Blah, Blah, Adorable, Blah, Genius, Blah Blah

Iris is at the cutest, most dumplinglike possible age: almost seven months, and so cherubic it is pretty much a full-time occupation to kiss her cheeks and the back of her neck. And lately (now that ear infection number two is on the way out) she is in the greatest mood: screeching at the cat, grinning at all of us (but mostly at Ingrid), levitating towards the ceiling fan and the hanging bell in the dining room. Loving sweet potatoes and letting most other foods dribble down her chin. And pulling off some amazing physical feats like going from tummy to sitting to tummy again all on her own.

And her sleep continues to go pretty darn well. Since last Saturday, putting her down for naps and bed has kept on being, well, easy. Nurse, doze, put down, cry for usually less than five seconds, sleep. Middle of the night wakings are still not so good. But the predictable napping and easy put-downs do a world of good for my sanity and, I am convinced, her mood.

Ingrid has done some pretty unbelievable things in the past week or so, too. She is all of a sudden using the toilet for all her waking pees, and is completely into doing it All. By. Herself. Could you give me a little privacy, Mama?

She is also suddenly interested in climbing into the car seat on her own. How embarrassed should I be that I have not been able to get her to do that until now? She’s a reluctant climber, and I just couldn’t persuade her to do it, even last summer when I had to swing her into the car over my giant pregnant belly. All of a sudden, she doesn’t even want me to stand near her while she gets in. Phew. Hooray.

And—this tickles me the absolute most—lately she is looking at letters and words in a different way. She’s realized what I am reading when I read her stories and is interested in how words look. One day last week we sat together at the computer “typing.” (She loves this. Big font. She chooses the color. She asks me to type words, or she presses keys and asks me what she’s written.) I typed “Ingrid” and “Mama” and she “read” them (not a surprise, since she sees those words often—it’s more shape recognition than reading). Then (here’s where the genius comes in) I typed “Daddy” and asked her what it said. And she said? “David.” Which in my opinion is pretty damn awesome. David is a kid at her day care (all their names are written on their cubbies in big letters). She could have easily guessed “Daddy” from the Ingrid/Mama context, but she was looking at those letters enough to know that it looked like David’s cubby. Must give the standard disclaimer: There’s no pressure about this kind of stuff around here; we just follow what she’s interested in, and I know early reading isn’t necessarily a sign of future anything (isn’t even necessarily good). But it’s so exciting to see her figure this out.

There is also, as you perhaps may have detected in my posts of the past, oh, seven months or so, some weirdness and strife in Ingrid’s and my relationship, and it’s hard to explain why but I feel like I am on the verge of figuring something out that will make things better. She has become so mysterious to me, and it seems like there is a key thing about her that I haven’t been understanding right, and I feel like I am almost to the point of figuring it out enough to at least know what questions to ask. That sounds cryptic, but I don’t mean it to—it really is that foggy, even to me. More on that later.

I am turning 34 on Wednesday (Or is it 35?, I keep asking myself, honestly.) My birthday gift from A (which, ok, I requested pretty explicitly) is the time and money to attend, over the next couple of weekends, two writing workshops through our terrific local writing center. Hooray. And spring is almost here. Hooray again!

Breakthroughs, Parenthetical Questions

Sleep was going downhill. With the baby, I mean. There were 15-minute naps at non-nap times and no naps at naptimes, and at bedtime there was nurse nurse nurse nurse nurse, fiiiiinally drift off to sleep, geeeently attempt to put down, startle, wake up and cry, nurse nurse nurse nurse nurse til I thought I would lose my mind.

There is no accounting for what happened next. Saturday night after the third nurse nurse nurse nurse, I thought to myself, I bet she doesn't even really want to nurse. I bet she just wants to lie in that crib and go to sleep. So I gave her a little head snuggle (soft baby heads! They are why I do this at all!) and put her in the crib. Lay on the bed next to the crib where she could see me. Watched the clock and tried to relax.

She cried for two minutes, but (speaking of what you hear when your kids cry) it wasn't even like Mama, you are abandoning me! Pick me up! I'm dying! at all. It was more like I'm tired! Tired! AAAAA! Tired, tired! Ti...

And then she turned her head to one side, said ummm and went to sleep. For three hours, which is the longest she's slept in days. Textbook! I should have taken advantage of it to sleep, but I stayed up until midnight playing euchre (isn't euchre quaint?) and eating chocolate chip cookies.

And then naps today were like that, too. Well, they were still pitifully short, but instead of nursing her until I felt like my brains were being pulled out through my nipples, I lay her in her crib and cooed at her while she cried for between thirty seconds and three minutes and then zonked out on her own.

Also, today Ingrid peed on the potty three times and only wore a diaper at naptime and when out for a walk. I won't go into it but this was totally unheard of before today.

And at dinner I gave Iris some bits of banana to occupy her. (Should I not be doing that? Should I be reading up on the Heimlich?) She didn't get many of them to her mouth anyway, but she pulverized some of them and scraped the rest off into her lap, and then I swear to God she very deliberately tapped her little mitten-y hands together in the sign for more. She did it three times, and then after I gave her another pile of banana chunks she didn't do it again. A saw it too. Is that totally unheard of, that a six-month-old could do a sign? She's seen me do it a few dozen times in the past week but...is that even possible?

Also, she can now scooch forward. Not crawling, exactly, but for a non-crawler she is all of a sudden damn mobile. As of Saturday.

And after months of resisting my doing anything with her hair, Ingrid is all of a sudden into wearing pigtails and it is ADORABLE.

And this week Ingrid and I discovered the kids' non-fiction section at the library. Why had we only been looking at the fiction before? She chose a book about butter, two about bees, one about lacrosse, and one called The Biography of Wheat.

The bees were what started it. I bought some honey in a honeycomb at the co-op as a treat and I felt I needed some backup for my assertion that the honey was in that thing because the bees put it there. Who put it there, Mama?

I wish I had something more coherent to say. I've been eating a lot of toast with honey. I have a lot of work-y stuff going on that I can't exactly write about. I've knitted four inches of that bag (and by the way, I forgot to mention: All that yarn? Cost four dollars!) And I'm wondering, is there sometimes something wrong with bloglines where nothing comes up for, like, twelve hours, or has the entire blogging community just taken up the practice of observing the Sabbath?

Lest you mistake that for a happy ending...

M woke up at 11:30 last night all out of sorts. One thing and another: Ibuprofen (though no real symptoms of pain other than awake and cranky); yogurt; nursing. She was awake until almost 3, then nursed again at 5 and slept/nursed until 7:30.

I mean it about not talking and thinking so much about sleep any more, though. Let this be the last word on the matter: It still sucks.

Through the Night

For the past several nights M has slept from the eight o'clock hour to the five o'clock hour without waking up (or waking up only to fuss herself back to sleep within a minute), and then nursed and gone back to sleep until seven or even eight.

I had stopped believing that this would ever happen. Over the past year or so, well-meaning people, noticing my exhaustion, have said things like, I hope M starts sleeping through the night soon, and I have thought, You might as well wish that she would fly off to the moon.

But we have reached that magical point. Tthe one that coworkers and random strangers began asking about when M was (no joke) less than two months old. The one that people finally stopped asking about around the time she turned one. Not, I think, because they noticed how I seemed to want to scrape my brain out with a grapefruit spoon and wipe it on the pants of whoever popped the sleep question, but because pretty much everyone (except for a few cherished friends who are also blessed with rotten sleepers) started to assume at that point that she must have been sleeping well by then.

And it is amazing, this new development. I can't say I have gotten a ton more sleep over the past few days than during the times when we were in a good co-sleeping and night nursing groove. I've been up late drinking wine (great side benefit of night weaning, by the way) and eating goat cheese with old friends in town for the weekend, and, before that, scrambling to finish a proposal for work, and, before that, knitting like a maniac on the thick grey scarf I'm making for my husband. But if I were to go to bed at a decent hour! Just think! I could sleep for, like eight hours in a row! Uninterrupted! It could happen.

These sleep changes, and my many, many posts here on the matter (for which, forgive me. Unless you are also trying to night wean your 16-month-old and get some rest, in which case, take heart and lay in a good supply of dark roast coffee and madeleines and let me know how it goes) have made me think a lot about the overshadowing role sleep has taken in my life and identity as a parent.

For which I blame forces larger than myself. See above comment about random stranger sleep inquiries starting super early in baby's life. See also, some blogger I can't remember who wrote about how sleep is the big flashpoint for our generation of parents the way potty training was a big enormous deal for our grandparents. Also, decisions about sleep are one of those litmus tests that it seems people use to determine What Type of Parent You Are: Where does she sleep? Oh, you're still nursing? Oh, you let him cry? Etc.

But of course I'm to blame, too. It's still my inclination, when meeting another parent, to ask about sleep, to compare nap lengths. How many baby sleep books do I own? Three! I'm starting to think about what I've missed during all this obsession. What else could I be talking about? What other parts of my identity as a parent have atrophied as I've clamored for the elusive goal of spending more than four hours at a stretch with my eyes shut? Now that I am no longer so desparate for a decent rest—and even, dammit, if things go south and we end up awake at all hours again for some reason—I'm going to find that out.

9 to 5

Actually, 9:30 to 5:30, but who's counting? The only sleep intervention of the night was a 30-second period of my holding my hand on M's back when she woke up crying after about an hour of sleep at 9:30. Could be lots worse.

Maybe it is just going to suck forever.

Night 9: Down at 8:30. Asleep until 1:30. Brief pat/soothe. Awake at 5:30. Briefly back asleep after some soothing. Then up at 6 wanting milk, milk milk milk milk and not buying the whole It's still night time line at all. So I nursed her and then she fell back asleep until I woke her up at 8.

When I whined to my coworker this morning about all the recent 6 a.m. wake ups, she pointed out that if M usually goes to bed at 7 or 8 and is mostly asleep until 6, that is a pretty decent night's sleep and may be all she needs.

On the other hand, the fact that today she slept another two hours after nursing tells me that at least sometimes she needs more than the 10 hours or whatever. And those damn sleep books sure say she should be getting more than 10 hours.

Either way, though, if it were 10 straight hours, minus this 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. business, I think we would all be happier.

Also, I think I am losing my ability to evaluate what is a better or worse night of sleep, and as I think about it I realize maybe it is actually a little bit insane to try. Is it better to wake up at 1 and 4, and 5:30, but only briefly, or be solidly asleep from 11 to 3:30 then mostly awake for an hour? Would you rather wake up at 5:30 every morning, or not fall asleep until 2? Would you rather lose a finger or a toe? Would you rather eat a can of peaches in heavy syrup every day for the rest of your life, or spend 3o days wearing a wet suit?

Miserable

So, last night was bad. The usual wake-up around the time we go to bed. Then she slept untli 3:30. And then from 3:30 to 5 or so, she went back and forth between sleeping and fussing/crying at such a rate that I would just be starting to drift back asleep when she started squirming again and demanding more backrub. Ack. And then she was up at 6 wanting milk and we were out of bed by 6:30. Double ugh.

If this continues, I will lose my mind.

This seems like a good place to tell you that M is totally delightful during the day. She is learning about a zillion new words per day. My three favorites from this week: boogers (did I mention we've had a cold?); outfit (cute clothing Grandma sent); and caterpillar (as in Very Hungry. Pronounced cabbadidda.)

She is rarely cranky and often very funny. She giggles a lot and has an impressive attention span and thirst for repetition of her favorite books and songs (See caterpillar). She doesn't show evidence of being sleep-deprived—not that I can see, anyway.

However, a lot of the time I feel like I'd be a much better parent to her (more energy, creativity, attention, etc. etc.) if I could just get some more damn sleep.

Are you bored with this yet?

Night 7: Down at 8, up and fussy from 11 to 11:30, then asleep until at least 6, maybe 6:15, but then up for the day.

So that's like, six and a half hours of sleep in a row, which might be record-breaking. Somehow I feel no less exhausted, though.

Six Hours

Last night: Down at almost 9; fussing, etc. at 10:30; asleep on her own until 4:30; up at 6:15 demanding milk; finally back asleep at almost 7 and up for the day at 7:15.

Six hours of uninterrupted sleep is about as good as we've ever had it. Still, I feel pretty fogged in after so many 4 am's in a row.

Today was the music class again and there was much, much less Barney this time. Phew.

She's down for a nap now and my well-honed nap radar predicts it will be short. So I have my priorities in line: update blog, drink tea and read new Anna Quindlen book, and if she's still asleep then maybe make a grocery list.

Ever So Slightly Bitter

Night 5: Down at 8:15, wake ups at 12 and 4, a half hour to 45 minutes of intermittent back rubbing each time. Up at 7.

I’m not sure where I got the idea that once M didn’t want to nurse at night any more, she would magically start sleeping all the way through on her own. But it appears I was mistaken. How many more years until I get a solid night of sleep?

Amnesia, and a First

I don’t remember exactly what happened last night. She needed a little back rubbing once or twice before I even went to bed, and there was a lot of fussing that she recovered from on her own. I think she must have woken up about twice during the night, and I don’t think I rubbed her back / murmured to her for more than a couple of minutes each time.

What I do remember is that she was awake for the day by 6:20. A bit early for my taste.

Is this progress? I don’t know. I’m afraid we’ve hit a plateau, where back rubbing has replaced nursing and none of us will necessarily sleep any better than we were and the main change is that I’ll have to cut down on the ice cream because I’m not expending so many calories nursing.

We'll see. Maybe we'll do a few more days of this and then try to move her out of our bed.

This morning we went to the first day of the parent/child ed. class, which was unexpectedly good. No Elmo in sight, for one thing. Also, there were a few moms who seemed promisingly introverted.

M fell asleep in the car on the way home despite my loud singing and tickling and then, for the first time ever in her life, I was able to carry her from the car up to her sleeping spot and put her down. She was awake on the way up the stairs and asking for milk, and I thought I’d nurse her when we into the bedroom, but the second I put the blanket over her she dozed off again.

A kid who sleeps without milk! It’s like an alternate universe!

Progress, Apology, Thanks

M has a sniffle, and I was worried that would jeopardize this whole project. But last night went the same as and maybe a little better than the night before. More wake ups (9pm, midnight, and I think a bunch of stirrings in the wee hours), but less time to get her back to sleep, and a bunch of times she fussed and started to cry and then got herself back to sleep. Hurrah!

Several posts by other bloggers yesterday made me think about what I'd written (and not written) that day, and why, and now I want to write a little about why it seemed ok to post nothing but the mundane details of our family's sleep life on the anniversary—the big, round five-year anniversary—of such an awful day. In retrospect, I think it would have been better to hold the ordinary post and, in the absence of anything to say in observance of the day, have a bloggy moment of silence here.

But before I read, yesterday, a few really moving reflections on the anniversary, I felt very, very far from that day five years ago. Geographically, chronologically, and emotionally far. And I'd gotten so used to "the tragedy of 9/11" being used as a rhetorical tool in the service of wrong-headed foreign policy and sensationalistic, ratings-seeking TV programming that I'd started tuning out most talk about it and had pretty much disconnected the part of me that hears words about terrorism and tragedy from the part that, five years ago, spent weeks and weeks in a state of raw anxiety and sadness over what happened.

What other writers—people who live much closer to the physical landmarks of this tragedy than I—wrote yesterday made me remember that before it was a trope, before it had a name, before it was fodder for bumperstickers and justification for an unjust war, September 11, 2001 was a clear fall day that turned into a nightmare that stripped what had seemed to be a solid, certain world down to its naked fragility.

Thank you, Moxie and Brooklyn Girl and those who wrote comments on your blogs yesterday. Here in the middle of the country, September 11, 2006 was a cloudy day. But I felt the sharpness of that blue New York sky with you.

And as I kept going yesterday, as we all do, with the ordinary tasks of my day and night—as I woke up again and again to soothe my daughter back to sleep—I could see more clearly that lying next to a crying toddler, her loud mad voice in my ear and her snot soaking my pajama top, is not just drudge work, is not just a chore; it is an exquisite privilege. To be here for this, to be alive for this. We are so lucky to have this life.

Better

Yesterday was kind of a blur. M was cranky, clingy, and nurse-y. Not surprising: bad night of sleep the night before, plus inexplicable short naps for the past week (this happens for no reason sometimes). Plus, I think she was testing out the We can nurse all you want when the sun comes up promise. Really, Mama? All I want? Even now? Even when you’re trying to finally eat breakfast?

Anyway, last night she woke up at 1 but went back to sleep after 15 minutes of off-and-on back rubbing. Then the same thing about 4:30. And then she slept until almost 7.

The back rubbing calms her down but we try to keep it minimal because I am worried about switching to a back rubbing addiction. Better than a nursing addiction, because anyone can rub backs, not just Mama, but still not ideal.

The daytime clinginess worries me, but it seems less intense than the last time we tried this. She was 11 months old then and I think the change was too drastic at that point. During that experiment, the transitions to babysitter time on the days I worked were awful. Today she greeted the babysitter with her usual happy demand of Shoes. Shoes. Park! So, phew.

Last time, as I remember, night 3 was the worst. I hope that’s different this time, too.

Went ok, ended weirdly.

She went to sleep about 8, which is on the late end of normal. Woke up shortly before 11. Almost fell back to sleep about 15 minutes later, then woke up again and got all worked up, yelling for Daddy (who for a bunch of reasons slept downstairs last night) and, more querulously, for book and bubbles. Finally fell back asleep about 12:30.

Didn't wake up again until 6:20, which I figured was close enough to a reasonable wake up time. I nursed her. Then she threw up all over the sheets. She seems fine now, though.

Night Weaning

We're doing it. Starting tonight.

M is 16 months old and still nurses down for naps (except the two naps per week she's with a babysitter), nurses to sleep at night, and nurses back to sleep after at least two, and often three or four, wake-ups at night. I'm ready to be done with the midnight nursing, and I really believe (remind me of this tomorrow when I'm slogging through on too little sleep after a night of screaming baby) that, though she'll need to get over her inital pissed off reaction to the change, she's ready for it too.

For the past few days I've been talking to her about how the milk needs to go night night when mama does. And I've been trying to shorten her night time nursing sessions for the past week or so. But I think from here we just need to go cold turkey. Wish us luck.

I S S T T N Y ?

Hah. Most times, I say, “mmhmm” and change the subject.

On a good night, the Monkey goes to sleep at 7:30, then wakes up to nurse at around 11 or 12, again at around 3:30, and sometimes around 6, and then is up for the day at around 7.

She sleeps on a pack-n-play mattress on the floor in our bedroom until the first wake up, and then we bring her into bed with us.

She naps twice a day, still. A half hour in the morning and maybe an hour in the afternoon. Naps, too, are on the floor of our bedroom.

Going down for naps or for the night entails either my lying with her, nursing off and on, for between 15 minutes and an hour (lately, closer to an hour a lot of the time, especially at night), or Dada or the babysitter holding her while she screams her head off, mad about the lack of nursing, then falls asleep.

We did not set out to be co-sleepers, but here we are. And while I am glad to have given the M the nighttime closeness that she seems to have needed for this long, I am ready—have been ready for a while—for a change.

However, I cannot stomach the blood-curdling screaming that ensues when the Monkey’s drive to nurse is thwarted. Nor does my first choice of sleep solution (me checking in to the Hilton for a month or two while the mister and the Monkey sort this all out) seem very realistic. There must be a happy medium. I’m open to suggestions.

"If you could do anything in the world right now, what would it be?"

I wonder when my answer to that will stop being, "Sleep."