No, my hesitation stemmed from what I'm supposed to share. Like, if I take a poop and Baby P does something cute while hanging in the bathroom with me, do I have to specify where we were when she learned to nod or should I leave out the mental image? Is that too much information? Probably.
But the time has come, I think, and Josh isn't here to stop me. (Full disclosure: Josh doesn't read my blog. He has no idea what kind of shenanigans I get up to here. If he did we wouldn't have the blissfully ignorant communication that we currently enjoy.)
[Insert cliche about getting into the nitty gritty here.]
3:30 a.m. I am awoken by a strategically placed tiny elbow in my nostril. I peek down at Baby P and am chagrined to see she is happily NOT sleeping. She's been doing this random waking a few nights a week for 4 months now. She's not upset or gassy, just bright-eyed and cloth diaper-tailed at an hour that the most over-achieving rooster would be pissed to be woken at. I attempt to roll us over and rearrange the milk supply in the hopes that she'll drift off again but no dice. Instead I get playfully smacked in the nose.
I drag my butt into the living room and attempt to shimmy and jiggle Peyton back to sleep.
At some point Josh tumbles out of bed and goes off to PT.
5:30 a.m. Peyton finally stops staring at me and slowly closes her eyes and falls to sleep. I wait a few minutes and then s.l.o.w.l.y. put her in her crib and tiptoe back to bed.
I get comfortable and am finally just drifting into foggy happy dreamland when...
6:30 a.m. A strangled cry startles me to attention and I huddle under the covers praying it's a false alarm. (It never is.) I bring Peyton to bed and attempt to sleep while awake. I can usually get 30 minutes of drowsy, unproductive non-sleep while Baby P helps herself to breakfast. But my eyes are closed the whole time so I count it.
7:15 a.m. Okay, okay, I'm up! Quit biting my nipple and smacking me in the belly. (She finds the Thwacking sound hilarious, me, not so much.)
We make the bed, a.k.a I make one side while Peyton unmakes the other. Then I go to the bathroom while Peyton crawls around the nursery looking for something to destroy. You know, the healthy way to start the day. I change her and shake the 3 inserts out of her overnight diaper, noting that I REALLY need to figure out a new nighttime diaper system because the inserts are not supposed to drip. Ew.
After we are freshly diapered and P is dressed, I put on my fancy new yoga capris and a tank top so after breakfast we can go for a walk. For the past couple weeks I've been trying to take the dog out daily. Since she uses a doggy litter box for all her bathroom needs I've gotten extremely slack in exercising her. As a result she has way too much energy and she keeps running out of the house and down the street where I have to chase after her in my sweatpants and no bra for 30 minutes. This is no fun for anyone except the dog, so we're working on it.
I eat a bowl of cereal and check Facebook and e-mails while Baby P alternates between smacking my keyboard and crying to be picked up. It's looking like a Velcro Baby kind of day. Some days Peyton just needs more physical contact than others. I read somewhere that babies growth is increased through touch, so on days like this I try to remind myself that she's up my butt because she's working on her baby genius. Or something.
Hermione has seen that I'm dressed for a walk and is whining and yipping and basically can't handle life right now because she's so excited.
8:00 a.m. We commence our walk. It's a bit cooler outside today so I dressed Peyton in my favorite warm outfit. She usually does pretty good in the stroller as long as I mimic her every sound and keep it short and sweet. Occasionally she will decide she requires being carried and will start screaming like I'm stabbing her and I end up carrying her while the dog rides in the stroller. Hermione doesn't mind this arrangement one bit. Today, thankfully, Peyton is happy to babble and play with the ten million toys I've clipped to her straps. The Songza app on my phone blares "Happy Girl" through the one earbud I have in and I feel pretty good by the time we circle the block back to the house.
8:20 a.m. I put the exersaucer in front of the mirror in the hallway and pile it a foot high with every toy I can. I try to find an outfit that is clean and fits relatively well and then I stick Baby P in her exersaucer and jump in the shower. I sing, chat and make ridiculous noises for the 4 minutes it takes for Peyton to get bored and throw all her toys on the ground. She starts yelling which means it's time to get out. I let her wander around the bathroom while I throw on clothes and put myself together enough to look presentable if the mail lady needs me to sign for a package.
8:50 a.m. We migrate to the kitchen and I zip the wet bag up and toss the dirty diapers down the basement stairs, following it with Miss Velcro on my hip. I put them in for a rinse and we head back up to do the dishes and bang on pots and pans with a big spoon. (You can decide for yourself who did what.) I run down and throw detergent in for a hot wash when all the dishes are done (Peyton is a very efficient dishwasher so it all happens within 10 minutes).
I put on Baby Signing Time and put Peyton in her high chair with some banana and blueberries and spend some time throwing dinner into the crockpot. Then I pick up the living room and pick up whatever dropped fruit Hermione hasn't snatched up so it doesn't stain the carpet. (It still does.)
9:45 a.m. Commence rocking, jiggling, patting, nursing and singing to get Peyton down for her first nap. She takes a little while to get down, there's screaming and thrashing and I find out the hard way that she needs her nails trimmed.
10:30 a.m. She's out and I spend the next hour and a half browsing the internet, writing up our morning and checking things off my To Do list on Springpad.
12 p.m. P is awake and she nurses for a little while before pushing away from me in an effort to get down. I barely keep her from tumbling forcefully out of my lap and put her down. She immediately claws at my legs and cries to be picked up again. We play this up-down-up-down game for a little while and then I remember the diapers and we run down to start the last rinse.
We spend some time playing with a beautiful new stacker toy that I forgot I ordered until it came in the mail yesterday. (Zulily is awesome but it takes for-freaking-ever for your purchase to arrive, I'm not some crazed shopaholic who buys so much stuff I can't remember it all.) (Except sometimes I am.)
I run down with Peyton to throw the diapers in the dryer and we bring the bag of forgotten laundry that I discover sitting in the dryer. I fold it and Peyton unfolds it and Hermione rolls around in it. All in all, we're a good team.
I dust with my homemade spray (1 cup water, 1 cup white vinegar, 20 drops lavender essential oil) which is a good thing because Peyton follows me around taste-testing all the furniture for cleanliness.
I steam some veggies for Peyton's lunch and make myself a sandwich. Peyton decides halfway through her lunch that she is not in the mood to sit in her highchair and starts fighting against the straps and screaming. A few minutes later I am gifted with a diaper full of poo. At least now I know it wasn't my cooking that caused the meltdown. I change her diaper only to see her get the look on her face again and I rush to the bathroom to plunk her down on her baby potty and save myself yet another dirty diaper. She cries when she's done because she can't figure out how to detach the poop and it's a weird sensation. (Sorry, was that too far?)
3:00 p.m. Where the heck did the morning go? I
4:30 p.m. I pick up the living room again, completely baffled about how it got this messy already. I only get it halfway picked up before the vacuum cleaner looks at Peyton the wrong way and she starts screaming. (Okay, I have no idea what caused the screaming, I'm just guessing.)
5 p.m. Josh gets home and Peyton follows him around babbling while I go use the bathroom alone (well, the dog followed me but I take what I can get).
We go out for a short family walk and chat about our day.
6 p.m. We eat dinner and watch the last episodes of Weeds. I used to roll my eyes at that show but it kind of grew on me. I'm usually late on things like this.
7 p.m. I give Peyton a bath and sit on the floor typing up this afternoon with my laptop propped on the toilet. Multitasking mommy blogger over here.
I give Peyton the metal lid of the coconut oil jar to play with while I put on her nighttime diaper and pajamas. This lowers the crying to 50% volume so hopefully the neighbors won't call CPS on me. I do worry about that sometimes. If I was my neighbor, I would be very concerned about all the crying that goes on over here.
I read her Amelia Bedelia and rub Night Night Balm on her feet, temples and upper lip. It's my latest expense in my quest for better sleep. It seems to be working on me, not so sure about the baby.
I try to rock her to sleep but she lets me know through violence that she is not ready for bed. And I forgot to trim her nails. I let her crawl around while I check Facebook, then we play with the stacker toy for a few minutes. I can tell by how frantic her movements are getting that she's tired (Or maybe it's me projecting my own tiredness onto her?) (Nah.)
8:30 p.m. After 30 minutes of crying from being tired but in denial that she's tired, Baby P is asleep and my chest looks like I got in a fight with a miniature werewolf. Josh goes to bed and I sit and read a little. My first attempt to lay Peyton down in her crib is a big fat failure. Her eyes spring open and she starts kicking her legs like she's generating baby power via exercise. I sit back down to rock her back to sleep and try to lay her down again 30 minutes later.
10 p.m. Success! I wander around picking up trash and dishes and locking all the doors and windows. I run down to grab the diapers so I don't have to do it in the morning. I crawl into bed (after pushing my diagonal-sleeping husband over to his own side of the bed.) and read just a little more until I'm nice and sleepy.
10:58 p.m. Strangled cry, shuffle to the crib and back into the bed. Shove the dog back under the covers from where she popped out to investigate as if this doesn't happen every night. Me and P fall back to sleep together and that's all I remember until 6:30 a.m. when we started all over again this morning.
If you're still reading (Hi, mom.) then you get a virtual cookie and a hug. This was what I consider a pretty good day. Reading back over it, I suppose someone without a baby might shudder or roll their eyes because I obviously have no idea what I'm doing. But to those who know (you know, the ones who don't have the time to read this.) I wave my burp cloth to you in a show of friendship and understanding.
