What Is With the Lack of Sleeping?

On numerous occasions in the past, I've lamented about the sleep habits of my darling little girl. About how she wakes up a hundred million times or she wakes up at unholy hours and all that nonsense. Well I had a reprieve. Her sleep got better. And I didn't even say anything about it for fear of angering the sleep gods.

Then it all went to crap. For no good reason! Well maybe it was a good reason as she was cutting molars. Of course this occurred during my mid-term frigging exams. Insert sigh here.

Then it got better again. Sure there was the occasional 4am wake-up but it was something that we just dealt with as it came up. She was getting up fine for daycare and napping well and going to bed easily. So we tried not to mess with a semi good thing.

Then we regressed...again. This time there is no good reason. There are no teeth coming in, she isn't sick, she isn't hungry because she can almost out eat me. She isn't cold because unlike our meat locker of a master bedroom, hers is warm. Plus she is in fleece jammies and has a mink like crib sheet that is so soft, warm and rather luxurious that I would get one for our bed if they made them in queen size. She.Is.Fine.

This translated into a week of utter disaster. Including the uber fun night where she screamed and carried on for nearly three hours despite both me and honey taking turns holding her and offering cuddles, water, milk and pretty much anything else that usually soothes the savage beast. She did finally end up falling asleep in my arms, likely from sheer exhaustion. I don't remember transferring her back into her crib although I'm sure we did. After some discussion and seeing how well she did with the late holiday nights, we moved back her bedtime an hour.

Then it got good again. Then this week started and trouble cropped up again.

So I write this now at 12:20am. Why am I still awake, much less sitting on the computer blogging this late on a Sunday? Because I expect that sometime in the next 40 minutes, she is going to squawk. She will stand up in her crib and whine until someone rescues her, I offer her a snack and then she is happy. Insert the sigh again.

So I wait. Really wish that I didn't have to.

Been So Long

And I'm very sorry about that. It's just with school and everything I don't have a ton of time to get online. The little time that I do get is generally done via iPhone. And iPhone blogging is less than fun.

Things have been crazy with school. I have had lots of assignments in the past couple of months and this is my second exam week. And it seems for the second time, I have a teething baby during exams. She just cut three molars and I get the feeling that the fourth is coming in as we speak. Her sleep is terrible. Like she is freaking out right now and has been for about an hour. Plus she has a cold...that she gave to me.

To top it off, we have my father with us. He's been here for nearly two weeks now and when he is in town he stays with us. It's been pretty difficult. It's been kind of annoying having someone always be here and I feel almost judged. Like his comments about how "the baby must have had a bad night" Do you really think I need someone else to tell me that? Cuz I really don't. I can only imagine what he is going to say tomorrow morning. Man can't hear his name being spoken from right next to him but he can hear the baby having a hissy fit. At least he is leaving in a few days. Because I'm not sure how much more I can take.

I'm Quite Likely in Trouble

We skipped Thanksgiving this year. My family decided that nobody wanted to cook this year, even though my dad and his girlfriend who are staying with us this weekend offered to do it. So they chose to eat at a hotel with a buffet instead, at 6pm. My kid goes to be at 7pm, give or take no more than ten minutes. And the hotel is located a good twenty minute drive from our house. Does this sound like a recipe for disaster for you too? Because it does for me and hubby.

I told my dad I didn't like this plan. I told him it really conflicted with my rather regimented schedule for the baby. But they didn't either A) want to order it in from the hotel, B) eat at 3pm, or C) cook themselves. I told him I made no guarantees we will be there. We didn't go.

Instead our family of three spent the day in a beautiful small town about two hours from here. We walked along the water, looked at the boats and just enjoyed the wonderful weather, just our little family. We had a simple dinner of spaghetti at home and the baby went to bed easily and right on time.

My dad called me wondering where we were. He was rather shocked when I told him, even though it's not so far fetched. We are known to take the baby out for mini road trips to new and exciting places. But I could hear the disappointment in his voice when he realized that we weren't coming. I told him we never said for sure that we would be able to make it, and that I was very unhappy with what time it was.

So this is pretty much the first time that I've done this, skipped a family meal I mean. I'm anticipating some serious fallout. I'll likely be hearing about this until Christmas. But I'm not worried. I come from a very small family. My dad has one sister who only has one child and then I'm an only child. Other than my daughter, the last baby to be born in our family was me. So they just don't get that she has a schedule and we stick to it like glue. Having her eat supper and then go to bed late is among the worst ideas in human history. I can safely say that all the other diners would be giving thanks that we stayed home. Kidlet isn't thirteen weeks and super portable, will sleep anywhere, only to wake up every few hours to eat. Nor is she thirteen years with bedtime of 10pm and easily adaptable to change. She is thirteen months, so very dependent on her routine. I will defend our choice to the end and I will not feel badly that we skipped a restaurant Thanksgiving.

Utterly Miserable

It seems that something is getting the kidlet down. I'm not sure if it's her molars, her eye teeth, or if she has a virus or something. Maybe a combination of all of the above? Her sleep last night was atrocious. She woke up and stayed up at 3:45am. After an hour she went back down only to get up and stay up around 6:30am for the day. Now getting up at 6:30am has been part of her routine as of late so I can't say I was totally surprised about that. But she just didn't want to nap. She slept for maybe 20 minutes on the way to the bank. Considering that she sleeps for 2-3 hours at daycare, this was a total fail.

Not sleeping equals very angry baby. She was in a near constant state of freakout for most of the late afternoon. The good kind of freakout where she only accepts being held by me whilst standing. When you are trying to show your dad's girlfriend the floor plans for the houses that you and your husband are looking at for next year and holding a twenty some odd pound baby don't really mix.

So we put her down for another nap attempt. Amazingly, she fell asleep. Too bad it was soon supper time. Decision time. Wake her up for dinner? Let sleeping baby lie? We went with the wake up route. She ate maybe one third of her meal before she threw a huge fit and I took her to bed for the night where she is now peacefully sleeping.

We are set to have Thanksgiving dinner(at a hotel, don't ask) tomorrow. I really hope that she's feeling better. My grandparents will be crushed if we are no shows. Here is hoping.

Time to Read

Every night before bed we read a book. She really enjoys it and I have found myself reading books to my baby that were read to me when I was a child. Books that I didn't remember until we picked them out at the library. We are a very short walk away from the public library that I frequented when I was a child and I'm enjoying sharing the experience with my little girl.

We picked out a bunch of Miffy the bunny books yesterday during our once a week trip to the library. I always liked the Miffy books and it seems like she does as well.

But I think the best book that we got was a book about trains that she picked out herself. Hubby works for one of the two national rail companies and whenever we pass by the yard I always tell her that daddy works there on the trains. So she pulled it out and I told her that the train book was a bit too long for bedtime story and I put it back. I then pulled and put back a few other books. She really wanted the train book because she pulled it back out again and gave it to me. So we checked it out and we will read it tonight. I hope she likes it.

So Done With Teething

I'm fairly certain(actually positive) that I said I was done with teething when babe was like 4 months old and didn't even have any teeth yet. Then she got a tooth and then another one and then stalled and life was good. My happy little fantasy world of no more teething was shattered at the beginning of the week when my generally happy, yet dramatic baby became a terror. Her sleep which had improved became the stuff of nightmares and she was just restless. She wanted to be held and cuddled yet wanted to be on the floor to play at the same time. Very frustrating!

Then while she was chewing on my finger, I noticed it. She's cutting three teeth all at once with another right behind. So all of her top incisors are breaking through pretty much at once. So she's cranky and her gums hurt and pretty much any little thing sets her off.

At this point I will gladly take the baby who wakes up at 4am just as long as I can give back the one who wakes up at 8:30 and then takes an hour to go back to sleep, then at 2, then 4, then 6, then up at 7 for the day and fights naps worse than before(although I didn't think that was possible)

Right now she is laying on the floor sucking her thumb. She never does that. Poor little girl :(

Moving With a Baby

What a terrible idea! Our new house is twice the size with a finished basement, dishwasher, laundry, almost everything you could want in a house. I've been excited to move for weeks now.

We were able to get into the house about a month ago and I started bringing things over. Outgrown baby clothes, winter gear, pictures, that kind of stuff. We need to be officially out of our house by noon this Sunday so that the cleaner can come in so we can list on Monday so this weekend is when we are moving everything this. Did I mention that my husband works Saturdays? Ya...

So the baby and I brought a load of stuff over this morning and I tried to get all the boxes that I had already brought over and had stashed in her room unpacked. I put her on the floor of the living room and let her play while I got the kitchen and closets organized.

Epic fail. I got the closets done and started on the kitchen when the shrieking began. I tried nursing, and she snacked for a minute or two then done. Try to put her back down, nope. Tried giving her a new toy to play with which satisfied her enough for me to unpack another box. Then shrieks again. So I turned on the tv for some noise, but something was wrong with it and I could only get NBC so we were stuck with the French Open and I don't like tennis. Baby is just too tired to deal anymore(did I mention that I have a nap refuser for a child?)

So off we head for home, at least she sleeps in the car. I'm just waiting for my mom who should be here in about 1/2 hour or so to help me bring some more stuff over to the new place. We're also going to pick up our new space foam mattress. The store says it comes in a box so we should actually be able to fit it in the backseat of my car and we'll just move the car seat to my mom's. Never thought I'd be transporting anything other than an air mattress in my car.

Sleep Training....Oy

We've(and by we've I mean me) have been trying to sleep train our daughter. We have co-slept since birth and it worked for us for a long time. But now that she is getting bigger and crawling and moving around it's just not cutting it anymore.

So off baby goes to her crib. I've tried now cry it out methods, they don't work on my little tyrant. So despite saying that we wouldn't do CIO, here we are(although I said we wouldn't co-sleep either so my word's not worth that much).

I haven't read any CIO books(although I picked up Sleep Easy from the library today) so we started with my own version. I'd put her into her jammies, then we'd nurse until she was drowsy but still awake and then I'd put her into her crib, turn on her musical seahorse, hand her this cute bunny lovey I bought off etsy and say night night.

She screams the second I get her within a foot of her crib like she's dying. Then I do checkins every 10 minutes and eventually she falls asleep, sucking her thumb. Day 1 it was an hour, by day 3 it was only 20 minutes. I thought I was doing pretty damn good.

Then she learned how to pull herself to standing....she can't get back down.Ugh! Last night was a 2.5 hour nightmare. I consulted some Sleep Easy veterans on a message board I belong to who told me to not lay her back down. She'd learn to do it herself/she'd fall asleep standing/she'd fall down etc. Main point, don't touch her. Well that's great but that doesn't work! By 2.15 hours I got fed up and laid her back down and less than 15 minutes after that she was out until I dunno, around 3-4am when she freaked again and in I go and she's standing up again. I laid her down but I really don't know what happened after that because I fell asleep, I assume she did too. By around 7am, she woke up as usual and was standing again. Not sure how long she was standing there. Sigh.

Who knows what tonight brings. I just want my baby to sleep.