She no longer hates baths or diaper changes, she loves them. She also loves any game that involves hand movements: like patty-cake and the itsy-bitsy spider. She sleeps from 9 or 10pm to 3am every night. And she is getting very, very chubby.
Are you sensing a BUT?
Well, there are nights like this one has been, where she starts getting fussy at 7pm, cries like she's being tortured from 7:45 to 8:45, finally falling asleep and letting me put her down at 9:30pm.
Fine, that's not that unusual, but it's cramping my social life. Knowing that any guests need to be out of here by 7pm is tough- because if we don't start our routine: a walk, some reading, then serious sensory deprivation by 7pm, the screaming and flailing starts. Oh, my friends and that is not pretty.
But by 3am, all is forgotten. By then, I am so engorged, I want her to wake up and give me some relief. She wakes up happy and hungry and usually goes right back down to sleep for at least another hour or two.
Except on nights like tonight.
When I got up to get her, I did my usual: change her diaper. "Weird", I thought, "it's dry".
Well then when I was feeding her, she pooped. Okay, time for another diaper.
Then she did what I lovingly call, the Urine Puddle. That's when a little girl sneakily starts to urinate while you have pulled away the soiled diaper and are still preparing the new diaper. My sweet girl like to splash her feet around in the puddle too, a friend recently bought her some rainboots, perhaps I should start using them for diaper changes?
So then it's time for a new changing pad, a new onesie, and some more nursing. Then I have to pretend that her feet aren't vaguely sticky, because a bath at 3am would wake us both up in a way that is irreparable and inappropriate.
But soon enough, the girl is back to sleep. Now, it's time for the checklist of how to tell she is REALLY asleep:
1) Can you pull her away from her meal without any whimpering or protest?
2) Are her feet and hands still kneading, or have they relaxed into death-like limpness?
3) Is her breathing still a full-body experience, or has it settled into a little bird-like puff that barely moves her ribcage?
Speaking of birds, after the Urine Puddle, I put on a new onesie - one that has a cute silkscreened bird on it. Apparently it is made of sandpaper, as it was nearly impossible to get on and felt scratchy even to me as I nursed her. Now putting your baby back to sleep at 3am in a onesie made of sandpaper is ill-advised for sure, but so is taking said onesie back off to put another one on, I mean, I do want to get back to sleep eventually tonight.
But after nights like tonight, I am left a little wound up. The evening crying alone is so tough. I just hate to see her so upset, it's so ... well tough.
It's now 4:07am, and my time to sleep is ticking down, so off I go. Remind me to tell you the tale of my crazy neighbor. It's a doosy.
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