Misery Needs Company

This will be a short post. Because I'm tired. We just spent nearly an hour getting Laney to go to sleep.

Here's the story. Laney has been a champion sleeper from the beginning. She's slept through the night from 3-weeks-old, she naps regularly, and has always gone to sleep easily while happily babbling to her stuffed animals. That's just not the case anymore. For the past week or so, it's been World War III every time we try to put her down at night.

So I've begun to research the opposing sleep methods of Dr. Ferber and Dr. Sears. This is what I've come to learn: I can "ferberize" Laney by letting her cry herself to sleep and risk permanently damaging her psyche if her sleeping problem happens to be linked to a fear of being alone. Or I can have her sleep with Marshall and I and risk having to buy a California king-size bed in the future that is big enough for Marshall, myself, and a 16-year-old to sleep in. Decisions, decisions. HA!

I realize I'm exaggerating a bit, but it is hard to decide how to raise a child in 2010 when none of your close friends have children and your only advisors are your own parents, who haven't dealt with these issues in over 20 years and probably don't even remember exactly how they put us to sleep! That's right, I wish at least one of my friends was dealing with difficult baby issues, too, and was sitting up at midnight blogging about them. I need some company. As for a tangible solution to my problem, I guess Marshall and I will just have to settle for finding a method somewhere in between the two extremes that will work for Laney. And hopefully she won't grow up feeling scarred, unloved, or overly-coddled. And just maybe she'll forgive us for our inexperience. These are the times that make me sure that the second child will be much easier in certain ways. Or maybe parenthood will just seem less dramatic by then.

Pray for us.

Laney v. "the Cats"

Welp, it's official! We have a mobile baby girl. Laney has now been crawling around for about 3 weeks and is getting a little faster with each passing day. Despite the swearing from more experienced mothers that her mobility would be my worst nightmare, I've LOVED her new-found independence! She's even happier now that she can get where she wants to go (somewhat, anyway). Maybe I'm loving this time only because she's still quite slow getting around and usually tires out way before she gets anywhere near an electrical outlet or cabinet full of cleaning supplies. And I'm not the only one happy with this new development. Laney is QUITE pleased with herself now that she is crawling and starting to pull up to a standing position. Her huge grin just screams, "Look at me! I'm such a big girl! Not to mention wonderful, beautiful, perfect, lovely, and smart." I wonder where she heard all those things? Surely she hasn't been paying attention to all of us that have been giving her all those compliments 10 times a day since the day she was born. Ha! We can rest assured that low self-esteem is one quality that Laney will NOT possess. We may be needing to introduce a new characteristic to her soon - "humble."


There are 2 members of our household that are not as pleased with Laney's mobility- our cats. For those of you who don't know, we have an orange male cat named Jack and a white female cat named Penny. I've never been a huge cat person, but I found Jack on the street in college and fell in love with him. At that time, he was a 1-pound kitten with burnt paws that was barely still alive and had luckily not been flattened into roadkill quite yet. Marshall and I rescued him and nursed him back to health. And healthy he is. These days, he's a huge, lazy man cat that is nothing less than the real-life version of Garfield. We got him a friend from the pound, Penny, and now the 2 of them are best friends and love their lives. They are not loving their lives so much, now, though, since Laney is beginning to chase them! She wants nothing more than to grab their fur and tails and yank on their ears and whiskers. They want nothing more than for Laney to stay far away! It has been so funny for Marshall and I to watch. Jack and Penny have no idea that, soon enough, Laney will be able to catch them. :)

We also had to take the bumper out of Laney's crib and lower the mattress to the last notch. This way she can't climb over the railing of the crib. She can still pull up on the side of the railing, though. The following video was taken the first time she did this. Once again, she was quite proud of herself! So were we, of course.