Today WILL be a good day

So I feel like blogging. I think its because I got 7 consecutive hours of sleep last night. Ah, sweet sweet sleep. Its been a long week. A long stressful week. I even got a cold sore. I haven't had one of those since I was in pharmacy school. I got them at the start of every semester like clockwork. Too, too stressful for me. The most recent one is a result of waking up every couple of hours to a baby crying/yelling "Da!" because she can't breathe out her nose. Followed by torturous nose irrigation and nose suckage. I detailed it all previously.

But, I slept from 11pm to 6am. At 6am, Alice wanted to nurse, and kept pulling off to breathe (a sure sign that nose irrigation is in the near future). After some torture, and her being very slippery, but not as powerfully strong as usual, we sucked the nose and left her breathing almost properly. Within 10 minutes of completion she was asleep. And I realized I was awake.

Man, my punctuation in this is horrible, and I don't even care!

So my goal is for the kid to get well enough we can go to mommy and me music time at the church on Friday. She has 24 hours to start eating food again.

My boobs will thank her.

And, maybe she will even eat more baby crack. Her appetite has consisted of "Ooo baby crack! I want some" to within 2 minutes, lets feed Daddy the baby crack. Daddy of course lets her and say "Yumm" Even though I think all those baby puffs are pretty yucky and strangely sweet. I mean, it says sweet potato, but it tastes like sweet potatoes covered in brown sugar. She still sees the container and is all excited about it, but doesn't care to eat.

Here I was all excited that she was nursing less and less often. Then, KABAM!, she got sick and if she could breathe, nursing was all she wanted. She probably has lost weight. Or at least hasn't gained any this week. Even though she ate cookies. (go figure, the only things she wants when she is sick is baby snacks and cookies)

My cooking plan has been modified to deal with all the sickies in our house. Partly because its hard to remember to get thigns ready for the next day. Take last night. I put a chicken and veggies in the crockpot around 12. The chicken had been out of the freezer and thawing in the fridge for 24 hours and was still rock hard. And perhaps people will say, I shouldn't have tried cooking it when it was totally frozen, but I don't feel like arguing about temperatures and cooking food properly in crockpots.

Well come dinner time (6 hours on high later) it looked pretty not done. So I cooked up a vegetarian risotto. Only, we didn't have any corn in the freezer. Shocking I know. I mean, we still have 6 bags of frozen broccoli, but no frozen corn. So I used peas. I also didn't have any garlic cloves, so I used garlic salt in the water (no broth). Lets just say, it was ok, but daniel was pretty sick of it after he are most of his bowl. Just a hint, if you are supposed to use parmesan and mozerella cheeses together, don't switch out the mozerella for sharp cheddar. Its really not the same.

Ok, my brain has been flushed of all thoughts. except i think there is a woodpecker outside attacking the neighbors trees. I would look, but its the east side of the house, and who knows opening curtains might be enough to wake babies. We want her to sleep another 4 hours. Then wake up eat baby cereal, and go back to sleep for another couple of hours. That would be my idea of a good day.

Follow the trail of crumbs...

So Alice decided to play Hansel and Gretel with me. I gave her a roll to eat and she took it with her on an excursion of the downstairs. Ok, it was from the computer room to the living room, but whatever.

So I hear her cry. I ignored it cause sometimes she just wants to know someone will find her and I figured if I called she would come.

Unless she was on the stairs.

She didn't come, and cried again. Great she is on the stairs. I knew I should have put up the baby gate. She has this thing where she wants to stand, and will climb up the legs of chairs, tables, people etc to get standing. Then she is stuck.

Its a similar thing for stairs. She climbs up a step and gets stuck.

Well I go to get her, and I notice that she left some crumbs of her roll on the carpet, I assumed I would run into the remainder of the roll, but no just lots and lots of crumbs.

And there she was on the stairs. Almost past the turn! Dang it. The turn had stumped her for a while now. Alas, she will be much more dangerous soon.

I grabbed her, out her on the floor, put up the baby gate. Then I saw it.

Thats strange. Was that here this morning? Is it a poopy diaper from last night? That would be Daniel's fault, and why he left that there is beyond me.

Then I saw Alice starting to stand using her swing's legs. I saw her pink rear sticking out. I was mooned.

Crap.

I picked her up and realized her dress was wet.

Double crap.

I went and grabbed the diaper. It was also wet.

Dang it.

I grabbed her and the diaper and went to get a dry one and dry clothes. I got the diaper on her and started taking off the wet dress.

She IMMEDIATELY started taking off the diaper.

UGH!

We like BumGenius diapers. We really do. But she has learned that if you grab at the velcro you can be free.

So I put her in a one piece outfit that snaps in the crotch. Try to get the diaper off now!

So yeah, I get to vacuum up a trail of crumbs, and clean up a wet spot on the stairs. Oh yeah, and I get to start shopping for a couple of diapers that are stuffables like BumGenius but use padlocks, chains and electricity to keep them on and little hands off.

How to get your sleep!

Alice is sleeping.

And, she has been asleep in the bed since 9. She was probably asleep around 8:30 and then she did not wake upwhen I put her down. Yes, you read that right.

I sort of feel like a 4th grader at her first sleepover...its probably a high induced by the lack of irresponsibility, or freedom from opression, or something.

So how did I do it? I read up on high needs infants, and what to do with them to get them to sleep. Maybe Alice isn't as bad as some babies, but trust me, this girl is needy. Then I decided to implement some of the suggestions.

1. I let her sleep. As much as she wanted, everytime she acted like she wanted to. There was a point where my legs were falling asleep because I had been holding her sleeping for a while. I got a foot rest. Problem solved. (Yes we do attachment parenting)

2. We did all sorts of 'wind down' type things. We found the sling, and carried her around in it for 30-40 minutes. She was physically opressed, but still allowed to stare at things, and it worked.

3. We fed her. I tried to get her on a schedule of eating in the day...12 lunch, 4:30 dinner, 7:30 cereal snack. Yes, I drugged her with carbohydrates.

4. We watched some old school Tom Hanks movie. Alice was asleep in bed the whole time. Happy happy times!