Monday, June 20, 2011

Isn't this when Mary Poppins comes?

Someone hold me. We're going through what I suspect/hope is the 37-week sleep regression. Wynne IS sleeping, but don't ask me when her naps were yesterday or what they'll be like tomorrow. She'll wake up at 6:30 one morning, then sleep until 8 the next. She'll take 9 minutes to fall asleep for her first nap and an hour to fall asleep for the second one. I can't STAND the unpredictability and wondering if I put her down too soon or too late. She always cries when I leave her to sleep and takes forever to settle, which is maddening because she'd just gotten to where she knew the routine and usually took just 10 minutes to fall asleep. She needs to go in for her 6 month shots but I have no idea when to schedule an appointment because I can't guess when naptimes will be. Some days she gets 5 hours of naps, some days only 2.5 or 3, so bedtimes vary from day to day and that makes wake time vary. We have no schedule anymore and it is highly unpleasant.

She's also not eating like she used to. Sometimes she'll eat a normal serving, sometimes she'll turn her nose up at food she's always liked after three bites, sometimes she won't finish her bottle and has no interest in food at all. And no matter what it's a struggle to get through a meal. She's distracted and bats at the spoon and rubs her green beany hands in her eyes and hair. She didn't used to do these things, and it's making me dread mealtimes.

She constantly makes grunty humming sounds and scrunches up her nose and mashes her face into my body and rubs her eyes after 2 hour naps like she's still tired. She bursts into tears when I leave the room to put her diapers in the pail or get food ready or anything, even when somebody else is in the room playing with her. She'll be playing with a toy and suddenly NEED TO BE PICKED UP NOOWWW WOMAN!! She's had a rash around the sides of her diaper for a week now that will periodically get better and then pinker and more inflamed. She's always on the move, crawling for a step or two and then sticking her left leg out like a kickstand, getting stuck, and resorting to a sniper crawl. And in the last couple days she's started trying to pull up to her knees. I'm sort of hoping she'll start trying to walk just so we can do aaaall the developmental disruptions at once and get back to a schedule sooner.

I don't know WHAT to do most of the time. Basically I'm trying everything I can think to entertain her when she's awake, I'm doing ridiculous performances to keep her from melting down in the crib, I'm trying to sneak food in when she's distracted so she can't fling the spoon or the bottle to the floor, and for the most part, none of it is working.