Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Slumming on the Hump Day

Can I just file this post under Too Tired to Try? Could that be a thing, maybe long-term?

'Cause here's the thing: from the time that Mia was born, I've been surprisingly, amazingly okay with being woken up at night to tend to her. I've been excited about the prospect of her sleeping through the night, sure. That's always a big bonus when it happens. But honestly, I wasn't in a hurry, for once. We had a good schedule where she started of strong in her sleeper or crib, at which point I'd have to get up to bring her into bed and feed her, but then I kept her there. And though she'd wake me once, maybe twice more, all I had to do was start nursing again and we were set for another good block of time.

Lately, not only has she been barely making it to midnight before I have to bring her into bed, when she gets there she's all tossy-and-turny. She wakes more frequently to eat, is incredibly sensitive to my attempts to readjust my own position, and has begun to make a habit of deciding to stay awake for awhile and talk to the dark at fairly inopportune times (like 4 am, well before it's time to get up for the day).

It's really starting to wear on me now. I'm dragging by lunchtime, and near-useless by dinner. The one bright side of all of this is that Mia is giving me a break during the day, for the most part. She's staying calm and happy for longer and longer periods of time, whether lounging comfortably in her rocker, bouncing out in her jumper, or enjoying some time on the floor.

The floor time is always tricky for me, however, even when she's happy. Once I place her on her mat, I must take up the role of goalie and fend off incoming objects and toddlers at a near-constant rate.

Meanwhile, Michael is going through some changes of his own, which are adding to the complexity of my days. He's become suddenly very needy, often vying for a spot on my lap at the precise moment when I need to place his younger sister there to keep her happy. When he's not using me as a recliner, he's racing around the playroom dumping toys out of storage cubes at every turn. It seems that we're going to have to rethink how we organize, like, yesterday.

Abby's stayed rather consistent, at least. She can be pretty cool that way.


In fact, she's made nap time a whole lot easier by proving to us that she can be trusted to take a book to bed and fall asleep on her own while browsing through it.

Never mind that she elected to draw on the walls again, when I finally gave her crayons back to her, then followed up her insurrection by making an earnest effort to clean off her artwork with a tissue, melting my irritated little heart in the process.

Of course, I've no doubt in my mind that she'll be waiting in the wings to throw me for a new loop just when things are starting to feel normal again.

Babies are predictably unpredictable like that.