already did lose a child. I held him in my arms. I sat with death for a while – the death of dreams, the death of a sweet little person. And yet now, years later, I have a living child, a vibrant, alive child running around my house and I still can’t wrap my brain around it.

First, go and read Tash’s post about a lovely new drug called Makena. She explains it so well.

A drug that has been successfully used to treat preterm labor for very little cost, mixed by pharmacies, is now going to be made by a big pharmaceutical company with FDA approval (under the Orphan Drug Act or somesuch). Big Pharma of course will be the only maker of this newly-FDA-approved drug. Instead of $20 per dose? Makena is going to be $1500 per dose. They’re trying to justify it, but I don’t see how it’s even possible to justify that.

All I can think is fucking assholes.

::

Today I used the My Ride to gauge my feelings for it compared to the Boulevard. Know what I discovered? I like it a lot more than I previously thought. Kate does, too. She’s still not a huge fan of actually being snugged into the harness, but I’m getting the idea that’s a toddler/age thing, not a seat thing. But the harness and buckles on that thing are just so much nicer to me! I can get her in and out much more quickly, and it doesn’t irritate me. It also apparently doesn’t bug Kate either, since she was babbling and grinning at me (except for the tightening it part). Plus it’s cuter.

Then when I came home I looked it up on Amazon just for shits and giggles. One of the girl patterned My Rides is on sale for $115. I said, “Screw that!” I filed for a product return for the Britax, printed out the shipping label, and wrestled that thing back into the box and slapped the shipping label on it. I’m getting another My Ride for Den’s car. And if it totally sucks forward facing in a few years I’ll replace them with a Graco Nautilus. Combined it’s the same price as the Britax. So there. Done.

I feel so much better now.

::

When at 6pm the husband astutely notes that the baby looks really tired the correct answer would be make her stay awake by all means necessary. The wrong answer is putting her down for a nap. And then not waking her up for 2 hours. Because now? It is 11pm and she is walking circles around my chair, whinily demanding I come play with her, while at the same time resisting every attempt to put her to sleep (read: screaming like an angry raptor). She’s not even particularly tired. My dearest husband, on the other hand, basically fell asleep in the middle of a sentence, so I’m stuck with the awake, unhappy child by myself. Fantastic. I don’t know what I was thinking.

12:30 and I finally got her to fall asleep… and it was a good half an hour of me rocking and patting her in the dark of her bedroom.

::

Suddenly I noticed that her head is bumping the underside of my desk when she’s walking around. She had half an inch of clearance last week (okay maybe not that much, but she wasn’t close). She’s going to be really ticked off when she whacks her head with the next growth spurt. She already can’t walk underneath our dining table and she’s constantly getting “stuck” and crying because she doesn’t know how to duck, so she just repeatedly tries to walk forward and gets her forehead bonked every time.

Just this week she’s figured out how to put the balls back in her gumball machine. (It was a free toy. Balls go in the top, you press a lever, it plays a song, and out pops a ball.) She figured out the “out” part really quickly, I just had to sit there constantly putting them back in for her. This week she is deliberately picking up the ball and dropping it in the top, the pressing the lever and watching it come out the bottom. It feels like such a leap in understanding, moreso than just a coordination thing. She used to hit the lever until all the balls came out and then keep pressing it and get confused, like she thought there should be a magical limitless supply of balls. Now when she presses the lever and no ball comes out she immediately looks around for a ball to put in the top.

She is climbing and exploring. Her walking is picking up speed, which means she can get further away from me in a shorter amount of time. Good luck setting her down while I try to do something foolish like set up her travel highchair. She’s off trying to eat things off the floor. Or walking over to people and grabbing their leg (she’s a very friendly girl). Or just walking off. She can climb a flight of stairs and she is stepping up on things to reach higher.

She’s also figured out how to get off her bed mattress in her own room: she slithers forward enough that her hands touch the ground, then she continues slithering until her knees are on the ground. This works great on her 5″ high mattress. Unfortunately she thinks the same method will work just as well on our bed and other furniture.

Best of all she is entering into the age of angry raptor screeching. This past week with the screaming only highlighted it, but it has become a daily fixture. They’re typically short, ear-piercing screeches full of rage. You blink and it’s over and she’s distracted, playing with a toy. You could almost pretend you just imagined it. Except it happens with some regularity throughout the day.
“What the hell was that?” Den asked me today with a look of surprized concern.
“That?” Kate arched her back again and screeched again when I still wouldn’t let her lean forward to bang on my keyboard while I was writing. “Oh, she’s just angry.”
Reasons for raptor-screeching include the aforementioned no-keyboard-banging; being held when she wants to be put down; being stuck under a piece of furniture; and the biggie, being put to sleep. If she’s wicked tired it’s not a problem, but like tonight when I know she’s tired and needs to sleep but she doesn’t know it… angry screeching when I lay down with her, and she gets very very angry when I hold her tight and try rocking her to sleep. That method is pretty much not working at all anymore. (Plus I think my eardrums are damaged.) If I let her go she returns to happy-Kate but does not become sleeping-Kate. If I continue to hold her tight and whisper and sing and rock she remains raging-Kate. I have to stand up with her and hold her against my chest (but not too tight!) and bounce and hope like hell she realizes she’s tired and puts her head down. Once her head is down and she relaxes I’m golden. But getting there… not so fun.

I am so not ready to have a toddler.

I seriously think I hate carseats at this point. I want to go to every company that makes them and say, “You suck, you suck, you suck. You too. Yes you, you suck!” I have addled my brains researching every conceivable fact, comparing, and driving to BRU three times to try out the seats. And every single one of them has something wrong with it. (Correction: something I don’t like about it. It may be a good reason, it may be a totally stupid reason, but I want to like my carseats.)

The MyRide? Awesome rear-facing seat. I spent only $130 on it, it installed super easy with no issues whatsoever using a seatbelt (we can’t use LATCH in the center in the SUV), Kate fits, she seems happy. The harness was a little tight to snug up on her, but I hear that with a lot of different car seats, especially with rear-facing installs. It’s a little lacking in the cushiony department, but Kate didn’t seem to mind. The big but? It sucks forward facing, so we’d have to get a different seat in a few years. The seat doesn’t recline or have a base, it just has two little legs that pop out to prop it up a bit more for forward facing…. and trying to fit it into a seat with the base flat and have the back actually against the seat back? Not going to happen. I tried it, just to see. It’s a known issue, most people just don’t use it forward facing… if they even have the option. I can see why.

I looked at a lot of different seats. Tried them out in the store. Compared stats and reviews. I hemmed and I hawed and I decided in the end to spend the money on a Britax. I am being supremely picky about this, so I figured let’s spend the extra money to get THE car seat… the luxury edition. Nifty little velcro tabs to hold back the harness straps, lots of padding, a smooth harness adjuster, easy to install, etc etc. This was it. It was hard making that decision, but I hit the purchase button.

It arrived today. I was so freaking excited. I took it out, oooed and ahhhed over it, got it adjusted to Kate’s shoulders. Then I took the MyRide out of the SUV and set about installing the Boulevard. It wasn’t easy like everyone said. Maybe everyone was talking about LATCH. Because the seat belt? Just as hard as with the MyRide. In fact after I huffed and puffed and got it in nice and solid it was the wrong angle. And that’s when I noticed the Boulevard has no little bubble ball level meter, it just has a line on the side. The line shows the center of the allowable recline between 30 and 45%. Uhh. That’s… not helpful. I mean, it kind of gives you a rough idea, but I don’t know if I’m over 30% or not. I do know however that it was so upright I had trouble getting her in it, so I uninstalled the bugger and got a rolled-up towel. Wrestled with it again. Success! It was acceptable to me.

Kate was happily playing in the back of the SUV all this time, by the way. Apparently it’s like the perfect playpen back there; I threw a bunch of her toys back there with her and she waddled around and tossed things and smushed her face up against the window squealing in delight. The seat back was high enough it kept her contained. I’m thinking maybe I should eat my lunches out there. But I digress.

Pleased with my install and yet feeling rather miffed at how the love was just not coming yet I snagged Kate and put her in the seat. Your new seat, Kate! How exciting! I’m just going to buckle you in-…. “WAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!” The screech of rage. Yes, okay, the crotch buckle is a little bit closer than in the MyRide and the padding thicker, making it a tighter fit. But still, it’s all kushy and happy! Happy, Kate, happy! She did not see the happy.

Once the harness was nice and snug – which, by the way, was not as easy I was lead to believe it was going to be – and she had settled down from the rage-screeching I got in and drove around the block. She fell asleep. So clearly it’s not a terrible seat. The head wings made me feel much better about her sleeping, like she was all cuddled by the seat. I thought, well maybe she is just in a mood. She’s tired.

We went back out a few hours later to go meet up with some friends. More screeching as I buckled her in. And again I was huffing and tugging on that damn strap to get it tight. She was screeching as if I was doing it up way too tight, but when I checked the shoulders there was a ton of slack – way more than I’m used to. What? I removed all the optional padding (belly, shoulders, had already removed the infant insert thing). Same thing. I sulked the whole drive. She was mostly silent, except for random bursts of babble and every once in a while a grunt and annoyed whine as she tried to get out of the harness.

At this point I really want to crawl underneath my bed and never look at car seats again. I can return the Boulevard, which is indeed my first instinct – why keep an expensive seat if it’s no better than the cheap seat? But then I look up what to get instead and I’m back to square one. They all have something I don’t like. I’ve decided to keep the MyRide in my SUV, since I DO like it, and so does she. When it’s time to turn her forward facing I’ll probably get the Graco Nautilus (forward facing only, harness to high back booster to low back booster). What I want for Den’s car is a cheap (less than $150) seat that will keep her rear facing the same amount of time as the MyRide and yet will be able to be used forward facing and not need to be replaced. The Boulevard actually does meet that criteria. Den wants to keep it. I cringe at the thought of keeping the $240 seat as the backup.

It’s times like these that I really really wish I was the kind of person who could quickly take in the general facts, make a decision, and then just be happy with it and forget the rest. Bah.

I’ve written about eyes before. I get emotional, waiting and hoping for my blue-eyed child. And I feel so guilty for that, guilty that I am disappointed in anything at all. It’s the one struggle that I can’t seem to let go of. I have spent the past 10 months staring at Kate’s grey eyes, knowing they weren’t going to turn blue but hoping they would at least stay grey. When they started turning brown I kept trying to convince myself it was the light. It wasn’t – they clearly were turning a brown hue. I was trying to just accept that, she is who she is and I need to let it go.

The other day I studied her eyes by habit and realized with a shock that they have green in them. Green. I had to look three times and I keep asking people if they see it too, because I was sure I was imagining it. They keep confirming that her eyes are in fact a grey-olive tone now. Definitely brown in there, but also a green tint. So unexpected. Yes I know that your children can end up with pretty much any color eyes under the sun, no matter what you have, but we all just figured brown (Den’s) or blue (mine).

I admit, I feel a rush of relief. Green! I can handle green. It’s not blue, but green feels unique and very… Kate. Who knows what color they’ll actually end up, maybe hazel or grey/brown/green. It sure is interesting watching them change.

10 Months

8 Months

4 Months

2 Months

After a lot of deliberation I ended up buying the Britax Boulevard for her main carseat, the MyRide will be going in Den’s car. These kind of decisions stress me out so I’m really hoping she and I like the Boulevard as much as it seemed when we tried them in the store. Fingers crossed. And yes, I am super sad about letting go of the uber cute MyRide. I just feel like since we’re in the car every day for a while that some more padding and features would be nice.

::

Someone – and I have no freaking clue who, my memory sucks right now – informed me that Kate is right around the time for another one of those wonderweeks. I think I fucking hate wonder weeks. I know I fucking hate teething. At this point I can’t even tell you exactly what is bothering her, I just know that she refuses to sleep until she’s so tired she passes out. I even take her in the bedroom and turn off the lights and she’s starting to cry in protest and starts climbing my chest and trying to fling herself backwards out of my arms. Now my child has never slept through the night, she never stays asleep, but getting her to sleep was never a problem. I don’t have any particular routine, I don’t rock her, I normally just wait until she rubs her eyes, walk her into her room, lay down with her, sometimes I nurse her sometimes I don’t (but it helps), and she falls asleep. It takes me 2 minutes. This? This screechy angry crawling away from me child? This is crazy. It is making me crazy.

I just remind myself that it’s just one of those weeks and next week will probably be better. I kind of feel bad for my friends and relatives on facebook because almost all of my posts are about how she is not sleeping. My entire life revolves around my child’s lack of naps. It’s awesome.

::

Last night I actually managed to get Kate down to sleep at a somewhat normal time of 9pm. It was a tricky operation, mostly involving her getting so tired she cried pitifully until I rocked her to sleep and very very carefully put her down on her bed. As I tip-toed out of her room Den whispered something to me.

I quietly shut her door and then took a step down the hall, whispering back, “What? I couldn’t hear–” *BA-WHAM!!* Not watching where I was stepping I friggin kicked her monkey ball right into the bathroom door. I just stood there, motionless, shoulders slumped. I mean, seriously?

By some miracle she did not wake up. At least, not right then. She slept a whole 30 minutes before waking up screaming. At least it wasn’t my fault.

::

Warning: Cloth diaper babble.

I’ve been having problems with Kate’s Thirsties diapers leaking, which had me wondering if either she was outgrowing them (finally), or if the elastics were starting to go. Considering we have 7 Thirsties covers and used them pretty much exclusively, I wouldn’t be surprized. So I pulled out the small FuzziBunz I’d packed away months ago (because of leaks) and stripped them with dawn. They still fit her and they no longer leak. I am super excited! I also bought two GroVia AIO one-size dipes, which may not be my preferred type of diaper but the prints are super cute. And in my world, cute almost always wins. (Why don’t GroVia’s AI2s have the same side-snaps as the AIOs? This irritates me. I love the side snap.) I am now searching for some other pockets to try, especially anything with cute prints. I’m looking for snaps because someone has been pulling at her clothes and diapers and I have a feeling she’ll be taking the velcro ones off soon. I plan to buy some more hemp inserts too… I’m currently using the Thirsties duo inserts in them, which work fine but since I don’t need the stay-dry inside a pocket I could get away with just hemp and be much trimmer.

Any suggestions welcome.

Kate has been using the infant carseat we got at Devin’s baby shower, a Graco Safe Seat 1. It goes up to 30 lbs and was one of the first infant seats of the larger, higher weight limit variety – at the time most went up to 22lbs. I figured I would be wearing my baby more than lugging around the seat (because it is heavy, even without a baby in it!) so I was more concerned with a higher limit than portability. I love that seat. It installed easily, it fit Kate great from day 1, it still fits her comfortably today, and it’s easy to use. The only annoyance is having to re-thread the harness straps when you want to move them, but that’s the same for any infant seat out there. Kate is currently only around 19lbs and on the middle harness height (of 3) so she still has plenty of room to grow in it. I probably could have kept her in it until she was 18 months, and with her it’s a sure bet she’d outgrow it by height than weight. So in hindsight I didn’t really need the higher weight limit, but maybe my next kid will be a chunker. (The Safe Seat has been replaced with new higher-limit SnugRide infant seats.)

Regardless, a few months ago I got all excited at a sale and purchased Kate a convertable car seat. (Note: Put off purchasing a car seat as long as possible, especially if you plan to use it for multiple children. A car seat has an expiration date, typically 6 or 7 years, and the longer you put off buying a seat the longer you’ll be able to use it.) I finally decided I really wanted to install it just to see how I liked it. I want to figure out if I’ll be using the MyRide as her primary carseat in my SUV or putting it into Den’s car as a secondary. Either way I need to buy a second convertable seat and I need to decide what to get.

I chose the MyRide for a few reasons. Firstly, it has a rear-facing weight limit of 40lbs, which is fantastic. I plan to keep Kate rear-facing until at least 3, so I needed a large rear-facing seat. She will be outgrowing by height long before she hits the 40lb weight limit. Now there are multiple carseats on the market now that are great for extended rear-facing, and I chose the Graco mainly because of how much I loved the infant seat. I liked their buckle and chest strap, both of which are significantly different than any other brand’s. (Smart move on their part!) I checked out reviews and found that the MyRide was getting a lot of good buzz. It sells for around $140, which is significantly less than the Britax seats I was originally going to get. And lastly it comes in a completely awesome pink and brown fabric cover that I love, hee hee.

Installation didn’t go as well as I had hoped the first try – and it wasn’t the seat’s fault. The SUV’s LATCH locations are apparently completely assanine, so I can’t use them in the center (or on the sides, for that matter. They’re placed in the middle of the center and outboard seats, what the fuck?). The center seat has a simple lap belt, which actually is perfect for installing car seats… if you can manage to adjust the stupid thing. I grunted and pulled and wiggled and tugged and that sucker is TIGHT. And Kate, wathcing me from her position strapped into her infant seat sitting in the back of the SUV, got tired of the arrangement and started crying. I gave up, left it, and called Den to let him know I was stuck at home until he could get the seat installed. When he got home it took him about 60 seconds to adjust the seatbelt, I pushed on the carseat while he buckled it in. And man, that is the most solid carseat install I’ve ever seen in my life. Perfect angle without any pool noodles or towels, no futzing around, just carseat click and that thing doesn’t budge.

At first I was not entirely happy with the MyRide. Going from an infant seat to a convertable – especially a large one – looks weird to start with. Kate looked so small in it! There is nothing for her to rest her head on when she sleeps (which is not a safety concern, just a general comfort thing). It does sit pretty high, about the same as the infant seat did, and I sometimes bonk her head on the ceiling when lifting her in to her seat, so that was a bummer. My main concern was that the harness adjuster seemed to require a lot of force to pull on. The infant seat was always so easy to snug tight – and I do get it very snug, I’m obsessive about that – so I was irritated. It’s also a very wide seat, so if you’re trying to fit three across in your car this is not the right seat for you. Kate will be in the center until we have another child, then they will both have to be put on the outside seats – but my SUV is very narrow and we are going to have that problem with just about every seat out there except for the Radian (which I don’t want). But I wanted to use it for a week or two before making a decision.

After a couple of days I’m liking it more and more, and getting less concerned about it. Kate seems to like it just fine, she happily kicks her legs, plays with the strap, babbles, and chills out like normal. The first day she whined as I was tightening the harness, but that could have been because I was taking too long or because she was confused about this new seat or something else entirely. (Regardless, even after whining she was still perfectly happy as soon as I started driving so it obviously didn’t bother her much.) I removed the harness covers (which are optional) and I’m quicker at tightening the harness and today she didn’t complain at all, plus I think she figured out that this is her new seat. She even fell asleep in it a couple of times, she didn’t seem concerned by the lack of headrest.

Would it be nice to have some luxury features that come with a Britax? Oh yeah. The Britax seats had a very smooth, easy harness adjustment, velcro on the straps to hold them open, and extra padding in the seat. The new Marathon and Boulevard also have an adjustable headrest which allows you to adjust the height of the shoulder straps without uninstalling the car, a very nice perk! But are they work the extra $100? Hard to say. If I were to do it again would I get a MyRide? Maybe not. But regardless, the MyRide will rear-face for pretty much the same length of time (same rear-facing weight limits, approximately the same shell height), and I’m still very pleased with my purchase. Even if I end up getting a fancier car seat for my vehicle it will make an excellent secondary seat for our other vehicle. And at this point, as long as Kate likes it and it doesn’t give me any trouble, I’ll probably be keeping it.

Plus it is SO pretty. ;)

I had over a week of huge long 2-hour naps from Kate. Twice a day. Plus a normal bedtime and good nights. Den was away for a week so I’d bring her into bed with me and oh MAN is it nice having a king mattress all to ourselves! Kate had me nearby, I got to spread out, we got some good sleep! Even after Den came home, still she was taking massive naps. I figure growth spurt – she’s been a very good napper for the most part, but naps over an hour and a half are still crazy long in her world.

Yesterday she was resisting napping so I put it off and went to work with her, returning home when she had had enough and was getting close to melting down. I got her home and put her to bed and slept a long time! So long, in fact, that she didn’t want to go to bed. And I’m not talking hysterics, I’m talking she was perfectly awake and perky and happy. At midnight I finally said $@!%$@#! and went to bed with her, she finally got tired. This is why Kate doesn’t take evening naps anymore. It’s just a bad idea.

Today? Today she refused to nap. Period. I wrestled her down for all of 30 minutes while tied tight in my arms, but then she woke up and that was that. There was poo at inopportune times as I was trying to get her down, she nursed at weird times so then refused to nurse when I was trying to use the Mighty Boobs to knock her out. There was even times when I had her almost asleep, or so I thought. And then she’d twitch and start babbling to me, touching my face, and struggling to get up and crawl away. What the hell?

That time I was losing my patience and so I took a page from her book and screamed out loud, shaking my head against the pillow. Kate stared at me, and screamed back. I screamed again. She giggled. From there it disintegrated into a tickle fight, with her laughing hysterically in my ear. I thought to myself, now that’s how to deal with frustration!

She slept for maybe 30 minutes in the car. I thought, okay that’s fine, she’ll go to bed at a normal hour. Bawahahahahaha. No.

Apparently tooth #2 finally decided to make an entrance. I can feel it now, slightly above the gum line. Which explains all of the weirdness of the past two days. I hate teeth. Can’t she stay gummy forever? And why do I get a child who absolutely refuses to sleep if the slightest thing is bothering her? She’s way too much like me. (I’m the same way, to an obsessive degree. The blankets and pillows have to be just right. I can’t sleep at all if DH is snoring or the dog is licking or something is pinging outside the window.)

Yes I realize I shouldn’t post about sleep only when it’s sucky. But I feel like posting, “Awesome naps! Great nights! This rocks!!” is just begging for trouble. So instead I just look back in retrospect and think, man, that was so awesome.

::

Kate is starting to move into 12M clothes. She still fits into the 9M stuff (with a few random exceptions), but she can wear some of the 12M tops and pants. It’s really weird to me because I hold up a 12M item and laugh, thinking it’s so huge. Then I put it on her and realize, no, actually, not huge. How did this happen?

Today I was looking up woven wraps – researching and looking for used ones. I was reading things about carrying a toddler and they were saying things that all applied. And I realized, oh my GOD I have a toddler. No wonder it’s getting so hard to carry her on my front – I know she must be around 19lbs now. That’s not insignificant. She’s no tiny baby anymore! I mean, I knew that, but I just never equated Kate with the pictures of people doing back carries with their toddler.