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07/12/2007: "Six weeks"
I don't know how long I'll have to write this because the baby is in her crib gazing lovingly at her mobile. In the past week she's fallen in love with her mobile, a Suessian device that looks like this. She tracks its motion now and kicks and coos at it, which is fun for me to watch, but then after a time she decides she hates the mobile, the mobile is her sworn enemy and she wants nothing more to do with it. "I have used this up! Take it away!" is her message, which she delivers via nothing more sophisticated than a simple scream.
Which I jump up to answer, so I guess she's got me trained.
Stimulation is starting to entertain her for more extended periods of time now. The mobile is the clear winner, but she's beginning to interact with other things as well. She actually let Dave and I eat dinner together the other night while she sat in her swing and she fell asleep in it this morning. She recognizes her bottle and her pacifier and, if she's not too hysterical, will quiet a bit and open her mouth for them. She is extremely enamored of her changing pad and loves to become Naked Baby. I think I actually got a smile out of her while I was changing her today but it was fleeting. I wouldn't say she's exactly smiling yet, but she's thinking about it.
There are all sorts of signs that her little brain is coming online. In the past couple of days she's been sleeping a lot and eating a bunch and last night was the payoff. Dessa slept through the night last night. I put her down at eleven and she cried for a bottle at 7:30 am. Today is her 6 week birthday, so clearly she is brilliant and also she has great compassion for her poor exhausted parents. Right?
Well, just because she slept through the night, do not think that I did. It wasn't exactly Dessa's fault, although I think that through the gift of Mommy Guilt I can probably make her feel like it was her fault when she's 16. I'm going to work on that. In the meantime, let me tell you exactly why I slept so badly last night. First off, Dave was snoring so that was strike one. I can fall asleep to the TV, the radio and the occasional iPod, but snoring makes me In. Sane. Then, the dog was snoring, so double fun. Also, Riley was in Extreme Cuddle Mode, which I'm used to and don't mind much unless it includes His Highness wanting to sleep with his head ON my pillow, which of course last night it did. So after much tossing and turning on my part I think I fell asleep somewhere around 1 am.
But the real reason it could conceivably be the baby's fault is that I then proceeded to wake up every 45 minutes or so because I've become the world's lightest sleeper. Even with earplugs in I hear every sigh, coo, shift and fart that my daughter makes (do not underestimate the power of the fart. It is massive and it is impressive). I'm incapable of sleeping through any noise she makes; I am on high alert at all times. I don't know when, or if, this changes as a mother but I'm not counting on it being any time soon.
So I'm a little tired today, but triumphant. Six weeks old and my baby slept through the night! I don't expect this will happen every night, since it's early days (though I slept through the night at 6 weeks... like mother like daughter I guess) but it's a start. We're making progress.
Now if we could just convince her to make her own breakfast I think we'd be in business.
Notes from a Yarn Hacker
