Alice has not been sleeping. Well, I take that back, she has been sleeping but only for 45 minutes at a time. Saturday she did not take a nap AT ALL! She was awake (and cheerful, I might add) from 7am to 8pm. For the last week and a half, the overnights have been rough on John and me to say the least. We work in shifts at nights for a few reasons…First, so we don’t argue about whose turn it is to get up with her but mostly because we both have very different sleep cycles. John is dead to the world from the moment his head hits the pillow until the early morning hours. I, on the other hand, am non-functioning from those wee hours until the time I get up for the day (ask my mom about trying to wake me in the morning). So, we each tend to Alice when our brains are actually functioning. Of course, I use the word functioning with a great deal of exaggeration. Our schedule goes like this: I get up with the girl from the time she goes down for the night until 1:30am and John takes her from 1:30am until we get up for the day (usually around 5:30am).
On Sunday night, Alice fell asleep in my arms around 8:30pm; I put her in her crib, snuck out of her room and went to bed myself. She woke up at 11:30pm so I rocked her until she fell asleep again. I put her in the crib and immediately her eyes opened and she started crying. This happened about 3 more times before she actually stayed asleep during the arm to crib transfer. So at 12:30am, I drag myself back to bed. At 1:30am, it started over. Diaper change and rocking for 30 minutes did not even make a dent in her energy. I woke up John and informed him of the shift change and went downstairs to make a bottle. John fed the munchkin and I went back to bed. He told me that morning that he finally put her down about 2:30am but that she was back up from 3:30am to 4:15am. Then she woke up again at 5:15am while John was in the shower. Now, as exhausted as John and I are, we know that we are extremely lucky that we have a child who usually sleeps 8-9 hours a night, was never colicky, and is insanely cheerful. It is so hard to be upset with her late night crying when she is so excited to see you enter her room. She never notices that we are physically dragging ourselves in there and that the rocking chair we use in hopes of lulling her to sleep actually works on us before her. We are NOT complaining and we are not blind to our blessings.
Anyway, I have had asuspicion about the reason for the sleeplessness but have not had any evidence to substantiate it. Well, the proof appeared yesterday. Alice is getting one of her two front teeth. She has had little lumps on the front of her gums for a while but the left tooth has finally broken through. Very soon she will look like a little bunny rabbit. Is it even possible for her to get any cuter? I never think so but I am proven wrong each and every morning.
