Adelaide thrives on schedule. I know they say that you can't put a baby on a schedule, but we tried it anyway, and believe it or not, it worked. I'm not claiming it works for every baby, but it sure does work for ours. The problem with a schedule-thriving baby is that a series of successive busy weekends make it difficult to maintain a schedule. So we have bounced back and forth between quiet, structured weeks to crazy, wild weekends. Oh so very tiring.
Last night was our third and final wedding this year (just barely, though; my baby sis is getting married on January 5!), and I brought Adelaide home early from the reception for bedtime. She went down easily and was asleep 5 minutes after I laid her down in her crib, with minimal fussiness. But I wasn't fooled. See, when Adelaide doesn't get good naps (which basically means any time she is up for more than 1 hour consecutively), she doesn't sleep well at night. She falls asleep easily enough, but about 45 minutes to an hour later, she wakes up screaming. And she doesn't stop. Last night, the screaming was minimal because I am learning that if I turn a light on, she quiets down and stares at the light, but then she is up for a good hour before the exhaustion beats out the over tiredness. Before I figured out the whole light thing, she usually screamed or needed to be bounced or held for an hour or more before falling back asleep. We aren't of the "cry it out" philosophy, and aren't normally "rock the baby to sleep" folks either, but these episodes of over-tired screaming usually involve lots of comforting and holding until she calms down. Exhausting for all of us.
Compare the above story to our day today. Adelaide woke up at 7 am, ate every three hours, slept for two of the three in between, and was happy and cooing when I put her to bed, still awake, at 7 pm, no rocking, no screaming. Haven't heard a peep from her since. And most likely won't until tomorrow morning. Sigh. It's nice to have a peaceful babe. Now if we can just figure out how to take her out in public for more than an hour and still maintain sanity.
The funniest part is, she doesn't usually get cranky when she misses or has abbreviated naps. Yesterday at the wedding and reception, she was was alert and chill the whole time. I tried to get her to sleep, but I guess the big wide world is just too interesting. When she misses a nap or wakes up early, people think I'm crazy when I tell them Adelaide needs to sleep because she doesn't look like she is tired . If only they could see her around bedtime later than night.
And now that we have made it to the end of our busy weekends, I am gearing up for the beginning of another busy season--going back to work. I have one week of maternity leave left. I'm trying really hard to have a positive attitude about it, but the truth is, I really feel like I could stay home with Adelaide and be quite content. I know staying home would be hard, just in different ways. I talked to my cousin Sarah at Wedding #2 last weekend, and she said, "There's no right and wrong. There's just hard." Going back to work is hard. Staying home is hard. Moral of the story. You become a parent and get yourself into a situation where life is hard. :)
Good thing it's so very worth it. I mean, look at this face...
