The latest and not so greatest

The not so greatest is just that Edie's sleep schedule continues to be totally unpredictable. Getting her to bed? Easy peasy. The frequency of her wake-ups? ANNOYING. Many nights is just twice a night and wow are those treats - falling asleep at 8:30 and waking at 1am and 5am, getting up for the day around 8am. But then she likes to throw us curve balls like last night where she woke up at 11pm and then 2:30. But at 2:30, she was all, "DUDE, being awake is SO fun! Let's stay up until 4am!" At least she wasn't crying and pissed, but STILL. Being awake at 3am is NOT fun and I sort of felt like leaving her in her crib to have "fun" all by herself a few different times. In fact I tried this. But suddenly, she wasn't really having fun anymore if I wasn't there. Oh well. It can't last forever, right?

And now for the latest:

Shopping = Confusion

So shopping pre-pregnancy was already confusing for me. I had to figure out -

1. Is this cute?

2. Is this cute on ME?

3. Does this make me look thin? Or fat?

4. Is it the right length or will I need to get it hemmed?

5. Am I too old to wear this?

But then you go about 6 months of only wearing hand-me-downs or shopping from an extremely limited selection of elastic waist pants and stretchy shirts. So when suddenly you're proportioned more like a woman again and a little less like a watermelon, things get even more confusing in the shopping department. Add to the usual list of questions:

6. Can I breastfeed in this?

7. How will spit up look on this?

8. Will Edie pull the sequins or beading off this?

9. Is this too tight?

10. Do my boobs look too enormous in this?

11. Is this "mom appropriate" or am I trying too hard?

12. Is this my style?

13. What IS my style? I forget.

14. If I wore leggings and big shirts in 1987 and thought it was cool only to look back and realize it was NOT, why is it cool now?

15. What are Jeggings? And WHY AM I BUYING THEM? Actually I know the answer to this one - it's because they are pretty much like wearing yoga pants in public, only for some reason fashion-appropriate. And because I can wear long shirts over my post-partum hips and pretend that it's because I'm cool and not because I'm hiding something.

Dear Edie,

Today you are 5 months old. SO OLD. I simply cannot believe that you are this old. Words to describe you this month:

Hilarious
Spazzy
Affectionate
Energetic
Fun

Words I would not use to describe you this month:

Good sleeper

This month you started sitting up on your own!
You still fall over sometimes so I keep my hands nearby or surround you with pillows and I think it's really funny (although you, less so) when you fall over because you haven't quite mastered the art of breaking your fall with your hands. Or rather, you try sometimes but don't have the arm strength to do any good and therefore royally face-plant and then are furious.

We're calling it now that we think you're a lefty like your Dad. You seem to favor your left side and grab for things first using your left hand. And speaking of grabbing, you are very into playing with toys this month. Your favorite toy right now is a funny wooden ball that's colored blue with little worm-like-people that pop out when it rolls around.
You grunt in an insistent manner and reach for your toys when they fall out of reach or are removed from your grasp. The cat has also become of great interest to you this month (finally). Every time he walks by, you reach out to touch him and he's started swiping back to protect himself from what will surely be your new favorite habit soon - pulling his hair. When we go to visit Grandma and Grandpa B you also love to interact with their dog Toby and he stares and stares at you, wondering what your story is.

Just this last week you started taking your bottles while sitting up, which means we are seeing signs of readiness for solid foods. Your Dad and I signed up for a seminar on "first foods" next week so we're looking forward to learning all about introducing these to your diet soon. For now you gulp greedily at bottles using no hands and look kind of like a gerbil at the water bottle. Or a baby bird crossed with a tiny, drooling monkey. Your Dad calls you his tiny monkey all the time.

You are an extremely energetic baby. You still love standing and sometimes stand for a second or two by yourself or just holding onto my fingers and you spend lots of time in your Johnny Jump Up that hangs between the living and dining rooms. You dance and jump like a star in River Dance; one arm hanging out and one tucked inside the seat.
You have quite the circle of friends these days with Mae, Evan, Alison, and Eme being those that you see the most frequently. We also eagerly anticipate the baby boy that Darrah and Matt are having soon and hope that you take a liking to him right away.

For now, it's still pretty cold and wet outside, but soon enough the weather will turn again and we'll be spending our days in the backyard and going to the park and the zoo. Did I mention that I quit my job last week? Well, I did. You are officially my new boss and I hope to spend as much time with you as possible for as long as possible. Because really, you're the best.

Until next month Eedster,
Mom

Flip Friday

please forgive my unforgivably messy house.

A trip to the park

The weather has been so nice for January lately. Edie and I took a trip to the park 3 blocks away this week and hung out on the swings and stared at the other kids with their Moms. Watching a Mom chase around her daughter while she grabbed other kids' toys made me wonder - how exactly do you raise your kid to be polite? Or at least respect other people's property. And not throw themselves on the ground and kick themselves in a circle because they couldn't push another kid off a swing that was "MINE".

I couldn't choose just one picture because, seriously, she is so cute in all of them. She is killing me softly with her cuteness.

Drawer Number 4

Missing: One baby body

Well

I'm feeling a little bad about trashing Edie earlier this week. I really can't stress enough how fun she is lately during the day. But nights have been rough. She was showing so much promise last week; stretching her sleeps to almost 6 hours for a night or two. But then we took our usual 2 steps back and relapsed for a few nights in a row and dude. Not sleeping more than one or two hours consecutively is HARD. Last night was MUCH better, but the cumulative effect of no sleep is still pretty exhausting. Last night she went down at 9pm and slept peacefully until 12:30am.
That wake-up wasn't super fun and finally ended in Jeff having a stroke of genius that got her to sleep by 1am. After about 8 times of her falling asleep in his arms and then waking and crying in the crib, he thought to try putting her pacifier in her mouth as soon as she hit the crib mattress. She went instantly from crying to sucking and then falling asleep and spitting her pacifier out after maybe 5 sucks. She then slept until 5:30am for a quick feed and then slept again until 7:30. Not too shabby Edie, not too shabby.

Kill me now

I think I got 2 hours of sleep last night? And I don't mean two hours consecutively. I don't know what happened. Well, I know for sure that I shouldn't have stayed up so late watching Hurt Locker. That was two and half hours of sleep I may never get back. Then Edie decided to wake up. Over and over. The third time I decided to just make a bed on her floor and sleep with her there. She was pulling her favorite move of falling deeply asleep the second she was in my arms and then flipping her shit every time I put her in her crib. So we sort of kind of fell asleep on the couch cushion bed together, but then, I don't know. It was so uncomfortable! And Edie was so in my way! And then at 5:30 she just woke up. Like for the day. I tried to ignore the fact that she was clearly up. Until 6am and now we're downstairs with her playing on her play-mat thing. I'm basically just waiting/hoping for her to get tired again so that maybe I can get another hour of sleep. SO HATING LIFE RIGHT NOW.

I can see clearly now

Thursday was beautiful. The sun came out and it was unseasonably warm. More like March than January. I decided to take Edie for a big walk in the stroller but remembered at the last minute that when it's super sunny, Edie is often blinded in the stroller with no way to turn her head away. I almost delayed the walk but then remembered! Heidi and Maggie gave me some ridiculous baby sunglasses at my baby shower last year! I dug them out and she loved them.

Until she took them off and tried to eat them. Which took about 5 seconds. In the end, I opted for a blanket draped over the stroller to shield her from the sun.

Days like Thursday remind me that Spring will be here soon. Last year at this time I was so overwhelmed with morning sickness. When I think back to that time I mostly remember looking forward to 2010. And while these days I'm sometimes (okay, all the time) tired and occasionally feel a little left out when I hear that parties that I would have been invited to last year are happening that I didn't even know about this year.... life is pretty great. Even better than what I'd envisioned 12 months ago. Edie has been sleeping well this week, the sun is out, boring chicken breast by boring chicken breast my body is slowly returning to me, and I get to spend my days having dance parties to Fleetwood Mac with Edie. And the best part? I get to keep doing it. Because guess what? I quit my job.

Flip Friday - week 3

Sorry for the delay, but it IS still Friday.

Flip Friday

Edie takes Bumbo-driving VERY seriously.

Peekaboo however is HILARIOUS.

Tired thoughts about being tired

Jeff is out with the boys and I got Edie down at 8pm tonight. This is a new record. For months Edie wouldn't go to sleep until close to 11pm (and even that was early sometimes), so it's quite an accomplishment to have worked her back down to 8pm. I have so many friends with babies who go to bed at 6 or 7pm and it makes me wonder - are some kids just programmed to crap out earlier and get up bright and early? Others to stay up late, fight sleep and snooze until 9am? Or is it something to do with how we parented her the first week of her life? If we'd made more of an effort to put her to bed early when we first brought her home from the hospital, would things be different? Do I even want them to be different? Because if they were different, Edie wouldn't be Edie.

Sleep never really improved for us after Thanksgiving. I don't even remember what it's like to sleep for more than 3 or 4 hours straight. We had that one weird night (December 12th to be precise) that she slept 8 and half hours before waking to eat, but being a total moron I didn't spend those 8 hours sleeping; I mostly spent them wandering to and from the nursery sticking my finger under Edie's nose to make sure she was still breathing and worrying that the long sleep meant that she was sick or something. I refused to believe she was just sleeping.

Another stupid thing that I do? Go to bed at 10pm even if Edie goes to sleep at 8pm. Then when she wakes at 1am, I've only had 3 hours of sleep when I could have had 5. Idiot. But I've been struggling a bit lately with insomnia. I think going back to work is messing with my head a bit. Trying to get my job done when I'm only in the office one day a week is stupid. So I lay in bed at night trying so hard to get back to sleep, but instead end up thinking about emails that I need to respond to. Counting backwards from 100 by threes used to help me get sleepy while blocking out other thoughts, but now I've pretty much got that memorized and find that I'm able to obsess about all sorts of other stupid things while ALSO counting backwards from 100 in threes. I'm all, 100, 97, 94, how am I going to travel to DC for work and leave Edie at home for a week?, 91, 88, why can't I fall asleep?, 85, 82, 79, what time is it now? was that Edie sighing or the cat snoring?, 76, 73... you get the idea.

For me, being a Mom is an experience full of self-doubt. I like to have answers and there often ARE no answers when asking questions like, "Should I feed Edie every time she wakes up in the night? Is she actually hungry or .... what? Why IS she waking up so frequently?" Then how to act upon the problem is an entirely different beast. I've got the older generation talking of letting babies "work themselves down on their own" AKA "crying it out". Then I've got Ann (the pediatric nurse that leads my Mom's group) saying that at this age, babies are so overwhelmed with developmental milestones and growing that trying to sleep-train them is like trying to help a customer at work while your boss is yelling at you, the phone is ringing, you're carrying a teetering pile of files, and you have to pee - all at the same time. Who's advice to follow?? At 5am when you've been up with a baby who falls deeply asleep in your arms and then wakes up and cries the second they hit the crib (and doing this dance for over an hour), the whole "crying it out" idea suddenly seems like your best option. But when she's actually crying? How do you possibly just lie there in bed and listen? Hm. Turns out being a parent is hard.

I have to say though, that if there really is only one thing I've learned so far in regards to parenting, it's that "this too shall pass". And that goes for the good as well as the bad. Edie's sleep will get better. It might take a while, but it will. And then it will probably get worse. And if not, something else will get worse. And then better.... there really is very little that's consistent about the behavior of children. I can already forecast 4 years into my future and picture a pajama'd Edie begging me for just 5 more minutes before she has to go to bed. And then demanding a glass of water. And then a stuffed animal. And then a hug. You get the idea. I think I'm very slowly making peace with the fact that for the foreseeable future, sleep is privilege, not a right.

Oh and PS - It's now 9:15 and I've already stopped writing twice to rescue a crying Edie and put her back to sleep.

Update

Well, going back to work last week was.... work. My Mom came down for the day and hung out with Edie while she mostly threw a day-long-hissy about me not being there. But they also had some fun times in the Johnny Jump Up and strollering around in the rain so it wasn't horrible. I felt worse (umm I almost wrote "more bad" instead of "worse" - seriously - has my brain gone to complete baby-rot? Next time I'll be writing "more badder") for my Mom and Edie than I did for myself really. I followed my Mothers advice and compartmentalized; focusing almost entirely on work and trying not to think too much about home, knowing that the lump in my throat would turn itself into tears without much effort. Edie was thrilled to see me at the end of the day and needless to say the feeling was mutual, so that was a nice way to cap the day. Tomorrow, I go back to work and BOTH of Edie's Grandmas will be on the scene to keep her happy.

I'm really hopeful that she'll be fun for them tomorrow because she's been so much more fun these days for me and Jeff. I feel like we've hit our stride (despite the lack of sleep that has persisted since Thanksgiving) with the whole family biz. Edie's happy to hang out in her Johnny Jump-up while we eat dinner and sit in her Bumbo while I cook. She loves watching me cook and I predict she'll be my kitchen helper before I know it.
A few more pictures for your viewing pleasure.


Edie's come down with a bit of a diaper rash for the first time so she spent some time with no pants and no diaper on yesterday. Jeff took pictures of her lounging nude-tooter and I keep cracking up at the deterioration of her expressions:

Introducing - Flip Fridays!

We've gone through our catalog of videos from the last week and had a difficult time choosing just one video. I really liked the video of Edie dancing hard to a song called "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell" but Jeff argued that the video we took of her "talking" is better. For this reason we kick off Flip Friday with TWO videos. Double your pleasure, double your fun.

Better late than never After-Photos

Hold onto your hats folks, because I'm about to post about something other than Edie. Remember that project we started this summer when I was pregnant? How Jeff and his Dad cut a giant hole in the wall between our living room and kitchen? Well, we got pretty far along in the project and then an 8lb 2oz distraction came along and the project was side-lined for a while. Well, Jeff recently took some time and put the finishing touches on the wall and ... well... feast your eyes on THIS:Ta DAAAAAAAA!

We're so pleased. It's so pretty and so much more fun to be able to cook and converse with guests in the living room at the same time. Anyways, I plan to post more soon about my return to work and all that biz, but for now I'll just tease you with a mention of a new feature soon to come to jillsdailynote - Flip Fridays! Starting tomorrow we'll post a video every Friday of Edie taken on our Flip video camera for your viewing pleasure.

The power of suggestion/Failure

Me: Look Edie, napping is SO MUCH FUN - why don't you try it with me?
Edie: What are we doing next? It better not be napping because naps are for suckers.

Back to the Grind

Kind of. Tomorrow I go to.... gulp.... THE OFFICE. Yes, it's back to work for me. But just for the one day this week. My Mom is driving down early to take over for the day and then driving back to Bellingham at the end of the day. Wish me luck. And even more - wish my Mom luck.

RIP Amy C. Ware's Gallbladder: 1977-2009

After discovering giant gallstones were invading her belly on Monday of this week, Amy's pesky gallbladder was removed Tuesday afternoon. She is home and doing well, only slightly disgruntled that they wouldn't let her bring her gallbladder home in a jar.

Happy Birthday

Happy birthday to my lovely (and super old) husband. Today he turns 34.