At least it did for a few days this weekend. So we took full advantage…
Wherein I resort to humming
Last night D was in a mood at bedtime. You know which one. The I’m-so-sleepy-but-I-don’t-want-to-go-to-bed-so-I’m-just-going-to-cry mood.
It’s my favorite.
It was about 8:15, and she’d been displaying her usual signs of tiredness for awhile – rubbing her eyes, yawning, getting progressively more restless. So instead of even trying to get her to fall asleep on the couch with R, I carried her into her room to rock with the stars on.
That, apparently, was not how she intended to spend her evening.
She started crying before we even sat down in the chair, and proceeded to try to squirm her way out of my arms to freedom. Not so fast, young lady. I’m your mom and I know you’re tired.
So I just cradled her tightly and listened as her screams turned more into moans and little sobs. Ah ha, progress. I knew it!
She quickly stopped struggling, a sure sign that sleep was near, yet the little cries persisted. Ok, a new plan of attack must be in order.
What did I do? I started humming as her head rested against my chest. I thought the vibration might soothe her, reminding her of her time inside, even though that was so long ago now I’m sure she doesn’t remember it.
What did I hum, you ask? Well since I can’t sing for shit and needed something simple and fast, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” was the winner. Musical genius, right here.
After a couple renditions I tested the waters… Her whimpers started back up after a brief pause to catch my breath, so I continued.
Fortunately it only took a couple minutes more before her limbs went limp, her breathing slowed and deepened, the tell-tale little muscle jerks began, and her head hung lower and lower on my chest. Sleep was here.
So I guess I’m a pretty good hummer.
With my voice.
For my child to get to sleep.
Get your minds out of the gutter.
And then there was a toddler in our bed
There must have been something in her milk Saturday night, because D ended up sleeping in our bed for the 1st time ever. We do NOT make this a habit, obviously, when she can’t sleep, and usually she will eventually go back to sleep in her crib after waking in the middle of the night.
But for whatever reason she just wasn’t having it Saturday night. Try as we may, she wouldn’t sleep more than about 10 minutes at a stretch back in her crib.
Feel my pain? Here’s an approximate timeline of how our evening went:
8:00-9:00 Trying to get D to settle down, put toys away, and get snuggled in for night-night. R and I were engrossed in Season 1 of Downton Abbey on Netflix, so we wanted her to nestle into the blankets on the couch with R and fall asleep, like she often does. She was restless.
9:00 D finally conked out in his lap, so he carried her into her crib.
9:00-11:00 R and I become addicted to Downton Abbey. Well, I’m addicted. He may have just been humoring me by watching all these, but I think he actually kinda likes it too.
11:00ish D starts crying, so after it becomes clear she’s not just sleep crying R goes in to rock her back to sleep. I hear little cries coming from her room off and on.
11:15 R comes back out to the living room carrying D, who is still not back to sleep. He puts her in the blankets with him on the couch again, but she instantly pops back up and now wants to play after seeing a puppy on the tv. Wrong.
11:15-11:30 I take her back in her room to rock with her turtle projecting stars and moons on the ceiling, and she eventually goes back to sleep.
11:30ish I go to bed.
11:45-12:30 D wakes up 2-3 times, each time I rock her back to sleep. Those “sleeps” last no more than 10 minutes each. I’m getting really tired.
12:30 R goes in to try to get her to sleep and says he’ll just go lie on the couch with her. I know he’ll end up having to spend the rest of the night out there with her if he does, so I say just bring her into our bed. Little did I know that was the beginning of the end of any hope for a restful night.
12:30-6:30 D sleeps between me and R. And coughs in my face all night long. R bails at some point before morning to take up residence on the couch. Lucky. At 6:24 I awaken to a small arm moving back and forth over my forehead, then a finger in my eye. Nice wake up call.
So yeah, that wasn’t the most brilliant solution, and I now know why we haven’t tried it before.
D took 2 naps yesterday for the 1st time in months.
19 month stats
D turned 19 months old yesterday.
And I almost totally forgot about it!
I just kept thinking it was February, since that month seemed to last forever with its extra day this year and all, and then suddenly I realized it was March 1. 19 months!
I guess we now officially start saying her age in years instead of months? So she’s simply a year and a half old? Or would you continue saying 19 months?
Let’s see what’s new since her 18 month stats:
- She has added “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” to her repertoire and loves to sing it whenever she’s in her “boats”. She’ll get in an empty cardboard box, usually with the 2 Moosh pillows we have for some reason, and rock back and forth all over the living room saying “row, row, row”. It sounds more like “woah, woah, woah,” but you totally know what she’s doing. So then when you start singing the song, she gets super excited, rocks even harder, and claps mightily at the end.
- She recognizes that the little turtle in her room shines stars and moons on the ceiling when it’s dark, and she loves it. Now her new thing is to point up at the sky and wave her hand in a little circle, meaning she wants to see the stars. If I rock her to sleep that’s our new routine – watching the stars instead of reading a book.
- She knows that airplanes fly up in the sky. Whether this is because she’s been on a lot of them recently and I always tell her we’re going on a big vroom-vroom in the sky, or whether they’ve learned about them at school, I’m not sure. But she takes her toy airplane and zooms it up above her head, just like the vroom-vrooms in the sky.
- She loves to dance and sing and clap along to the alphabet song. My mom informed us that I knew my ABCs by the time I was a year and a half old, so now I guess we’d better get D rolling. They’ve obviously sung it at school, for as soon as you begin she knows exactly what you’re singing and joins in. I think it’ll be so fun once she actually knows the letters and can sing along with us.
- She actually danced with me for the first time the other night. We were heading into the kitchen to eat her supper and I turned on the radio speaker in there. She grabbed both of my hands and started swaying back and forth. And then I had to mop up the puddle into which my heart had melted because I was so happy.
- She’s still an excellent self-entertainer. She’ll happily sit in her play corner and scoot from toy to toy to book to book and back again for good chunks of time. She reads her books out loud and loves sitting in her chair. It’s the climbing from her chair to the couch that we need to work on stopping. Ahem.
- She is ridiculously silly. Lately she’s taken to army crawling and scooting around the house, sometime pushing something with her, sometimes just on her own. Last night she was crawling around on her knees pushing her box boat from the living room, through the dining room, into the bedrooms, and back out again. I love watching how playful and goofy she is. She definitely loves to laugh. A girl after my own heart.
- She loves to get down on the yoga mat with me when I do my push ups and sit ups at night. She’s done this for awhile now, but just the other night she actually grabbed the push up handles we have and used them exactly as they’re supposed to be. I was impressed. This girl’s gonna be ripped!
- She’s learned to sign “please”, which thrills me. I’ve been trying to get her to do that forever. You know, teaching manners and all. Finally just recently she’s started doing it, and I love it. Combined with the “thank you”s again, this mama couldn’t be prouder.
This girl. I love her so!
Tucson recap
If you’ll remember, D and I flew out to Tucson for a nice long weekend over President’s Day. My grandparents live out there, so we made a Friday night – Tuesday afternoon visit. My mom, stepdad, one of my sisters, and my brother-in-law joined us for a great time.
The flights out ended up sucking, however.
We were delayed a few minutes leaving Milwaukee waiting for 25 passengers from a flight in from Newark, which was awesome. We landed in Denver in just enough time to make our quick half hour connection, though, so I thought we would be Tucson-bound with no problem.
Not so much. I looked up at the flight monitor board as soon as we deplaned only to discover that our 2nd flight was delayed for an hour and a half. Wha?!?! WHY?!?!? Now I have to spend 2 HOURS entertaining a very overtired D all by myself. Gag!
Fortunately we survived, obvs, and we got into Tucson around 1am. D was happy as a clam to see Grandma and Auntie M at the airport, and I was just so relieved to be off airplanes. Bring on the vacation!
I forgot a camera, of course, so all the pictures I have from our trip were taken on my iPhone. So please excuse the quality, but here is a photographic recap of our days out west. It felt so good to relax, spend time with family, and soak up some sun.
The fruit in my grandparents’ yards was all a-bloom!
D and I thoroughly enjoyed our first visit to the Desert Museum, just west of Tucson in the Saguaro National Park. It’s gorgeous out there! I think the hummingbirds in that little sanctuary area thought D’s hat was a flower, because 1 of them flew right up to her head, which she loved.
Tuesday morning we took D up to the mini golf course before we left, and she had an absolute blast running around all the holes chasing her golf ball. We should have done that every day!
Those were 4 glorious days, and I’m so glad we were able to make the trip. We don’t see my grandparents nearly often enough, so I always love when they are able to spend time with D too.
We weren’t quite as excited for our flights home as we were for the ones heading out there, but it was wonderful to get to see Daddy again.
Memories Captured – February Edition
What a difference a year makes…
Happy Hearts Day
As an adult, Valentine’s Day has never been one of my favorites.
To me, it’s much more of a made-up “Hallmark holiday”, created mainly to inflate prices of roses, candy, and paper goods.
Plus I never had a boyfriend over Valentine’s Day until I met R, so I usually didn’t have a reason to make it a big deal.
Sure I enjoy getting a card or an extra “I love you” every February 14, but I don’t really hold it in high regard or eagerly anticipate it each year.
It was great as a kid, though. Who doesn’t love a mug covered in pictures of candy hearts and brimming with said sugary confection waiting for you on the kitchen table first thing in the morning?
But as an adult, I can pretty much take it or leave it. Plus we had to send valentines to daycare for D’s party today.
Dumb.
I mean, it’s cute that they’re having a party, but dumb that parents send a dozen valentines for a group of 18-24 month olds who have zero idea the meaning of the day. Ah well, I guess it’s a small sacrifice for a classroom of cuties.
However, I am quite excited for our heart-shaped pizza from Papa Murphy’s that R’s mom gets us each Valentine’s Day. It has become our Valentine’s Day dinner tradition, usually paired with our favorite tv show at the time. A few years ago it was Lost. Tonight we might check out the new show The River, since I’ve heard it’s very Lost-esque. Anyone catch its debut last week?
We usually see R’s family each year the weekend before Valentine’s Day for one of our nephew’s birthday party, and that is how we always get the heart-shaped pizzas. Some may laugh, but I love it!
Plus, look at this adorable shot of D playing in a bounce house with her cousins at the party this past weekend. That’s my little valentine!
So Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone, however you like to celebrate (or not)!