I used to be a BIG TIME navel-gazer. I was really into reflecting on my life and thinking about things that had happened and things that I felt and wondering what it all meant. Now, I forget to think most of the time and would probably forget my ass if it weren't attached to my body (for Christmas, I managed to get my mom a book that she had already read because I had lent it to her-- duh) and tend to roll my eyes at the "What does it all mean?" shit.
The exception to all of this is at the beginning/end of a year-- there's something there (albeit artificial and trite as all get-out) that still makes me want to look back and reflect for a minute. A year ago, we taught Chickie to fall asleep on his own (i.e. we cut the bounce-to-sleep-on-the-ball cord), but a year later, he still can't sleep through the night, mainly because the all-you-can-eat Mommy buffet never really closed at night. Believe it or not, I actually stopped nursing him at night a couple days ago, and we're down to just twice a day-- before bed and first thing in the morning. He still wakes up a lot, especially after 3 a.m. or so, but I'm hoping that that'll resolve with time as he figures out that the kitchen is closed.
While not nursing at night is great in some ways (I don't have to get out of bed 2-3 times a night and deal with the baby), it's hard in other ways... wait, wait, just hear me out before you tell me I'm nuts. For the past 18 months, nighttime is MY time and MY domain. Chickie cries, and I feed him and put him back in his crib while Dan does pretty much nothing. To be fair, he has helped from time to time, but there hasn't been a night where I've done NOTHING. Now that I'm not nursing at night, I feel like I have no control over what's happening with Chickie. I can't go in and soothe him, because he literally smacks me in the face with rage if I don't feed him, so I have to wait for Dan to take care of him. Of course, while Dan's up with him, he's TOTALLY pissed ("Why are YOU here?? You don't have magic boobies!!") and screaming, so it's not like I'm getting any sleep anyway.
The by-product of night-weaning is that Chickie is SUPER clingy with me during the day. I couldn't put him down this morning and had to hold him for 45 freaking minutes while I attempted to eat and make coffee and go to the bathroom and what not. I guess he need me to make up for the lack of nighttime Mommy snuggle time.
And you know what? As much as nursing at night SUCKS, there's something really precious about it. Even in the earliest days, I felt like Chickie was more mine at night. As he became this mobile, verbal little boy, he was still a little baby at night. His eyes would be mostly closed, and he would roll towards me and reach for me with his mouth open like a little baby bird.
But enough of all that. The boy is growing up, and it's fabulous. He's starting to string together 3 words pretty consistently-- "no throw car" (or whatever he happens to have just hurled across the room) doesn't count because "no throw" is one word to him, I'm sure. We're trying to give him cow's milk more consistently now, and this morning, Dan was giving him a cup of water and a cup of milk so that he could understand the difference, and at one point, he took away the cup of water, and Chickie said, "uh-oh, where water?" Funny baby.
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