Season's Greetings!

I finally made my Christmas cards.

Now I just have to actually send them. I'm horrible at this whole adult thing. Life was so much easier when Mum still wiped my ass.

My Sleep Solution

Madelynn had been doing very well in the sleep department just a few months ago. I would lay her in bed at 7pm and she wouldn't peep until 7am or later. I don't know what turned those quiet twelve hours upside-down, whether it was new teeth or a growth spurt, the silent time ended in the beginning of November. Bed time routine has been the same since she was an infant, and I was still laying her down at 7pm. She would then wake up an hour later and I would have to lay with her for 15-45 minutes to get her back to sleep. She would sleep for another hour or less, and I would have to lay with her again. This would go on every hour until I finally went to bed, frustrated and more than a little annoyed with her. Last week, it got even worse. She went down at seven just to get back up at 7:15, 7:45, 8:30 and so on. Last night, I knew I just didn't want to do this anymore, I don't have the patience, I'm just so over it all. I admit, it's hard to spend 12 hours straight with someone and not be able to get away from them for a few hours. The hours after seven are mine.

I put Babe to bed at 7pm. When she woke up at 7:30 and walked down the hallway, I carried her back to bed, tucked her in with her bear and kissed her cheek. Then I just left. Of course she followed me, screaming. I scooped her up and put her back in bed. We did this for two whole hours, she walked out, I tucked her back in. Finally, at a little after ten, she stayed in bed and went to sleep. I was victorious, but I felt awful. I'll be kicked out of the attachment parenting club for sure after all that screaming.

Tonight, I put her down at 7pm. She woke up at eight and walked down the hallway. I carried her back, tucked her in and kissed her cheek. Then I left again. We went through the process twice tonight (out, back in, out, back in) and then she just went to sleep. What took two hours last night only lasted 15 minutes tonight, and with minimal screeching.

I don't know if this means I've won, or if it means she just doesn't like me enough to come looking for me... but I think I'm going to survive parenting now. Maybe.

Hunting Season

Since the onset of real winter, Mads and I have been cooped up in this apartment for full days sometimes. You can only go to the library so many times in one week without looking like A) a total loser, B) a potential book thief, or C) a book thief loser. Since today was almost close to beautiful, we spent a little time outside before runny noses and frozen fingertips forced us back in. The second our coats were hung on the rack, we were already annoyed with each other. We needed to do something, anything to get us through another long afternoon of hermit-life. Climb couch cushions? Check. Draw Christmas trees on the sinks, toilet, bath-tub and floor? Check-check-check. Have an Easter egg hunt? In December?

I busted out the plastic eggs and hid them all over the living room; one in her kitchen sink, one under the rocker, one on the seat of her chair, etc. I even hid one in the branches of the Christmas tree. You would have thought that Madelynn had just been introduced to the real live Jr. Asparagus, she was seriously 'tinkle just a little' thrilled every time she found an egg.

After a full hour of egg scavenging (yes, a full hour of hiding, finding and re-hiding all over the apartment), Babe and I collapsed on the living room floor, surrounded by multi-colored eggs. Just being silly, I shoved an egg down her shirt and a new hunting game was born:

If I had known that a handful of plastic eggs could happily kill an entire afternoon, I never would have drawn all over the bathroom. Shitfuck.

Brought to You Today by the Letter "P"

I've spent the past 21 years or so perfecting my signature. What started out as a crooked scrawl of uppercase letters has morphed into an elegant, yet messy scratch of Aimee C. In fact it was just recently that I figured out the absolute best way to curve that "C", it looked exactly the way I wanted it to. Today, I gave up my beloved "C" in favor of a new letter. Jeffrey and I got married today. It will take me years to make a perfect "P."

Before the wedding, I had my third OB appointment. Clutching my small cup of chilled pee and trying desperately to ignore the itch of my meticulously groomed nether regions, I laid on a table while an eighty-year-old man with coffee breath undid my jeans.

Ahh yes, this is exactly how I've always pictured my wedding day.

This One Hates Me

I didn't know that I was pregnant with Madelynn until I was already three months. This should tell you a couple things, the first being that I'm kind of a moron. Second, I had no symptoms. I really mean that, too. It's not like I found out and then looked back and said, "So that's why I (insert pregnancy symptom here) all those months!" Nope. I wasn't unusually tired, I wasn't sick, I was still flat as a board and shaped like a twelve year old boy. My pants fit. At around 6 months, I couldn't button my jeans. That was the first and only sign of pregnancy until Babe started break-dancing in there. Then she just kind of shot out like a rocket and bam, we have a baby.

With this one (who I have affectionately named "The New Kid"), it was like the exact moment pee met stick (at two weeks pregnant) I gained forty-seven pounds and had to use a hair-tye to keep my jeans closed. I may be exaggerating a tad with the weight gain, but I assure you the hair-tye part is true. For the past 84 days I have vomited every morning while brushing my tongue, usually in the sink (which is super-dooper gross because some of it always gets in that little hole, which makes me vomit again, which leaves me hanging over the toilet with Madelynn standing beside me trying to spit in the toilet while I puke in it, which forces me to use one hand to hold my hair while using the other to keep a screaming toddler at least an arm's length from the toilet, because we always bump heads when we try to spit in the toilet at the same time, which just isn't a very fun way to vomit in case you were wondering. I need at least one free hand to brace myself... ya know?). Two Mondays ago, I spent half of the day face-down on the living room floor, trying to half-snooze while Mads climbed on my head and ate dirt out of the planters.

Between the constant nausea, the total energy zap and the express trip into the realm of "Do you think Aimee is pregnant or just getting really super fat?" I've come to the conclusion that The New Kid hates my guts. Here's a newsflash for ya, New Kid... I don't fucking like you either!

12 weeks. I'm smiling because I avoided the sink-hole this morning. I can't think of a better way to start the day.

The Toaster Dance

Don't mind her mismatched pajammies and cow slippers, we don't do formal breakfasts around here.

Festive

Jeffrey, Mads and I put the Christmas tree up the day after Thanksgiving (Friday). We used purple, lime green and blue balls and snowflakes to match the living room, and I was very pleased with the end result. It was super cute. Mads loved it too, and no amount of "No, no, no!'s" could keep her little fingers off those glittery balls. By Saturday, I was so sick of fixing the balls that I started just tossing them at the tree, hoping they would stick and it would look like I did it on purpose. It didn't, it just looked messy with huge bald patches next to clumps of 5-7 balls all together:

And today, after scavenging most of the Christmas balls from every room in the apartment, I reached my breaking point. I didn't yell and stomp my feet, or toss the whole tree off the balcony like I desperately wanted to. I also didn't go to bed to weep under the covers (which I also wanted to do). I very calmly put all the balls and snowflakes back on the tree. Out of baby reach.

How freaking stupid festive does that look?

Window Cling

Mads helped me put some holiday window thingers up:

And now I can't keep her off the window sill. Super.

Super scary.

Thirsty

Mads was following me around the kitchen saying, "Wa? Waer? Wa?" I filled a sippy for her and she scampered off to parts unknown. I went back to the bedroom to put some clothes away. When I came back out to the living room, Mads was slurping water off the coffee table. How the hell did she get that sippy open? The sippy was nowhere in sight, but the container to her potty was sitting next to her slurping puddle. I tripped over the full sippy taking the potty part back to the bathroom. If the sippy is still full, where did she get all that water?

The toilet bowl had less than an inch of water in the bottom. There was a small puddle on bathroom floor. My child was drinking toilet water off my coffee table. That's gross.