kim through
   the looking glass

I’ll try

So, last week, Gwen turned 9 months old! 9 months!! That means she has been outside of me for longer than she was in my womb. That’s just craziness.

Our little miss is pulling up on everything in sight and trying to climb.

She has become a VERY proficient crawler and frequently finds the grossest things on the floor to put in her mouth!

She’s been babbling a tonne in the past week and has also learned to sign ‘milk’!

She’s into EVERYTHING in a flash - learning about gravity, how things feel, taste, sound …

… and leaving NOTHING IN HER PATH UNTURNED! One of our nicknames for her is ‘Gwenzilla’.

This stage of development is so fun! She’s a treat to watch and play with as she babbles away (”ba-ba-ba-da-da-da-pth”) and climbs all over you. Gwen LOVES books. She loves being read to, just looking at the pictures, and playing with books on the ground. If you put her down, she beelines for any book that might be sitting out. We need MORE BOARD BOOKS, PEOPLE!

Sleeping has been … difficult lately, although the past few nights have been wonderful and we’re hoping that we’re over the hump. For the past month, Gwen had been resisting bedtime (we’d lay her down and she’d push up to a sit and then pull up in her crib) and waking VERY frequently (on the order of 8-10 times a night). She wasn’t waking due to hunger, but she was waking nonetheless. Then, she stopped waking as much, but then was waking up for hours at night wanting to play. Either variation is not pleasant! For the past two nights, though, she has gone down between 8-9 (we’ve been trying to keep her awake a bit longer to get her practicing in BEFORE bed time!) and gone 7 hours without eating and only waking 1-2 times to be resettled before that one feed. Then she’s been going back to sleep and sleeping until she’s ready to be up for the day - around 7:15. It’s been a lovely few nights, and we’re hoping that maybe she’s through her need-to-wake-up-and-practice-all-my-mad-skillz stage.

First, let me caveat this post by saying that, in the rare occurance that I may actually get to sleep during the day and have a decent nap, as soon as I stand up, I am in pain. Extreme gas pain that puts me in a fouler than foul mood and is often accompanied by moaning, crying, groaning, and lying curled in the fetal position for 30 mins - 1 hour. I can’t tell you how long this has been the case, but long enough to know that unless I really need that nap, it’s really just not worth the aftermath. That said, let’s move on

Brad advised me this morning to sleep with Gwen goes down for her naps. We’ve both (yeah, I’ll get around to updating about that eventually) been quite sick, and I. Am. Exhausted. I shunned the idea for Gwen’s first nap, as it occured at only 9:30am, but I thought maybe for her second, I’d see what happens. Following is an account, for my darling husband, of what transpired during said ‘nap’. Please know that these events are not isolated and their occurence is well noted by myself under 4 - 5 months of observation. This wasn’t a one-off.

I had gone out to get lunch - a bagel - from a local shop and saw some friends while there. I arrived home at around 1:45pm, perfect timing for Gwen’s second nap, since she’d awoken from her first (1+ hours) at 10:45am. She was rubbing her eyes and yawning, clear Gwen signs that a nap will easily overtake her.

I decided to nap with her in our bed - one of my favourite things to do when she was little - and got us all comfy-cozied up. She latched on … and popped off. And latched on … and popped off. Bright eyed and bushy tailed now that we’re trying to get her to sleep, my kid played. Until 2:39pm. We had some cute moments, as she rewarded me with the ever-elusive Gwen giggle after I tickled her belly a few times, followed promptly by a head-butt into my sore, congested, sinuses. Thanks, Gwen.

So. At by 2:39pm, she was whiny and clumsy. I had lain there the whole time hoping against hope that she would tire quickly and I could still get my nap. I got us comfy-cozied up again (oh, and she’d fallen asleep in our bed for her naps just fine on Saturday when I had been too tired/weak to move, so it’s not because she was in our bed. Nice try though - I knew what you were thinking!) and … oh right. Comfy-cozied up again and she nurses and slips blissfully into a quiet sleep. I lay there staring at her, blissful amidst the nursing hormones and begin drifting off a few minutes later.

To be awoken at 3:00pm.

That’s right, people, my kid slept for 15 minutes.

That, my dear sweet Brad, is why I don’t try to nap anymore. I’ll take sheer exhaustion over that fiasco any day! Although today I got to enjoy that fiasco followed by sheer exhaustion made worse by the fact that my body thought it was going to get to sleep followed by kill-me-now gut pain. Yay!

Can any one else see why I find it difficult day after day to find the sunshine and puppy dogs in being a mother?

This is what keeps me going. This kid is seriously cute.