six cats in the yard

When we were in Tennessee after Leigh’s father passed away, we decided to find a bunny costume for Maddie for Halloween. We are always calling her bunny and thought that would be a cute idea. Needless to say, I looked online and found something acceptable that would require a little adjustment (addition of pink to the ears) and then just never got around to it. All of sudden it was Halloween and I told myself that we didn’t need a costume for a 3-month-old baby who wasn’t even going to know that day was any different from any other day.

Then I got an innocent email from our friend Tricia asking what Maddie was going to be for Halloween. She has a daughter just 3 weeks younger than Maddie and they were going to dress her up like a hot pepper. Nothing in that email was meant to make me feel bad, but all of a sudden I remembered some of my childhood when my mother forgot to sign me up for softball my 6th grade year and I was devastated. I never played softball again and it was something I was good at. I just remember how I felt, like I wasn’t important enough for my mother to remember something that was hugely important to me.

I pictured Maddie, years from now, in therapy because her mother couldn’t make the time to get her a costume for her very first Halloween. After all, she would at least have pictures of it, even if she didn’t remember it.

I know that having a child really does make you relive and work through your own issues and, while my mother did a lot for me and sacrificed a lot for me in her own way, she wasn’t always able to give me what I needed. I don’t want to make that mistake with Madeleine. I know that I will make my own mistakes, maybe in the name of making up for what I lacked when I was growing up, but hopefully I can give her all of the opportunities that I never had and give her the love and support that I sometimes feel I lacked. I know that she will have regrets in life, but I hope that  she will always make the most of her time here on earth for travel and education and sports and music and drama or science or whatever piques her interest.

So I went right down to our local Wal-Mart intent on finding a kick-ass costume that I could be proud of…well, I went to the evil WM after trying our local used baby clothes store where I couldn’t find anything her size. I was actually excited about the costume I found.

This was just how much she naps according to schedule!   

When I took Madeleine in for her 2-month checkup, I also asked the doctor about her naps. We hadn’t really, at that point, thought too long or too hard about exactly how long or when she should be sleeping. I had just let her sleep when she fell asleep or when she seemed cranky. I didn’t really know about the “science of sleep” for babies.

I wasn’t really prepared for her response, because it made me feel like a neglectful parent for one thing, and her advice was contrary to the way I had decided to parent Maddie. She said that Maddie had to have two 3-hour naps each day, one in the morning and one in the evening and that if she wouldn’t go to sleep on her own in the crib, that I should let her cry herself to sleep.

I know that’s the advice a lot of people give, but it just wasn’t going to work for me. It broke my heart to hear her cry and there was no way I could do that, especially because the first time I tried it (and yes, the dr. made me feel bad enough with her speech that I had to try it to see if it really worked as simply as she said it would), she cried so hard that she lost her breath and I felt like a complete schmuck.

So, the bottom line, the discussion at the doctor’s office got me thinking, reading and talking to others about what I really should be doing about her daily nap schedule. And I realized that I had to start a routine for bedtimes.

Since we also didn’t really have a bath routine down, we decided to go with Emily’s and the No Sleep Solution recommendation and add bath time to the nightly bedtime routine. Luckily she loves her bathtime.

We are starting to get back into a routine that we hope will be interrupted by a move to portland. My perfect day would include an early-morning walk, followed by breakfast. Short nap for Maddie, then some play/bonding time. Next would be a 3-hour nap for Madeleine and yoga, meditation, and possibly time to take care of dinner prep for me, then more bonding time. Short late afternoon nap. More bonding time. The rest of it can be up in the air.

Wednesday we had a mostly good day. Walk on a beautiful, sunny fall day with a happy baby.

The summer flowers were still hanging on in most of the neighborhood.

Madeleine’s nap lasted 1.5 hours which gave me enough time  for a nice yoga session and she was happy and googly most of the day. The next day, of course, was a full-blown scream fest in the afternoon when I tried to get the sleepy beepy to nap and then again that night when we tried to put her down …. Ah well. You can’t win every day.

After spending two weeks in Eugene doing my best to help out with my mom, we  discovered the usefulness in the vibrating chair (for the baby) and the baby swing, so we ordered them both immediately upon arriving home. And I mean immediately, in that we hadn’t been home for more than an hour when they were on their way. They don’t always work, but often they can give me enough time to shower or to make dinner (as long as none of that takes more than 5 minutes).

But sometimes they don’t work so well and we are again reminded that Madeleine is one very opinionated infant and has been since birth. We have a healthy fear of her toddler years. And we think it will start early. 

I’m going to try my best to update this blog over the next couple of weeks, as nap time & daddy time give me a little break from the wee one. Lots of things, both good and bad, have happened over the last 2.5 months. 

• a baby (actually several if you include friends’ babies) was born

• my mother succumbed to pancreatic and liver cancer

• Leigh’s father passed away only a week after my mother

• we are still trying to sell (or rent) our house and move to Portland and we are keeping our fingers crossed that we make it before Nov. 1

• stay tuned because I’m sure there will be more news; I just hope that it’s all good for awhile.