Friday, January 30, 2004
Oy. A late night last night, so little for today. My apologies in advance.
With the wife at work, the kids were under my care. Not a problem. got them fed, and into bed, and cooked up the remaining 4lbs of meat that was previously mentioned. (Wife made promising talks of chili....3 day chili.....3 days to make,and 3 days to recover) With that done, I retired for the night to participate in the video gaming community. It's a very small comunity (population 1), but it allows me to rewind and relax from an occasional stressful day.
Not that yesterday was all that much of a hard day. Just....hectic. Lots of stuff going on, and a hard time keeping track of it all.
The evening was tough though. For quite some time, the Youngest of Three has known her sleeping place to be a spot wedged between Mom and Dad. No before any of you get any shocked and revulsed attitudes about it, let me tell you this. It is all a matter of convienence. Since her earliest days as a newborn, she has breastfed. She wouldn't take to a bottle, no matter what we did. We tried various bottles and various types of formula with no luck.
She also happens to be a rather insecure baby, expecially early on. She cried endlessly the moment she was put down, demanding to be held all the time. They say you can't hold a baby too much, but when it starts to affect dear mother's sanity, well......
So it was simply easier to feed her from our own bed, rather than carry her abck and forth 3-4 times a night from crib to bed.
Now, she has gotten used to the idea of sleeping in our bed, and as you might imagine, that can cramp Mom and Dad's style. And don't go thinking that it's all about THAT....sometimes it's justs nice to sleep without waking up to a baby size 4 applied to your ribcage, or the back of your head. (She sleeps sideways between us, to further drive her wedge between mom and dad. She's a miniature chaperone!)
So as a special gift to each other for VD*, the wife and I have decided that we would move her back to her crib. For good. We're going to re-claim our bed as ours, and noone else's. We understood that we created this situation, so we're gonna fix it.
Oh, the heart-wrenching pain.
I got her to sleep, and put her in her crib. 20 minutes later, she woke up, realized where she was, and WAILED. Screaming, crying and weeping all at the same time, she pleaded for Daddy. Over and over and over and over.
One side of me moved to console her, and the other foot stayed anchored to the ground. It hurt to hear her sobs of abandonment, begging as loud as she could to simply be held so that she could fall asleep once more, content in the knowledge thather Daddy was keeping her safe. After some time-I think it was after I died for the 3,752nd consecutive time-she finally went silent, exhausting herself, with no more energy to cry, and fell asleep.
Or so I thought.
I thought that after she had stopped, I would go in and check on her to make sure she was OK. She was. However, she was still awake. She was trying to come to terms with her surroundings, with her stuffed animals that offered no consolation, with the idea that no matter how much she called, her patriarch wasn't going to ride to her rescue. She spied me at once, forcing me to withdraw, and for the wails to start anew. Fortunately, her plantive cries only lasted a small eternity, and she drifted off to sleep. Again, I approached her bed, noted that she was sleeping, and covered her with a blanket.
I don't know what was harder, trying to sleep with her crying, or trying to sleep with the guilt afterwards.
*VD is Valentines Day.
With the wife at work, the kids were under my care. Not a problem. got them fed, and into bed, and cooked up the remaining 4lbs of meat that was previously mentioned. (Wife made promising talks of chili....3 day chili.....3 days to make,and 3 days to recover) With that done, I retired for the night to participate in the video gaming community. It's a very small comunity (population 1), but it allows me to rewind and relax from an occasional stressful day.
Not that yesterday was all that much of a hard day. Just....hectic. Lots of stuff going on, and a hard time keeping track of it all.
The evening was tough though. For quite some time, the Youngest of Three has known her sleeping place to be a spot wedged between Mom and Dad. No before any of you get any shocked and revulsed attitudes about it, let me tell you this. It is all a matter of convienence. Since her earliest days as a newborn, she has breastfed. She wouldn't take to a bottle, no matter what we did. We tried various bottles and various types of formula with no luck.
She also happens to be a rather insecure baby, expecially early on. She cried endlessly the moment she was put down, demanding to be held all the time. They say you can't hold a baby too much, but when it starts to affect dear mother's sanity, well......
So it was simply easier to feed her from our own bed, rather than carry her abck and forth 3-4 times a night from crib to bed.
Now, she has gotten used to the idea of sleeping in our bed, and as you might imagine, that can cramp Mom and Dad's style. And don't go thinking that it's all about THAT....sometimes it's justs nice to sleep without waking up to a baby size 4 applied to your ribcage, or the back of your head. (She sleeps sideways between us, to further drive her wedge between mom and dad. She's a miniature chaperone!)
So as a special gift to each other for VD*, the wife and I have decided that we would move her back to her crib. For good. We're going to re-claim our bed as ours, and noone else's. We understood that we created this situation, so we're gonna fix it.
Oh, the heart-wrenching pain.
I got her to sleep, and put her in her crib. 20 minutes later, she woke up, realized where she was, and WAILED. Screaming, crying and weeping all at the same time, she pleaded for Daddy. Over and over and over and over.
One side of me moved to console her, and the other foot stayed anchored to the ground. It hurt to hear her sobs of abandonment, begging as loud as she could to simply be held so that she could fall asleep once more, content in the knowledge thather Daddy was keeping her safe. After some time-I think it was after I died for the 3,752nd consecutive time-she finally went silent, exhausting herself, with no more energy to cry, and fell asleep.
Or so I thought.
I thought that after she had stopped, I would go in and check on her to make sure she was OK. She was. However, she was still awake. She was trying to come to terms with her surroundings, with her stuffed animals that offered no consolation, with the idea that no matter how much she called, her patriarch wasn't going to ride to her rescue. She spied me at once, forcing me to withdraw, and for the wails to start anew. Fortunately, her plantive cries only lasted a small eternity, and she drifted off to sleep. Again, I approached her bed, noted that she was sleeping, and covered her with a blanket.
I don't know what was harder, trying to sleep with her crying, or trying to sleep with the guilt afterwards.
*VD is Valentines Day.
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