3 months +
I keep thinking of great ways to turn a phrase about Mia, and then inevitably being called back to duty and forgetting them before I can blog. Which is no great loss for the Internet, but makes it a bit harder to consistently produce content here. My other excuse is that the majority of my posts are written when Mia is asleep; because the packandplay/crib thing is next to my computer, I wake her up with my 70 words-per-minute clicking (ok, more like 60 now that I've switched to Dvorak). I just typed this paragraph on the iPad, and it was non-literally painful. Though apple's auto-correct isn't bad.
Luckily, Mia also loves playing in her playgym, so now that she's awake I can type this while she entertains herself. I found out that she was ready for one when we had a playdate at a friend's house, and she wouldn't stop playing with this one. I thought it was the cutest thing, but when I mentioned I wanted to get one, another friend ended up loaning us this one (not exactly, it's a few years older). My biggest lesson from baby-raising: beg and borrow, but don't buy everything you think you need. M barely uses the super-expensive swing that we got, but loves hanging out in the changing table. And she's gonna outgrow both in another month or so. You just can't know how they'll use things.
I thank the stars that she's still very independent for a baby - she looks around for us, but she'll hang out by herself for hours, which other moms tell me (with envy) is unusual. I think that's starting to change, however, with her growing awareness and sight. Now she can see me if I'm typing when she's in her crib, and will make cute or demanding noises. Since I'm not sure I'll be getting as many chances to blog, I've set up two Twitter pages: one for me, and one for her. Actually, that makes it sound like there was foresight or wisdom involved in this decision, when actually at 5am this morning my brain decided that people would stop reading my blog unless I posted more, therefore I should post more, but since posting these long, verbose pages takes writing time that is hard to find, I needed to set us up accounts on Twitter. Once I decided to do that, it let me fall asleep. I'm unused to following my brain's middle-of-the-night cravings, but I figured I'd run with it. I probably should have just eaten some leftovers instead.
Thursday's 4am brain-demand was that I wake up and offer to make C a sandwich before he left for work. It's like it decided I needed to punch feminism in the face, or something.
Month 3 has started off much better than 1 or 2. She sleeps from about 7pm to 9am, waking up twice during that and wanting to feed. Once around 2-4am, and once from 5-8am. I usually take the first, and C the second, so not only does everything feel more "fair" than it used to, we're both getting a decent amount of sleep for new parents. Although it takes us both a long time to fall asleep again once we're up - that's the really hard part. I would assume that since I'm spending 12+ hours Trying to Sleep that I'm well-rested, but it really varies day by day. The bad days I'm running on 3 hours of sleep, the good ones usually 7. So I try not to count, for fear I realize how tired I really am. Mia actually slept 9 hours straight the other day, but I couldn't take advantage of it because at 2am I woke up and waited for her to wake up, only to doze off again and wake up a half-hour later. This repeated until 5am, at which point she woke up and was starving, and I was a sleep-zombie the whole next day. It's a weird combo of having a routine and constant change as well...it means every day is different, and also that I have no idea what's coming next.
M's head control has really improved to the point where it only flops around if she's tired, so C has taken to handing her to people willy-nilly in order to make them more comfortable with babies. We both agree that it's unfortunate that in the US, by the time you're having a baby, it's not likely that you've actually had much experience with them, so the learning curve is steep. Ok, she's napping again, I have to take a break...