Some mornings Adriana wakes me up with little pats on my cheek with her tiny hand. I want to keep my eyes closed, so she'll keep doing it--it's just so sweet. But I know that when she sees me open my eyes she'll give me a big grin, and I think that's even better. Some days she naps when I expect her too and I get things done around the house and Brian plays with her in the evenings while I cook dinner, and everything is great. When she gets fussy around eight or nine o'clock, I put her in a double-thick diaper and footy pajamas, and then I read her Good Night Moon and nurse her down to sleep. And those days are perfect and wonderful and I think, I should have 10 more babies! Or maybe no more babies because now I have the exact life I want and why mess with that?
Some mornings the baby wakes up fussy, and I can't go back to sleep after Brian gets up with her. And I spend the day tired, and it seems as though the baby never naps (although she usually does), and the house gets messier and messier, and I don't feel like singing "Mail Myself to You" 789347894 times or changing another diaper, and dammit, I forgot to put the diapers in the dryer. Why on earth did I think I could handle having a baby? Is it too early in the day to call Brian and suggest that this would not be a good day for him to lose track of time at work and not get home until seven?
I am lucky, I know, that there are more days like the former than like the latter, and that most days are a mix. And I think overall I do pretty well. And so does Adriana. So that's about my experience. As for changes in the baby:
The baby, she crawls. Not really. Not a lot. But she sees something in front of her and leans forward onto her hands and knees and makes her way towards it. She moves a knee forward, then the other, then her hands. And she gets what she wants. Is amazing and fantastic and terrifying. I am totally doomed. Somehow I had come up with the idea that babies crawled around nine months, so I thought I was safe for awhile. And while she's not getting anywhere fast, I think this may count as crawling. When she first did it on Friday I was reluctant to call it crawling, but Brian and his parents saw it happen today and said it counted. So hey, the baby crawls! Yay! And also: dammit. And the cat, who was just awakened by a baby who crawled over to her and poked her says only "dammit."
Adriana began sitting unsupported not long after reaching five months, but it took her until this past week to begin pushing herself up to sitting. Last night, just before I dropped off to sleep, I opened my eyes to check that the baby was still breathing, just in time to see her push up to her hands and knees and then to sitting. She reached toward the side of the cosleeper and I grabbed her, because I already know that she can pull up onto her knees when she's like that, and I was envisioning her pulling herself over the side and landing on the floor with a thud. Because earlier this week she managed to roll or scoot off of our bed when I thought she was napping, and now I know exactly the sound an eighteen-pound baby makes when she hits the floor: thud, pause, scream. And I can do without ever hearing that again. So later on today, before she goes to bed for the evening, the cosleeper will be converted to a play yard. Which means I will have to wake up when the baby wakes and needs to eat, rather than just pulling her in with me and not remembering it (I know this for a fact because she was sleeping in a play yard while we were staying at my dad's in July), and I won't be able to just open my eyes to watch her back rise and fall to confirm that she is still alive. And really, this is all about me. Didn't you know?
Oh, and it's all about baby pictures:
1 comment:
what beautiful eyes!! So cute!
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