I’ve been using my phone to keep children quiet, so it’s often a) dead b) busy or c) so filthy I can’t use the camera. It reminded me that when I started this project three hundred and sixty weeks ago it was funny more than serious. They weren’t supposed to be GOOD pictures. So right now, bad is mostly what I have.

Sunday:

Not a black eye, a mosquito bite.

Rewatching all of Game of Thrones, because why not

Monday:

The days are long

Sweetness

Good kitty. I swear the older she gets the smaller she gets.

Tuesday:

THE INFAMOUS BUNCHEMS INCIDENT

Couch climber

Back naps!

Wednesday:

Faaaaaaaaaaall

Tiny pumpkins for a tiny boy

Thursday:

Ready for picture day! Except we were a week early.

They both love this game

Our town hall is cool

Friday:

My baby is cooler than me

He literally carries her around half the day but she still loves him

Saturday:

I really wish I could have gotten the geese flying OVER the moon

Ordering groceries and watching Outlander

My life is very exciting, if by exciting you mean incredibly mundane, normal, average and boring. It’s busy, for sure, but I’m starting to feel like my poor kids barely leave the state and I should really try to travel more. But then I remember traveling with kids is terrible so it’s back to the couch I go.

Like that title? I just made up a word, y’all.

Baby Evan has been experiencing a little bit of day/night reversal lately, but not in the usual way. Most of the time when babies get their days and nights confused it involves sleeping all day and very exhausted parents at night, especially during those first crazy, disorienting weeks right after you bring baby home. My child is doing just fine with his day-night sleeping patterns (besides the sudden and disappointing shortening of the ONE nap we have left to less than 2 hours most days) but his need-for-attention patterns are WHACKED.

Today at breastfeeding group Baby Evan flung himself into at least four different mamas’ laps, climbing over and pushing out of the way their own smaller babies. (He’s pretty much the infant version of Godzilla.) When one mom was foolish enough to pick him up after group he clung to her like she was the last empty lifeboat on the Titanic. While I was trying to make a pie this afternoon he literally hung on to my apron strings and pressed his face against the backs of my knees. His independent playtime has been cut from at least an  hour a day to just a few minutes at a time followed by much crying and whining and arm-raising until someone (me) lets him rub his nose on their shoulder and dig his sharp, grubby little finger nails into their arms.

And then bedtime comes and our sweet baby boy – who was once totally unable to sleep without at least 30 minutes of rocking and lullabies – thrashes out of our arms. He wants to be left ALOOOOOOOONE dammit, alone in the dark in his crib with his stuffed Yoda and his blankie. Mere minutes (and zero crying) after E sets a totally awake and active baby in his bed there is total silence from the nursery.The baby lays himself down. He pulls the blanket over himself, stuffs a corner in his mouth, and sleeps. It’s….mind boggling. As far as I know we haven’t trained him to put himself to sleep or encouraged it in any way. In fact, I’m a little sad he doesn’t want to rock before bed, since it’s the quietest, calmest part of the day and a baby cuddle is such a great way to relax.

I’ve started to wonder if affection works the same as food – maybe Baby Evan has a necessary daily allowance of love and if I meet all his needs before 7 pm he doesn’t have to fill up right before bed. Clearly his heart is bigger than his stomach.

Of course I know I’m tempting the mommy-blogger-gods AND Karma AND Fate AND probably a pack of rabid flying squirrels by writing about this on the internet, but I’m willing to risk it. Maybe my story will help some poor exhausted parent give their kid a chance to put himself to sleep and discover that’s what he wanted all along.

Since I’m still exclusively breastfeeding and Baby Evan is still being exclusively stubborn and exclusively refusing a bottle or solids of any kind, baby feeding is a one-woman show around here. When I’m not too exhausted to function, I remember breastfeeding is not going to last forever and we’re creating a special bond that I’m never going to regret. Before I became such a fan of nursing, one of the arguments I’ve heard against breastfeeding is that dads can start to feel left out of the nursing dyad and resent that bond between mama and baby. Although I don’t think there’s any danger of that happening around here (hellooooo no night feedings for Dad!), in the interest of shared parenting and giving E his own special baby bonding time, he is the exclusive manager of all baby bedtimes.

Besides a handful of nights where he was at work, E has done bath, pajamas and rocked Baby Evan to sleep every night for the last 10 months. He’s also home to do about 50% of the naps, although naps are in short supply around here lately. Since he’s had so much practice when it comes to sending the baby off to dream of a land made of boobs, puppies and small pieces of plastic to shove in his mouth, E is the expert. So the same way nursing is my baby go-to mode when the baby is upset, sleeping is E’s baby go-to mode. All the time.

Uh oh, Baby Evan fell on his face? NAP.

Oh dear, the baby’s grumpy because he’s teething. NAP.

If that child doesn’t stop screaming soon my ears are going to start bleeding. NAP.

Dirty Diaper? NAP.

Um, maybe someone should stop the baby from eating that. NAP.

The funny part is these naps have about a 70% success rate even when I didn’t really think the baby was tired. Unfortunately, when sleep ISN’T what the baby needed both Dad and baby end up frustrated and even more upset than when they started. It also means whenever I leave E in charge while I jump in the shower or head to the grocery store I come home to a sleeping baby – a sleeping baby who’s nap I wasted on stupid things like SHOWERS and GROCERY SHOPPING. Time I could have spent doing reckless things like leaving the dishwasher open for more than 30 seconds or sweeping the kitchen or trying to read a magazine without holding it up over my head. You know, getting REALLY WILD.

I suppose complaining that my husband is really good at putting our son to sleep is sort of like complaining my diamond shoes are too tight or this giant tiara is giving me a headache, but hey, we all have our problems.

(That’s Sleeping Through The Night for anyone who isn’t hip to the current parenting anagrams.)

(Anagrams isn’t the right word. Abbreviations? I know it’s not analogies. Acronyms! Definitely an acronym.)

(Did I really say “hip”?)

Sunday night – Bed at 7:30, Awake from 11:30 pm – 1:00 am, lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth (in our arms), 1 feeding
Monday night – For the life of me, I CANNOT REMEMBER Monday. See why I need to start getting some sleep?
Tuesday night – Bed at 8:30, Awake at 12:30, a little crying, rocked back to sleep, NO FEEDINGS!
Wednesday night -Bed at 7, Awake at 10:30, fussy, awake at 4:30, fussy, fed both times
Thursday night – Slept 6:45 pm – 6:15 am with one 2:30 am feeding.
Friday night – Asleep at 7:30 pm…and up at 6:30 am. NO FEEDINGS.

THAT’S RIGHT PEOPLE, HE MADE IT. Baby Evan went 11 hours without nursing and the world did not end. The sky did not fall. Monkeys did not fly out of my butt. Best of all, my boobs did not explode. He slept, well, like a baby all night with barely a peep to indicate he had woken up, rolled over and self-soothed himself back to sleep. I probably woke up more times that he did to look at the clock and think OMG 5 hours! OMG 6 hours! OMG 7 hours! And by total, sheer, inexplicable luck we did it without using CIO (cry it out, yet another acronym) (see, I remembered this time).

Now, I know that was just one night and the happy dance of joy I did all the way into the nursery this morning is probably premature. And if I had any sense at all I’d STOP WRITING ABOUT IT right now because I’m setting myself up for a post in a week written from the fetal position on the floor that starts “dear internets pls halp me i cant remember the last time i slept or took a shower send wine and housecleaner”. It’s totally my own fault for bragging. Mama Karma is a bitch. Yet I cannot help myself, especially since now my last few angry, bitter, I hate everything posts seem silly and totally exaggerated. It’s amazing how much brighter the world looks after 8 hours of sleep.