The Incredible Non-Sleeping Baby

We jinxed it.

Monday night remarked how lucky we are that we can just put our kid in her crib, say goodnight, and let her put herself to sleep. We smiled as we listened to our daughter softly recite her growing vocabulary in her crib before drifting off for twelve straight hours of sleep. Mama. Dada. Diddie. Baba. Baby. Baby! Babeeeeey! Whoooooo.

Tuesday she fought me a bit for naptime and vigorously battled nighttime sleep. After a couple rounds of crying for us, I had to hold her until she was essentially out.

Wednesday night—an epic battle for the ages. She had slept in late and napped a little late and probably too long (things I allowed because I was trying to hammer out a project). We usually have her up until at least 9:00 anyway (hey, it keeps her cribbed past the 8:00 a.m. hour), but this night, 9:30 was just the beginning.

Aaron did a couple rounds with her and then tried letting her cry. We’re not big cry-it-out people, but sometimes we’ll let her cry a bit if it seems she just wants to try to get you back in there. She usually gives it up in a couple minutes anyway. Well, after a good ten minutes of her crying, screaming bloody murder, and hacking (from crying so hard, plus she’s had an allergies cough), my brain was splitting open and I couldn’t possibly get any work done anyway, so I went in there. She seemed truly beyond the point of calming herself down.

Oh yeah. You would be too if you had that puke stench on you.

She’d only thrown up a little bit of milk, but it was nasty. So it necessitated lights on, wiping up, a change of clothes. And . . . let the cycle begin again. I went upstairs and heard Aaron reading to her. Rocking her. Singing to her. And the pitter-patter of tiny, hyperactive feet escaping from her room.

Eventually my turn again and I wasn’t taking any chances trying to put her down half asleep. I mean, don’t be a hero. I had to get this girl into her usual semicomatose state before I could so much as think about shifting her horizontal or taking a breath in the middle of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. I thought I’d ruined it when I put her down and she started grabbing at blankets, but the kid is like a T-Rex: she can’t see you if you don’t move. I froze until I was sure she didn’t know I was still there and was just getting comfortable to sleep like she usually does, you know, two and a half hours earlier.

So we all went to bed close to midnight, and only one of us woke up before 6:00 to get some work done. We should all be up late again tonight for fireworks over the bay—but a huge fog bank is enveloping our town as we speak. In case our night reverts to a quiet night at home, I need to get the once-again-late napper up now to avert a potential repeat!