Sleep Wars

A short time ago...in a nursery far, far away...

O.K., so it's not far away, it's right across the hall from our room.

But to Hailey, it might as well be on another planet!

Let me start this entry off by saying that Hailey is a very, very good baby...AND...I'd like to think that we are good parents (so far). However, when it comes to her bedtime, we have really missed the mark.

Our normal routine is to have her with us (or one of us) until we are ready for bed. At that point she is usually asleep and we lay her down in a bassinet next to our bed. Sometimes she wakes up, sometimes she doesn't. If she wakes up, then it doesn't take much to assure her that we are right there and she just needs to go back to sleep. After that... she sleeps like a champ - solid- all through the night.

At this point, some of you may be having an inner dialogue about the mistakes that we have already made. Let me just say that (at least for us) we are gone from her so much during the day that spending as much time as we can with Hailey at night... seems right. Putting her down at 8:00 pm just doesn't give me enough time. If that makes me selfish, then to this point, I wear that badge proudly.

Now the problem is...that routine isn't working any more. With her new strength and mobility, the bassinet has become unsafe and we simply can't use it anymore. That leaves the crib. The huge, beautiful, convertible crib that we bought with the expensive developmental mobile hanging over it.

She HATES it.

Or more to the point, she hates being in it alone in the nursery. She kicks, screams, cries, howls, yowls - anything and everything to let us know that she does not like laying in that crib. We have stood over her and reassured her, we have gone back at timed intervals, we let her cry it out.... nothing seems to be working.

I have to tell myself that she is mad and not scared. If I think she is crying because she is frightened that we left her and aren't coming back, I'd run back in that room so fast I'd burn the socks off my feet. If I think she is just mad at us, then it becomes a matter of wills and a test for future parenting - one that if we loose now, Nate and I better just start saving for the pony. Stick a fork in us - we're done.

This is just been so tough. Tough on her, tough on us as parents, tough on us as a couple. No one is getting enough sleep so that makes days harder than they should be. We have been struggling with this for a while, but have always come back to the bassinet because it worked. It made us feel like good parents who are close to their daughter and rewarded with blissful, long periods of sleep.

Now it's cold turkey and I feel like its back to square one. I remember the days immediate following her birth where her nights and days were switched. I paced and rocked her while she cried until 5:00 am. Ugh. Just the memory of that is enough to keep me awake at night.

Maybe, if we are patient, and believe in the power of 'The Force', Hailey will begin to see that the crib isn't all evil, that there is some good left in the crib - it can return from the dark side and she and the crib can live in harmony together.

My favorite time of day

I am really surprising myself with this post by stating something I never thought I would hear myself say:

"My favorite time of the day is when I first wake up in the morning".

No really. I'm not bluffing. Seriously, its the first twenty minutes after I wake up. Those of you who know me really well, probably cannot imagine me typing that with a straight face.

I have my reasons - or reason - which is of course Hailey. She is the only thing that could ever, possibly make me love the moments directly following the silencing of the alarm clock.

Lately, when I have been getting up for her morning feeding, I bring her into our bedroom and lay her on our big 'body pillow' - the more relaxed she is, the easier it is to feed her (and how can you not be relaxed on a body pillow?). Well... there is something about our room and the light filtering in from our window that makes my daughter look absolutely flawless. Don't get me wrong, she is a beautiful child at any time, but with the pale blue morning light...she is perfection. The redness around her mouth from her slight 'pacifier rash'...gone, as is the scratch which resulted from her mom & dad's inability to catch the latest long fingernail in time.

I'd say she looks like a doll or an angel, but that is pretty cliche (besides, dolls kinda creep me out). She looks like, a painting - from one of the great renaissance masters. An artist of light and texture who can capture the way light plays off of the few wispy hairs atop her head and can make you feel the softness of her cheek. Even the little morning eye crusties look like jewels just waiting for a crown. I would love to take a picture of that moment, but I doubt a camera could catch it.

She throws her hands behind her head and sighs when I replace the bottle with the pacifier and then I get to snuggle the body pillow with her on it.

I could stay like that all day. What job, what career could ever be more important than that moment?

Baby Fix

Apparently, I have been catching a lot of flack (from various sources) about my absence of Hailey pictures and updates over the last few posts.

Well...for those of you who need their dose of cuteness...here you go.

Hailey wore a dress with tights for the first time on Tuesday. She's so proud of them, she wanted to show them off for the camera. What a great leg stretch... where do I sign her up for dance classes? Does she have to know how to walk first?

As if you couldn't tell from the picture, she is developing quite a little personality.

• She is a gigantic people watcher.
• She farts like a Weber - I'm so proud!
• Much to Nathan's dismay, she likes the boys.
• She loves mom's necklaces and glasses.
• She really likes sleeping in.
• She does NOT like to be woken up.
• She smiles and giggles all the time, particularly at daddy and Harley.
• She is really alert and watches everything - in fact it seems she fights naps because she doesn't want to miss anything.
• She is almost always on (what our daycare lady calls a...) 'Sunny Day'.
• To relax, she always puts her hands behind her head and plays with her ears.
  

Hailey will be 8 months on the 24th. She isn't crawling yet, nor does she have any teeth. However, she really wants to crawl (darn legs) and chews everything in sight!

She is over her first cold but is still a booger factory. She hates having her face wiped...HATES it! We started her on solids months ago and the only thing we have found that she doesn't like is oatmeal.

Hailey loves her exersaucer, her key ring and the dog. She has started putting consonant sounds together and says 'buh' 'da' and 'muh' (so far) but they don't mean anything yet and she really just likes talking to the TV and Harley. We have her pacifier on a clip and she swings it around so hard, we call it her Nuk-Chuck (like numchuck..get it...? Yeah...ok...silly, I know).

She doesn't have what I would call fingernails - claws or talons would be a better term. Her eye is still occasionally goopy from her blocked tear duct, but it is much better. She is getting more hair every day, it is sandy blonde and most of it runs straight down the center of her head!

She is really pretty amazing.

Although I may seem distracted and tardy posting blogs on my baby daughter...believe me...I know how lucky I am to be able to write these updates and take these pictures. She is my little miracle in pink tights and I love sharing her with everyone.

For more pictures of Hailey go to my Flickr site [click here]