Amelia has some kind of viral crud that involves a nose that runs like a wide-open faucet, poor sleep, clingy behavior and intermittent fever. We both got no more than 2 contiguous hours of sleep last night and were up at 2:30 with fever. I took her to the doctor in the morning and her fever had broken but she was still very lethargic. The doctor didn’t like the look of that, so we did a blood test and it indicated a viral something. I’m just glad it doesn’t require antibiotics – she’s had way more ear infections in her life than I’m OK with, especially for an exclusively breast-fed baby!

But caring for a viral illness involves no magic bullet of antibiotics – just the old reliables of sleep, lots of nursing and quiet play. So we’re not going to the Whitehead Family Reunion this weekend, which is where Tom is right now, barbecuing brisket for about 50-80 people. Hopefully he’ll bring some home – he was really pulling out the stops for this year’s brisket! He left on Thursday night and will return on Sunday.

As much as I love spending time with Amelia, it is a little daunting to care for a sick baby all by yourself for 2 days straight. You can’t visit anyone because Amelia will get them sick, and it’s WAY too hot to be outside unless you just have to. I’ve been able to get a few things done around the house, just to preserve my own sanity, but I confess I’m a little tired and bored (our games are fun, but repetitive) and I’ll be happy when Tom gets home.

We have the funnest baby in the whole world. She just gets more fun and charming the older she gets. I love how she laughs when you tickle her ribs or under her chin! In Tom’s family (I think it’s a Texas thing, but I’m not sure) they call it “stealing her sugar” when they kiss or nibble the baby in a way that makes her giggle.

Amelia’s teachers all agree that she grew longer in the week that school was closed. She has been blowing them away with her new, wide smile and her ever more confident manner. This week she’s started sleeping on her belly at school, which was a big deal and I think gets her to sleep faster there. (This does not work at home, but lots of things that work at school don’t work at home.) I feel really lucky that the women she spends so much time with at the Montessori school are so genuinely loving and interested in our darling girl. It makes me feel much more confident about our decision to have her there, despite the almost crippling cost of it.

Amelia pulls herself up!

On Thursday, Amelia’s babysitter called in sick with a migraine and I ended up working from home so I could watch her. Working from home with her at this age is only medium difficult, compared to when Amelia was colicky (shudder), but I still end up feeling that I’m cheating her AND work by trying to attend to both simultaneously.

Perhaps it due to my slight inattention that Amelia attained another developmental milestone that day, a day before her 8-month birthday: she pulled herself up into a standing position! Granted, she hasn’t done it since, but she was SO pleased with herself that I am sure she’ll be back at it soon. See the play-by-play here:

Pardon the fuzzy photos – not trying to get all 1974 Sears baby portrait on you – all I had handy was the old iPhone.

After she finally got tired of standing in the crib, I sat her down (getting up is easy compared to getting down) and I swear on my soul that she just sat and giggled at me for two minutes straight.

One more piece of evidence that the child will walk before she crawls. Our little girl is growing up so fast!

Amelia started crying when I left to go to work today. When the babysitter arrived, Amelia asked me to pick her up by raising her arms like she does. I did, and gave her a kiss and a cuddle, and Amelia smiled at the babysitter. As soon as I put her down, she started getting upset. Then the babysitter picked her up and Amelia was wiggling and leaning away from her, looking at me with pleading eyes. She started really bawling when I opened the door to leave, and I could hear her outside the house as I got into my car.

I know we’re right on schedule for separation anxiety and this is perfectly normal, but I still feel like the Worst Mom Ever. Tom has volunteered to wait for the babysitter tomorrow, so we can share in the misery. He’s pretty awesome like that.

Does anyone want to pay me a couple of thousand a month to stay home and care for my baby? Oh, and I’ll need health insurance with that.

I’ve always thought of myself as a slightly heartless person. I was cynical from a ridiculously young age, though my face has always been fairly sympathetic – motherly when I hit my 30s. Despite my “cara de pureza,” as my students used to call it, I have mostly spent my life as a wry observer of life, apart and therefore somewhat unfeeling.

What has surprised me this year is the extent to which my heart has been cracked open by motherhood. Though still slightly terrified by the strength of my love for Amelia, I’m finally starting to take it a little more in stride… what’s ridiculous is how tender-hearted I’ve become! I can barely stand to hear about sick babies, and change the channel from NPR when they talk about children dying or families being torn apart. News stories that didn’t make me blink a year ago now send me into miserable imaginings of how horrible it would be to have my grown daughter stoned to death in Iran, or how I would feel if my child died when her school collapsed in an earthquake. Isn’t that hideously morbid? Why even go there, right?

I suppose that for me 2008 was a year in which I started learning the power of kindness and positivity. I took some risks, decided to try being optimistic (though I spent much of my time ranging between nervous of and terrified by that optimism) and generally set myself on the path of being open. I guess I didn’t realize how sentimental I really was, under all that sarcasm. I definitely remember thinking it was just dumb old hormones.

Does anyone have advice on how to be find the balance between laconic curmudgeon and teary-eyed sentimentalist? This getting misty at Hallmark commercials has GOT to stop!

We had a lovely weekend, partying with the DeBusks and getting the house ship-shape. The latter was de rigeur due to the fact that Amelia’s school is out this week – so we hired a babysitter to care for her during the week. It’s terrifying to realize that a relative stranger is not only going to care for your daughter for a week, but also be alone in your house, which hasn’t been properly cleaned for almost 8 months!

Of course, we put things off to the last minute and so were up until 11 pm or so, quite late for new parents. But then, of course Amelia let us sleep in – we were up only 15 minutes before Jennifer arrived! Poor thing, what could she have thought of us, Tom barely awake, though at least dressed – I was rushing around the house in my robe with a towel on my head!

Amelia actually took 2 naps with Jennifer, 2 more than we thought she would take, though she was pretty darned fussy and tired when I got home. She ate badly too, and needed to be held A LOT, which harkens back the the bad old days of C-O-L-I-C. Sleepy and whiny hours before bedtime, but hard to get to sleep – definitely feeling off her game!

It’s impressive to me how much the smallest of children thrive on routine. I must say, I miss our usual patterns as well – seeing Amelia at lunchtime as I do when she’s at school really lets me de-stress and reconnect with what’s truly important. And even when I know precisely why Amelia isn’t falling asleep easily, or sleeping well, I still find myself questioning my mothering abilities – and getting miserably tense.

Jennifer is perfectly capable, don’t get me wrong – but I’ll be really pleased when school is back in session and we can all get back into our well-worn grooves.

So next week the Wigglet’s school (daycare – calling it school makes me feel better – though for the record it is a Montessori school) is closed next week. We neglected to plan our vacation around the school’s vacation, as would be sensible, so we had to find a babysitter for her next week. Ear infections and such have whittled our shared PTO days down to the red line.

The bright spot in this situation is that today, when both Tom and I had the day off, Amelia’s school was open! So we dropped her off and had a baby-free day from 7 to 5!

I needed some Andrea time, so I took the morning to myself – had a nice breakfast at Magnolia Cafe, did some writing on the laptop, and then got my hair cut. A lot of my hair cut. Can you be a soccer mom if your kid doesn’t play soccer?

I’m kidding – I really like the cut and hope that it will be easier to style, adding precious moments to my morning, and that I will be able to get my ass in to the salon more often than once a quarter to keep it trimmed. The stylist at Wet was quite hesitant to cut it this short – evidently she had had a bad experience or two with people who were lying when they said “I want a pixie cut” – but I can go shorter if I want to… if I can get my ass back in the salon before Labor Day!

Amelia recognized me even with short hair.

Tom and I saw a matinee at the Alamo this afternoon – Away We Go, which we really enjoyed. Whatshername who was in Idiocracy was MUCH better in this, and the guy from the American version of The Office reminded me of Jason Hill a bit. In a good way.

Tomorrow, it’s Fourth of July festivities at the DeBusks! Do we stay long enough to watch the fireworks? It’s WAY past Amelia’s bed time, and then we’ll have the drive home and all that. Is it dumb to slavishly follow bedtimes? Should we just go with the flow and resign ourselves to her sleeping little and poorly as a result?

The Middleton-Whitehead clan visited the DeBusks last Saturday and had big fun, New Parents Style. It involved a lot of admiring babies, chatting about babies, changing diapers, chatting about diapers, complaining about Texas heat, lots of nursing on the parts of Andrea and Vicki and some errand-running on the parts of Tom and David.

Elijah and Amelia hit it off in the way only a 1-month-old and a 7-month-old can: they looked at each other with interest for about five minutes, sat mildly still for photos, and then got carried off to other, respectively age-appropriate amusements. Amelia played on Elijah’s play mat and Elijah slept, pooped, nursed, and pooped some more. It was pretty fun.

Oh! And they’re both wearing outfits bought for them by cool friends. Thanks, Auntie Becky, for bringing back a onesie from the RC Cola & Moon-Pie Festival in Bell Buckle, TN!

So Amelia still sleeps in our bed with us, and is still nursed to sleep. I fight a feeling of guilt about this, as I had set my expectations that she would sleep with us for 6 months or so and then transition to the crib. I didn’t really have a plan on the nursing to sleep thing, but Tom’s justifiable worry that one day I might have to sleep away from Amelia does give me pause.

The No-Cry Sleep Solution, here we come. I know other parents have successfully used the Ferber “cry it out” method, but it’s just not for us, especially after all those months of colic. Pantley gives a bunch of ideas in her book for co-sleeping, night-nursing parents like us, and they’re all good.

Except I’m weak. And I’m especially weak when I’m sleepy. We have tried starting to transition Amelia out of our bed several times already, and I’ll admit I’m the backslider. I’m like an Olympic luge backslider, if you want a degree of slidage. After a couple of night wakings, it just seems the most sensible thing to go back to the uncomfortable, but functional status quo of sleeping with and nursing Amelia all night.

This makes me particularly worried for Amelia when she upgrades to her 2.0 or 3.0 versions. Will I give in to her every whim because it’s just easier? Will I, a woman who was the terror of her students when a teacher, become an over-permissive parent out of laziness? I would hate that about me!

So at this point, I’m aiming low: I’m going to just try and night wean – ie, get Amelia to stop nursing all night long. Then we’ll see about getting her to sleep somewhere other than in our bed. Naturally, the fact that I’m trying to change something makes Amelia that much more determined to keep everything just the way it’s always been, so I’m getting pretty crappy sleep these days.
I suppose I could think of it like exercise – not much fun but bringing wonderful rewards in the future. Except I’ve never been that good at sticking to exercise for that reason.

Parenting in many ways is like florescent lighting for the soul – it highlights all my faults and makes my good features look sallow. but maybe that’s just the exhaustion talking.