World: Rocked

I was talking with my mom, a freelance writer and marketing guru extraordinaire (it's her birthday today, so I have to suck up a little...) a couple of days ago about a project I am helping her copy edit. I mentioned that I hoped, when I was finished entering all her notations into the file, to have time to go back through and make sure the little things were correct, like paragraphs correctly tabbed in, and page breaks at the end of chapters and two spaces at the end of every sentence.

That's when she rocked my world. Knocked it right off it's foundation.

She told me. ... I almost can't bear to say it. I'm all verklempt.

...

She told me that you aren't supposed to put two spaces after the end of a sentence any more. (You probably can't see it, but right there? At the end of that sentence? Two, count 'em, two spaces.)

I didn't believe her at first. So I did what any self-respecting person of my generation would do and I did a Yahoo! search. Sure enough, two spaces is no longer the norm when typing. But I just can't help myself.

I related this story to Mike later that night and rocked his world just as much as Mom rocked mine. Mike got a little pale and then said, "I'm just going to forget that you said that. I never heard it."

***

I continue to be swamped with work, and now I also have to keep going back to delete the extra space when I type in a new sentence on this project, so it's probably going to take me twice as long. Hopefully I can clear some of this stuff soon and be back to my regular blog writing and reading schedule. Gah! Still with the two spaces! I'm going to have to retrain my thumb!! It just hits the space bar twice all of its own accord!

I'm still here...

Just swamped with work and life and stuff.

But, I had to stick my head in to say hi and put some new bling up on my blog.

Katie gave me the "Nice Matters Award". What a sweetie!


I'm copying shamelessly from her post about the award.

"This award is for those bloggers who are nice people; good blog friends and those who inspire good feelings and inspiration. Also for those who are a positive influence on our blogging world. Once you've been awarded please pass it on to 7 others who you feel are deserving of this award."

I'm not sure I am going to be able to nominate 7 people, but I will give it my best shot. In off-the-top-of-my head order:

1. Jennifer. Jennifer just sent me two beautiful quilts for Emily and Lucy. Lucy spent at least 20 minutes laying on hers kicking and cooing. She loves it. Jennifer always leaves sweet comments on my blog, even though I don't comment (much) on hers.
   
2. Jess. Another nice commenter, who also is reassuring when I start to stress about this whole parenting-two-kids thing. Mike checked my email for me while I was in the hospital post-Lucy and told me that "daysgobee" had left me a comment. Now, whenever I see Jess' URL, I think of it as "daysgobee" instead of "days go by".
   
3. Lainey. I think I need to stop saying that specific people are nice commenters, since I have yet to receive a not-nice comment. Anyways, Lainey cracks me up. The first post of hers I read was about her son opening the bathroom door while she was still on the toilet. At the pediatrician's office. The bathroom was right off the reception area. I could totally see Emily doing the same thing to me. Lainey has had a rough couple weeks, but has managed to keep her sense of humor and I admire her for that.
   
4. Julie. I'm pretty sure I walked past Julie's house, or at least near it, when I was going to school in Philly. Julie is due to have baby #2 soon and hopefully I didn't scare her too badly with my account of my day with two kids. That was an unusual day. Really.
   
5. Jill. Jill is a friend of Katies, who has yet to join the mommy ranks, though I hear she's thinking about it. Even on the scary days, I wouldn't trade this mom gig for anything. Jill has also left me some sweet and funny comments.
   
6. Cagey. Cagey and I found each other through NaBloPoMo, when we announced our pregnancies and were in the running for the Javis Davis crib set. Her daughter Anjali is a day older than Lucy. She's funny and smart and I really enjoy reading her blogs.
   
7. Jennifer aka Binky Bitch. Jennifer cracks me up. I think about her when I am trying to get Lucy to go to sleep and I am going into Lucy's room to "plug her back in" every 2.5 minutes.
   

I'll be back later this week, hopefully, to tell you about how my mom rocked my world. And about the very, very exciting thing that happened (or will happen) tomorrow.

The cuteness might just kill me

My kids are too adorable for their own good. Emily has been particularly adorable this week, as evidenced by the photos below. (And, she's not only been really cute, she's also been very sunny and more or less even tempered (well, as even-tempered as you can be when you're 2). Imagine how bad I felt when I realized her sunny disposition returned at the same time I started feeling less overwhelmed (and therefore short-tempered, impatient and crabby) by the whole two-kids-ness of my life. Yeah, that was a really good feeling...)

Emilooney laying on the pillow friend made for her by Nana (Mike's mom) for her birthday

This chef outfit was given to Emily for her birthday by her friend,
whose birthday is the day before Emily's. Maybe she has a future career as a chef... She could take over dinner duty for me anytime.

Emily feeding her goose figurine.

Apparently Oscar was hungry, too.

She watches every. single. move I make. Last week, I kept seeing Emily tear up little pieces of paper and put them down her shirt and I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out what she was doing. Then it hit me. She was imitating me when I'm getting dressed. The pieces of paper? Nursing pads.

And then there's the bouncy seat. When the batteries start to die, it gets selective about turning on. I have found that a well-placed smack to the control panel will make it turn on. Yesterday, I turned the bouncy seat off as we were getting ready to go somewhere. And then watched in awe and dismay as Emily went over to the bouncy seat, saw that it wasn't on, heaved a huge sigh (more of an "Ugh!", which is what I do when I am frustrated or angry about something that isn't cooperating - it's better than swearing or saying "crap") and then whacked the bouncy seat.

Lucy, hold my calls, please.

You can't see it very well in this picture, but her shirt says "50% Mommy, 50% Daddy 100% sweet". And the socks she's wearing actually fit her, which is more than I can say for when Emily was wearing them. They never fit well on Emily's ginormous feet.

Video n' stuff

I took a little video of Lucy and Emily playing on the floor together a couple of days ago.



Lucy has been putting all that nursing to good use. She's gained over 3 pounds since arriving, and has grown at least an inch. When I had her at the pediatrician's on August 9, she was 10 pounds 6 ounces. We figured that she has been gaining a pound a week. I bought the outfit she's wearing in the video right after we found out that she was a Lucy, not a Toby (one of the boy names in consideration) and is finally starting to fill it out. The last time I tried to put it on her, the pants fell off. Girly really doesn't have much junk in her trunk.

She spent a lot of yesterday asleep and then made up for it by staying awake for the majority of the afternoon today, including a couple of car rides. We are definitely starting to get glimpses of Lucy's personality. That's so much fun!

We took Emily to a carriage driving contest near here today so she could see the horses. Emily is, for reasons unknown to us, obsessed with horses. She LOVES them. There are a couple of horses that live across the street from us and she gets all excited every time we go past them. And then there's the carousel horses at the mall, which she calls out for as we drive past the mall on the expressway.

The carriage driving contest charged admission, and we decided not to do that. Instead, we wandered around the stables and showed Emily about 80 different horses. She got to pet several mini ponies, which kind of freaked her out. The mini ponies were only about waist high on me (I'm 5'3"), so they were just about the same height as Emily (who measured 35 inches at her 2 year check up last week). There were also HUGE horses (and sizes in between teeny and HUGE), but we stayed away from any of those that weren't safely locked up in their stalls. She petted the noses of a couple of bigger horses, but was generally pretty afraid of them.

If the horse infatuation continues much longer, I'll have to look into some kind of pony ride or something for her.

Pick Your Poison

Would you rather have an infant who:

a) gets up every 2 hours to eat, eats for 10 or 15 minutes and falls right back to sleep [total out-of-bed time approximately 20 minutes with diaper change]

OR

b) gets up every 4 to 6 hours to eat, eats for 15 or 20 minutes and then takes another 20 minutes to go back to sleep [total out-of-bed time approximately an hour with diaper change]


Personally, I'd rather have a baby who gets up every 4 to 6 hours to eat, and then goes right back to sleep, but that apparently isn't an option.

Leave your choice and tales of nighttime breastfeeding woe (bonus points if you have an active toddler who wakes at the crack of ... well, 7:15) in the comments.

Pictures!

Before Lucy was born, Emily and I went to Target to have pictures taken. I had intended to post scans of those pictures, but they were due to come back the day Lucy was born and then when I came home from the hospital, I was maybe a little busy.

So here they are.
I just love how this picture came out. It's a good shot of me, and Emily was actually cooperating! You can't really tell there just how pregnant I am, but these were taken on June 28, so I was pretty far along.

Target offers all kinds of these multi-image pictures, and I really like them. They are expensive, so we don't do them all the time, but they come out so cute!

I have a thousand things to blog about, but it is going to have to wait. Lucy spit up almost all of her breakfast a few minutes ago, so I have to go give her her second bath in 12 hours. She's going to love that!! We girls are off to Cleveland this afternoon with my mom to see my step-dad's brothers and their wives. It will be the first time they are meeting Lucy and for one brother, the first time they have seen Emily in a loooooong time. We'll be back tomorrow!

Ta-ta!

It could be the purpose of my life is only to serve as a warning to others*

*quote borrowed and adapted from Demotivators.


Wow. It seems that my day in the life might have scared some of you guys. I promise it normally isn't that bad.

Yesterday was much, much, much better than Tuesday.

Tuesday was unusual in a number of ways. For starters, Lucy doesn't normally fight me that hard about going to sleep and therefore isn't awake and crying for the better part of 3 and a half hours. I was tired and so it didn't even register that what I was doing wasn't working and maybe, just maybe, I should try something else. Also, Emily doesn't normally run such high fevers and throw spectacular tantrums when her desires are thwarted. Currently, she is jumping around the living room and when she falls down, rolling across the floor, collecting as much dog hair as possible on her clothes. (I really, really need to vacuum. And Domino really, really needs to stop blowing his coat.)

Yesterday, I was able to take a nap and when I got up, both girls were still asleep, so I puttered around the house, putting things away. I took the curtains in our bedroom down and washed them (they were gross! and hadn't been cleaned in the 2 and a half years we've lived here), took the boxes of maternity clothes I've had piled in our room downstairs, and put drawer liners in my dresser drawers (which also meant taking everything out of my underwear drawer). I also took the living room drapes down and threw them in the dryer with a wet rag to get the dust out of them. They were even worse than the bedroom curtains were.

Gotta run, I'm meeting my mom at 10 and I need to start getting the kids ready to go.

A day in the life, August 2007

Julie suggested doing another round of Day in the Life posts and I thought it sounded like a great idea. She was glad I was doing it because she said that she hoped my day would give her an idea of what her life will be like when Polly arrives.

I really, really hope that her day is nothing like mine has started out to be. I wouldn't wish the night I had on anyone. I'm going to start my day at 8 pm last night because it all kind of ties in with today's events.

8 pm: on the phone with Katie, feed Lucy with an eye towards putting her to bed.
8:30 pm: Lucy is asleep in her bouncy seat, bring her into her room. Say good night to Katie. Write a quick blog post.
8:45 pm: grab Lucy's laundry and put it in washer.
9 pm: head into bed room to start getting ready for bed. Decide I am too sticky and hot to sleep, hop in the shower. Lucy starts crying while I am in the shower. Finish showering, dry off and pop pacifier back in Lucy's mouth.
9:10 pm: sit down to nurse Lucy again, since she's rooting.
9:15 pm: Mike comes home from church meeting, greet him in kitchen with Lucy still nursing.
9:30 pm: Lucy asleep again in crib, finish getting ready for bed.
10 pm - 10:40 pm: Lucy not asleep, nurse some more, finally get her to go to sleep in her bouncy seat.
12:35 am: Lucy awake again, change her diaper, nurse, put her back to bed in her crib, potty break.
1:03 am: back to bed.
2:22 am: something wakes me up. I am halfway down the hall, on my way to Lucy's room when I realize it's Emily who needs me. Detour into Emily's room. She's throwing up. Joy. Remove Emily from her bed, clean her up with diaper wipe, strip bed, put on new sheets, check Doggie and Oscar for puke, give Emily some Motrin for obvious fever, put her back to bed. Mike (who came in to help me when he smelled the puke - ick) and I head back to bed.
2:40 something: Lucy cries. Get up, trip over dog. Note to self: next dog we get is NOT going to be black. Are there fluorescent dogs? Or glow in the dark dogs? When I get in to her room, she's sleeping peacefully. Well, I'm here and I have a full booby, get her up to feed her. She has a snack, barely awake. Put her back down and head into living room to pump. There's no way I was going to be able to sleep like that.
2:54 am: finish pumping, check on girls on my way back to bed. Lucy is coming unswaddled. Reswaddle.
3:02 am: back in bed.
4:05 am: Lucy cries again, change diaper, nurse, head back to bed.
5 am: Mike's alarm goes off. He decides not to go to his 7 am meeting. It's been a terrible night for both of us.
6:30 am: Emily starts crying for me again. Get up, give her Tylenol, tell her it is still night-night time, has to go back to sleep. She does. Woo-hoo!
7 am: Lucy has graduated from grunting and squeaking to crying about her hunger (she does this every time. she is the noisiest sleeper. ever.). Get up, change diaper, feed her. Put her in bouncy seat because she's awake now. Bring her into bathroom with me, take shower.
7:20 am: out of shower. get dressed, do hair, etc.
7:40 am: head into kitchen to get breakfast. Cut brownies from last night. Put most of the brownies in a bag, save 2 for breakfast of champions.
7:42 am: Emily starts crying again. Decide to eat breakfast before getting her, since she'd want to share my brownies. Mike calls into meeting from home.
7:51 am: Mike off conference call, Mom calls.
7:58 am: check on Emily, sleeping again, this time with sheet over her head. get camera and take pictures.
7:59 am: Mike doesn't approve of quality of pictures, give him camera, go back into kitchen to clean up.
8:03 am: more crying from Emily.
8:05 am: upload pictures to add to post.
8:09 am: check on Emily again, back to sleep, bring Lucy in to the kitchen to hang out with Mike while he makes his lunch.
8:15 am: take Lucy into her room to get dressed, Mike goes outside to water plants.
8:19 am: come back out from getting Lucy dressed, have new mail message. From Katie!
8:24 am: log into Blogger, Mike finishes watering the plants
8:28 am: wrap Lucy in a blanket for a nap, sit and snuggle with my girl
8:31 am: Mike leaves for work. (I don't even want to think about when he'll be getting home, considering he has a 30 - 40 minute drive and has to get gas on his way.... it's going to be 6 or 6:30 easy. Ick.)
8:34 am: put Lucy down in her crib. go downstairs to move laundry along. start entering day so far into Blogger.
8:41 am: Lucy starts crying again. Bring her out to the living room with me. keep working on entering day so far.
9:03 am: Emily is awake.
9:11 am: Emily is dressed, medicated and FEVER FREE!! Get breakfast for Emily, pray that the milk won't be returned violently like yesterday.
9:13 am: Lucy is crying, get her out of bouncy seat and feed her. Couch still smells like sour milk. must buy Febreze today.
9:24 am: Lucy is done eating, burp her, clean up spit up, put her back in bouncy seat for nap, hopefully.
9:35 am: Emily sees my pen and paper that I have been using for notes and throws a monster tantrum because she wants to color. Mean mommy says no. Take Lucy into her room to try to nap there.
9:43 am: more tantrum. She stands up from rolling on the floor and is covered in dog hair. Note to self: need to vacuum this week. And with 2 tantrums in less than 10 minutes, this is looking like it is going to be a fantastic day.
9:59 am: Lucy still crying. Go into her room, give her pacifier again, she looks like she might go to sleep (PLEASE!).
10:02 am: still with the crying. go back to get her. sit in chair and calm Lucy down. she is so tired, but can't seem to go to sleep. damn reflux.
10:09 am: put Lucy in her swing, pray that she'll go to sleep.
10:12 am: mom calls to find out when I am coming up to their place (it's supposed to be in the upper 80s today). decide to head out.
10:25 am: kids are ready to go, put on shoes, take girls out to the car.
10:28 am: go back into house to get coupons in case I decide to go to the store while I'm at my mom's.
10:50 am: arrive at mom's. sit down to watch Sesame Street with Emily. Mom and Dad have Lucy upstairs in her new bouncy seat. Lucy slept while we were in the car, but as soon as we stopped moving she woke up. argh.
11:19 am: Dad set my computer up so that I can mooch internet access from their house on my pc while slumped in a chair, go to read blogs.
11:40 am: Mom comes downstairs and suggests I go get myself some lunch while she feeds Emily. Head out to McDonalds and the bank. Realize as I am sitting in the drive-thru that I forgot to get cash before getting in line. Doh.
12:15 pm: back at mom's after sitting for 3 lifetimes in the drive-thru. eat lunch and share my fries with Emily.
12:32 pm: explain to Emily, who wants to go upstairs, that if she goes upstairs she will be taking a nap, if she stays down here, she can color. she chooses coloring.
12:36 pm: huh. it would seem that I have lost my innernet connection. bummer. go back through this post to add witty asides instead of surfing.
12:44 pm: done adding semi-witty asides, child is quite smelly. take her upstairs for diaper change and n-a-p. Feed Lucy and then take nap of my own. also inform Dad of loss of internet.
2:36 pm: wake up from nap. decide that it is time to get up, though it is so tempting to go back to sleep. an hour and a half is plenty. Also, can hear Emily down the hall, crying. Go into office (next to Emily's room) and have whispered conversation with my parents about both girls. Emily settles down while we are talking. My parents finally agree, after several hours of having Lucy sleep in the office with them, that Lucy really is a loud sleeper. She grunts and groans, snorts and snuffles, all while sleeping peacefully. Very cute, but It. Makes. Me. Nuts.
2:52 pm: go downstairs, get some root beer and grab pc to continue updating my day.
2:55 pm: updating done, back to blogs. oh, wait, still no innernet.
2:59 pm: Dad has saved the day again. back to blogs.
3:21 pm: done with blogs. calling Mike to discuss plans for dinner.
3:26 pm: Mom is going to watch Emily and Lucy while I run out to the store for a minute. YAY! Kidless shopping! Back in a while....
4:45 pm: arrive back at Mom's, change Lucy's diaper and feed her. hang out after Lucy eats, playing with wide awake baby and keeping Emily from tearing the house down.
5:45 pm: Mike arrives at Mom's. have Mike bring in manual pump I have stashed in the van, sneak upstairs to pump before I blow out a seam.
6 pm: sit down for dinner.
7 pm: finish dinner, and post-dinner chat and start packing up to head home.
7:20 pm: arrive at home. put Emily in the bathtub while Mike puts the seats back in the van. run around while Emily plays in the tub, putting stuff away, taking out the garbage in the girls' rooms. Mike finishes putting the seats back in the van and changes Lucy's diaper and gets her ready for bed. Then he came in and took over Emily's bath so that I could go feed Lucy.
7:35 pm: sit down to feed Lucy.
7:45 pm: Lucy is done eating from both sides (unusual for her, but the side she started on was the one I pumped earlier, so it's likely there wasn't as much there as normal). Give Emily a hug and a kiss good night, set Lucy up in her bouncy seat and go into the kitchen to feed the dog. Sneak into Emily's room (while Mike is finishing the last part of getting her into bed) and grab her laundry basket to wash the sheets from last night (just in case I need them to be clean tonight - I hope not!!). Gather the rest of the garbage and take it out to the curb.
8:15 pm: sit down with brownies and iced tea to finish updating blog. Mike is watching some PBS show about the beginnings of Earth. Lucy appears to be falling asleep, will bring her into her room (in her bouncy seat) in a couple of minutes, if she stays quiet. Then I am going to pump and then go to bed.

So there you have it. My somewhat chaotic day. Emily has still been running a slight fever today, but is definitely much better. I have high hopes that I won't be hearing from her at all tonight. She didn't nap well this afternoon, so she should be pretty tired.

Batting 1000

Alternate Title: Mommy needs a cocktail

Today was one of those days. I'm pretty sure it is one of the days that I will remember for quite a while.

It started out ok.

Emily had a fever all weekend and with a 3-week-old in the house, I decided that if she was still feverish this morning, we were going to the doctor.

Her temp at 8:45 was 103. I made an appointment with the pediatrician (not our regular one, but another one in that practice) for 10:45. We got out of the doctor's office at 11:45. The verdict? Not an ear infection, not strep (the rapid test was negative). The doctor was betting that the fever would break today and she'd break out in the roseola rash tomorrow. We'll see if that prediction comes true.

We went to Target real quick and then came home for lunch and nap.

When I put Emily down for her nap, I only covered her with the sheet, since between the 101 degree fever she had at the time and the 90 degree weather outside, she was going to be plenty warm. When I checked on her she had pulled her comforter up, too. I didn't want to risk waking her up (because that would jeopardize my nap) so I left it.

When she woke up, she was HOT. I checked her temp and it was 104.9. YIKES!!

I called the doctor's office to find out what else I could be doing to a) get the fever down and b) report that the fever really wasn't gone yet (the nurse took her temp in the office under Emily's arm and it was only 94. well, duh! she's wearing a sleeveless sundress and has been in air conditioning for the past 45 minutes! the rest of her feels pretty hot, maybe she could have taken her temp some other way, since it's pretty unlikely that it dropped 11 degrees in 45 minutes... grr).

While I was on the phone, Emily was drinking her milk from lunch. As I came over to look at her to answer some question the nurse was asking, Emily coughed and then projectile vomited ALL of the milk she had just drank. All over the couch. GAH. I'm pretty sure I screamed in the poor nurse's ear. And as it was coming out, I tried to catch it in my hand. Yeah, like my cupped hand is any match for 10 ounces of milk.

I started getting Emily's temperature under control and so I got out the carpet cleaner to try to clean the couch (when I bought the couch (before I was married) I paid for extra stain protection. I called the company this afternoon to find out if they would come clean it for me. Yeah, turns out the warranty coverage on that expired a year ago. DOH!) When I turned on the carpet cleaner (think loud vacuum), Emily started SCREAMING.

And all the while I am also trying to keep Lucy's pacifier in her mouth to keep her from adding her voice to the mix.

It was quite an afternoon.

*****************

Emily's temp has come down very nicely. I dumped her in the tub after the carpet cleaner incident and that helped a lot to make her feel better, smell better and get her temp out of the stratosphere.

Mike came home about 5:15 and he hung out with the kids while I worked on cleaning the couch. The cushions look much better, but the jury's still out on whether the smell is totally gone. I may have to buy new batting to go inside the cushions. We'll see. I'll pick up some Febreze while I'm out tomorrow and see if that helps.

I put Emily to bed at 7 and she was asleep by 7:30 (woo-hoo!). While I was working on making some brownies for myself (since cocktails are somewhat out of the question for me, I was settling for chocolate), Katie called. I bent her ear about my day from hell and ate some brownie batter at the same time. That helped immensely.

Now it is 9 and Lucy is asleep, Emily is asleep and Mike is at a church meeting. So I am off to bed.

Tomorrow I am going to join Julie in doing a Day in the Life post. I might post it bit-by-bit or I might just post the whole shebang on Wednesday. We'll see what mood I'm in tomorrow.

Ta-ta!

News Items

Two things have been on the news recently around here.

One is pretty cool and the other makes me want to clutch my kids (plural! still not used to that) to my chest and NEVER let them go.

We'll do the clutching one first and get it over with. A baby was left in a car on Thursday (when it was 95 degrees out) and it died. I cannot imagine the pain and horror that mother must be feeling. I was watching the report about the incident and started crying. Lainey has talked about babies and toddlers in cars, and wrote a heart-wrenching post about the day her nephew died in a car. She says it much better than I can.

Ok, now for the pretty cool one. Click here, then come back for the story behind the story. Edited to add: Jess told me the video link wasn't working, I've changed the link to the article, and there is a link to the video, should you desire to see it.

Done? The reporter, Christine Webb is a friend of my parents and they introduced her to me (or me to her, whatever). She had been in a sucky relationship and we were talking about how you sometimes have to kiss a bunch of frogs before you find someone who is worthwhile and I told her about my sucky relationship and that now I think it was a good thing because it made me a better person and ... well, Mike and I wouldn't be together if it weren't for that relationship. Anyways, Christine got a job in Florida and was given permission by the station here to do a final going-away piece (there was concern for a while that she would just be ... gone, without any explanation, they can be stupid like that). She apparently decided to do a piece about empowering yourself to overcome life's obstacles and make changes for the better, etc. You watched the piece, you know what I'm talking about. So she asked me if I would do an interview with her and talk a little about my sucky relationship and how I got out and how I felt while in it and how I'm doing now and life is all roses and butterflies and milky baby breath and nose rubs from my 2 year old. I agreed. The result is pretty cool, I think. I'm famous!! Or something (though I went to a birthday party today and several people said "You were on the news last night, weren't you?" that was pretty cool.)

To bouncy or not to bouncy...

When Emily was roughly Lucy's age, she had a lot of problems with reflux. By a lot of problems I mean continual screaming, back arching, spitting up, throwing up everything I had just fed her, take 2 kinds of medication before we could get it under control. Good times.

I have mostly blocked those days from my memory.

Mostly.

But they are coming back to me now.

It would seem that Lucy is transitioning from what my pediatrician calls a "happy refluxer" (which, she says is the majority of babies) to an "unhappy refluxer".

Thursday night was especially bad and I was in tears at 5 am as memories of Emily's reflux came flooding back. And I was trying not to cry because if I was crying, I wasn't sleeping and if I was crying, Mike wasn't sleeping and neither of those states was a good thing.

The light of morning (and a little more sleep) helped me see things with a more objective eye. I decided we would see how the weekend went and then go to the doctor again if needed.

Since then, Lucy has been ... somewhat better. She has her moments of back arched, knees to the tummy screaming and she has started doing this weird thing while nursing that Emily used to do (she opens her mouth really wide and kind of wiggles her mouth back and forth over my nipple, like she's trying to latch, but if I try to put my nipple (God, I hate that word) in her mouth, she pulls away. I'm going to take a video of her doing it because it is the strangest thing and it makes. me. nuts. when she does it at 3 am.)

Anyways, I am keeping a very close eye on Miss Lucy and we'll see how it goes.

The point of this post wasn't actually to whine about all of that stuff.

The point is, that during all of this eating drama I have started putting Lucy to sleep in her bouncy seat if she's upset.

A couple of nights have been spent with Lucy securely buckled into her bouncy seat with a blanket tucked around her.

For some reason, this bugs me.

Even though I am the one who does it, I don't like it.

And I'm not sure why.

If she's sleeping, what does it matter where she does it?

But, the other side of me wants her to sleep in her crib because that's where babies are supposed to sleep.

But, if she's in her crib, she's likely to be crying and if she's crying I'm not sleeping and that is very, very bad.

So, please, everyone, tell me that I'm being stupid about this. Even my pediatrician told me to put her to sleep in her bouncy seat, or her swing or her car seat (that one wouldn't happen in a million years - the car seat to Lucy is a device of torture. For about 2.5 minutes, and then she's asleep, but until then, the screaming, Oh, the screaming.)