There?s nothing like a crying baby to get all your neck hairs standing up. That?s the way it should be ? how else are we to know that the baby needs something? It?s the moms who are ?supposed to know? why the baby is crying. Just as we?re able to determine what the different cries mean, they change! We?re back to square one, trying to figure out why Baby is crying. Has he been fed? Has he been changed? Is he lying on his arm or something?
Little T wasn?t really crying this evening. He?s becoming ?accustomed? to his new sleeping quarters ? his crib. He?d much prefer to sleep in Linda?s bed. This starts the old argument about the family bed. This is just me, but I think a baby should be in the crib until he?s old enough to maneuver ? like out from under a sleeping body. Maybe between 18 mos and 3 years, something like that.
Linda?s trying to get T to sleep all night in his crib. He takes these little power naps and then wakes up. Or he takes two nice 2 hour naps during the day to make him nice and energetic at night. Meanwhile, Linda?s been up most of the day and night too and is practically running on empty.
So when we got back from karate, I heard little T making conversational sounds and then realized he and Linda were in the family room. Linda was rocking him, looking exhausted. T, on the other hand, was bright eyed and bushy-tailed. So I took him to give Linda a break. I rocked him, I sang to him, I showed him my screen savers.
Linda came in and he was very happy to see her. She tried rocking him again but he wanted to play so I suggested let me try again. I had the lights turned down and was playing music softly. I rocked him and sang this ?go to sleep my ba-a-by, my ba-a-by, my ba-a-by?. I remembered it from some Laurel & Hardy short and I remembered singing it to my own kids. I just sang that song over and over and over and gradually he began to relax. Not long after that, he fell asleep.
You get this really helpless feeling as a tired parent trying to get a wide-awake kid to sleep. It?s one thing if the baby has a room of his own and you can try to sweat it out if he cries. You do the wait-five-minutes routine and go check him out and reassure him. Then you wait ten minutes and so on and eventually the kid does fall asleep. This is what I did with Billy, Heidi and Kristin.
It?s not so easy when you are rooming with the baby, as Linda is. It?s hard to fall asleep when you?ve got ?ah, ah, AH? next to your head. I can really sympathize with her, remembering how tired I felt some nights before Rich would come home from work. I felt tired and irritable but I know I shouldn?t be upset with my babies ? still, I was so tired. Sometimes I?d find myself beginning to doze as I rocked one of my babies.
Some of the advice I used to get from other mothers was: "just let them cry themselves to sleep. They'll be all right." That could be, but I really wasn't able to do that no matter how tired I was. I wouldn't have been able to fall asleep if my baby was crying.
Like I said, babies cry to let you know they need something.
It?s just one of those things parents have to endure until their babies grow out of it. And there are always going to be those nights when, for whatever reason, the baby is totally wide awake and will not sleep. No rest for the weary then!
But it all goes so fast. Looking back, losing some sleep because one of the kids won?t fall asleep is not such a big deal at all. And so it goes.
What was the first piece of music you bought with your very own money, and what format was it in?
I think the first piece of music I bought was a 45 rpm record. I?m not sure which song was the first. Maybe it was ?I Am A Rock? by Simon & Garfunkel. I bought tons of 45s. They were inexpensive and I could afford them with my allowance.
My first record album was, I think, by the Association. After that, I?d save up my babysitting money to buy other artists, especially Neil Diamond.
Do you recycle? Compost? Reuse household items until no other use can be wrung from them? Why or why not? Do you try any other ways to affect your household's footprint?
We used to recycle. We?d do our bit for the environment, separating paper from plastic, washing out cans and bottles. I think it?s neat that recycled items can be used to make clothes and other things. We?re not recycling now because the town doesn?t have a convenient program.