Day 18

     Yesterday Jr. turned 11 months old. It's surreal. Every time she celebrated a month-aversary during the first several months I was very aware. I was itching for her to get older, for things to get better. Now that they have, I'm not so focused on her age. And I promised myself I wouldn't be one of those people who when asked how old their kid was say, "19 months" or whatever. Once she's a year, she's a year. I can go so far as to say year and a half but that's it. It's so confusing. No one counts that way in the rest of society. No one says we've been married 14 months (at least no one I've met). No one says we've lived in this house 27 months. So why do we do this for babies? I think it stems from the fact that we start off parenthood with "I'm 28 weeks pregnant". Whenever someone would say that I would look at them blankly and then ask them what that was in months. When I was pregnant myself I knew exactly how many months, weeks and days that was but now that I'm not pregnant anymore, I can't remember!

      Wow. That was a tangent I didn't plan on taking! What I meant to talk about was that things have gotten exponentially better. The more independence Jr. achieves, the happier she is. Now that she can crawl, the sky is almost the limit. She still gets stuck sometimes and when she wants to be picked up or cuddled sometimes she'll stop mid-crawl toward me, sit there and cry. But otherwise if she doesn't want to be somewhere anymore, she'll just leave. She'll play with the magnets on the fridge, she'll follow Daddy into our bedroom and kiss the baby in the mirror (we have mirror closet doors), she'll pull books off the shelves in her room. And the blessing of having a sensitive child is that (so far) if I tell her 'no' once, that's all it takes. I didn't have to take away the plants on the floor, I didn't have to move pictures from lower shelves and I didn't have to worry about her pulling on cords. I'm also surprised that she hasn't even once attempted to get through the baby gate at the top of the stairs.

    Sleep is still a crap shoot. We've discovered that Tempra does NOT drug your baby to sleep. Last night she was crying and crying and crying so finally I gave her Tempra. This did not help things at all. By the time she went back to sleep it was 4:30 and then she woke up at 6:30. Also, the night before last she slept through the night completely and we hadn't given her anything. So I answered my own question from a previous post. I'm not sure what makes one night a good sleep and another not at all. I don't know if it's her teeth, if she's cold, if she's hungry, if she had a nightmare. I just don't know and I truly believe I'll never really know. I just try to relish the good nights and get through the bad ones (and hopefully take a nap that day!).

Dear Person I Wish I Could Be (is this supposed to be to my ideal self or is this supposed to be to someone whose qualities I wish I had?)

Dear Dad,
I wish I had your ambition, your tireless work ethic and your fearlessness.

Dear AD,
I wish I had your positive attitude and your ability to make people feel happy and special.

Dear MIL,
I wish I could cook like you and enjoy it the way you do.

Dear Little Jo,
I wish I could be creative and artistically talented like you.

Dear Deacon,
I wish I had your friendly and outgoing nature that welcomes everyone in; you are everyone's friend.

Dear Malt_Soda,
I wish I could have had your confidence in knowing what you wanted to be when you grew up.

Dear Hubby,
I wish I had your patience, your selflessness and your ease with languages.

Dear Fellow TA,
I wish I could be courageous like you and do everything I wanted to do while doing everything I must do.

Dear Mom,
I wish I could be as fearless about having and raising children as you.

Melissa