the pieces of my life

I just want you all to know that I live in fear–absolute and complete terror–of the day Sweetie Pie becomes truly mobile. Don’t let anyone fool you with that demure girl bullsh*t. Sweetie Pie is 13,768,439.72 times louder, busier, and more active than Doodles was at this age. I think we’ve got a real spitfire on our hands. I don’t know whether to be proud… or to run for cover.

I’ve had it up to here (you can’t see it but my hand is at stratospheric heights) with Sweetie’s sleep. As you know, we’d given up on Ferberizing. Many suggested we try again at nine months. I kind of figured, “Hey, we’re not having another baby, she goes down in her crib for a few hours at night so I get some time with Adam, what the hell, let’s just keep cosleeping with her.”

And then Sweetie decided that she’s on the verge of crawling. She scoots backwards. She rolls prolifically. She gets on her hands and knees and rocks and rocks. But apparently she wasn’t getting enough of time to do this during the day. So she started waking at 2 a.m. To practice. In our bed. For one and a half to two hours. A night.

On night five of this, I simply couldn’t take it anymore. “Get her back to her crib!” I decreed to Adam. There was much crying involved. Some of it even came from Sweetie.

So what to do? She couldn’t sleep with us, she couldn’t sleep without us. But I figured once I started down this road, there was no turning back. Sweetie is now in her crib. And every night there’s been crying involved. So much crying, in fact, that twice now she’s woken Doodles, who we then take into our room because it doesn’t seem fair to him to have to listen to Sweetie.

Now, mind you, this isn’t “leave her along and let her cry” crying. This is “pat her on the back, whisper soothing words, nurse her a little more” crying. But it is crying nonetheless. Basically, she goes to bed at 6 p.m. or so, depending on what time we get home. She’s definitely ready for sleep and she fights it, but we’re at the point where after about five minutes of crying, she’ll drift off. She then sleeps until 10 or 11. And then she wakes with a vengeance. I nurse her. She’s obviously exhausted, but she does sleep… eventually. It takes her about a half hour to calm down. Then, like clockwork, up at 3 a.m. Last night for the first time I was able to nurse her and she fell back asleep within three minutes instead of the half hour of fussing.

Improvement, right? Nursing just twice a night instead of hourly. Only when we were cosleeping, I could pretty much sleep through those hourly nursings. Now I have to get up, go to her room, get her out of the crib, go into the next room to sit in the glider, nurse her, put her back in her crib, and return to my bed. I’m waaaaaay more tired than I ever was before. Honestly, I don’t know how all the non-cosleeping parents out there do it!

I did pick up The No-Cry Sleep Solution and it does have some interesting ideas… none of which had any effect on Sweetie. All these sleeping books forget to take into account older siblings. The book says something to the effect of, “The hour before your baby goes to sleep, keep things calm and quiet. Try taking her for a walk or relaxing with her in bed.” Um, yeah. What about the kid running circles around the table while you’re trying to feed the baby a nice quiet meal. What about the kid jumping up and down screaming, “I’m hopping like a frog! I’m hopping like a frog!” while you’re trying to give the baby a soothing massage. What about the kid who picks up the baby’s hand and puts it to his ear, leans down to the top of her head, and then yells, “It’s a Sweetie Telephone! I’m talking in the Sweetie Telephone” while you’re trying to find a clean pair of pajamas. What about when you give in, put the kid in front of the television, and just as you finish nursing, starts screaming, “Little Einsteins is over! I want another show!”

The books don’t seem to cover that. Maybe it’s time for some new books to be written.

I haven’t forgotten you people… you’ll have to give till the morning, though. (I’ll postdate so don’t be confused).

The saying is if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. I disagree. What the saying should be is, If you can make it in New York with two kids, you can make it anywhere.

Let me tell you, there are few things that feel as uncool as driving down the FDR in… a minivan. The minivan was critical for the trip–when Pie freaked out, there was enough room for Adam to sit between the two kids and keep them happy–but boy did I feel bridge-and-tunnel driving that thing in the city.

Did we survive the trip? Barely. It was alternately very, very fun and very, very bad. Adam and I actually got a night out–the Nana and the Peter stayed in our hotel room with the wee ones–and I got to see high school folks I haven’t seen in decades. I got to drink alcoholic drinks, which happen to be my favorite kind of drinks. I had conversations with adults and I felt like I was someone other than a mother for once. (The odd part, though, was going out in New York in daylight. In my youth, I lived in the East Village, and it never would have occurred to me that daylight hours were for anything other than going to the office or catching up on my sleep. No self-respecting New Yorker would consider venturing out in daylight hours. They melt or something.)

But then there were the other moments. Like when Doodles, who requested to nap in Sweetie Pie’s crib, decided he wasn’t going to nap. He was going to play. And no matter how overtired he was (very) or how angry I was getting (very, very), he was not going to sleep (not at all). The highlight came when I turned to Adam and said, “This is no fun. Let’s go back to Boston now,” and Doodles latched on to this. He stood up in the crib, big fat tears streaming down his face, screaming, “I want to go back to Boston. I WANT TO GO BACK TO BOSTON NOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!” He did finally–two hours later–conk out in the bed once I lay next to him and closed my own eyes. Something about my pretending to sleep always puts Doodles to sleep.

Sweetie Pie’s sleep was not a success, but luckily that was mostly the Nana and the Peter’s problem as I was out enjoying said alcoholic drinks.

Will we go back? Eventually. But there better be a hell of a lot of those alcoholic drinks waiting for me.