Fussy Mommy

In our concerted efforts to simplify parenthood, Ramis and I have been fairly accomplished at taking the stress out of a lot of things that new parenthood can bring. (Well, perhaps he is far better at it than I am. I do tend to dwell on little things the more time I am given to think about them, but I've gotten a lot better. )

Sleeping is such a simple thing. It's like eating: if you're hungry, you eat; if you're sleepy, you sleep. But, this we've learned is not necessarily true for babies.

Now, before I go on, let me again preface this by saying that I am in no way complaining. Summer is an extremely easygoing baby who is a very good sleeper (unlike her parents). We got so incredibly lucky in so many ways that every day I wait for someone to wake me up from my dream! A dream baby, she most certainly is. The best of the best.

However, she started sleeping through the night early on and we rolled with it. As time went on, we kept to the schedule, but she didn't necessarily want to sleep on our schedule. Some nights she would be wide awake after at least 2 to 3 hours of rocking her to sleep. She wasn't necessarily cranky or fussy, she just was curious. This was frustrating knowing that we couldn't give up on our routine.

So, we tried to keep her up in the early evening. As Ramis was coming home from work, Summer would awaken from her afternoon nap and it was mommy and daddy's job to keep Summer awake and happy so that by the time it was bedtime, she would zonk out. We tried, and we tried again, and again. But, the pattern seemed to have little success. We would still spend hours watching her big, charcoal gray eyes stare at us for hours as we rocked, danced, sang, and hummed to get her to sleep.

Well, we've had great success over the past few days getting her to sleep. The time it has taken me over the past few days to get her to sleep? Less than 10 minutes. Why, you might ask? I let the poor girl sleep when she was sleepy. Yes, she woke up from her nap around 7:15pm and then eventually went down to sleep just before 9pm. This doesn't make sense to me, but she's a baby. Clearly Mommy was being the fussy one in this situation-- fussing with Summer's perfect rhythm. Ugh. You live and learn: simplify, simplify, simplify.