this end up

Plava is growing like a weed. She's close to sitting on her own, she's eating like a fiend, and she's reached a whole new level of volume with her voice. Her favorite thing to yell out at the moment is "DAAAADAAADAAAADAAAAAAA!!!". Add in a couple of screeches and happy screams, and you've got a typical 5 AM wake up in our household. Yes, it's been a challenge trying to get her to sleep those last couple of hours so that her mom isn't walking around like a zombie with a giggling growth hanging off her hip for the first couple hours of the day.

BUT, on the bright side (gleamingly bright!!!), she's starting to finally sleep better! Why? I have no idea! She's cut one tooth completely now, and the other is just below the surface still, so during the day she's a little cranky, but at night she's only up ONCE!!!! AAAAAAAH. It's been such a long wait.

>Let me just interject something here. I'm sure there's a mother or two reading this thinking, "wow, a whopping 4 months without sleep. I would have killed for only four months." but let me just say that hey, no matter how hard it's been for any of us, I think we can all agree that we're all pushed to limits in some way or another. Some of us have an easier time dealing with things, and others have a harder time. Some of us have kids who slept through the night from 2 weeks old, and others had colicky kids. Some of us had nursing challenges, others had birth challenges. We're all in this together!!!<

Anyway, last night something rather queer happened. And yes, I'm using the word "queer" in the traditional sense. Got a problem? :) At 1:00 AM, Plava had her usual wake-up and so I groggily slid out of bed, stumbled across the hall, went into her room and stood in front of her crib. Now for those of you who know me, you know that I have very weak eyes. I wear nice thick glasses and without them I can pretty much just see shapes. In fact, upon walking to Plava's room, I often slam into our door on the way out, partly because of sleepiness, and partly because of blindness. So as you can imagine, in the dark it's even harder to see. I squinted down and saw Plava's squirming sleeper-clad body in the crib. I reached down, picked her up and laid her on my shoulder. Then it occurred to me that something was different. It was as if her weight was distributed in some strange way. My wonderings were answered quickly as I suddenly felt a warm, hairy head brush my stomach. I was holding her upside down.

Ooops.

It was kind of surprising, to say the least. She didn't even make a peep, but I quickly put her down and hoisted her up in the upright position again. It's funny, because I was suddenly overwhelmed with a feeling of guilt, like when you're babysitting and you've just let the toddler fall off the couch and bang his head on the coffee table. I felt like there was some mother-guru out there somewhere who was going to reprimand me for my bad child-skills. But nothing like that happened of course. No, instead I laughed out loud, sighed, nursed Plava back to sleep, stumbled back into my own bed, and decided that this would be something I'd write about in my blog tomorrow. Yep, hot blog material.

I hope all you readers are having a great day, and a very nice new year. Take care.