Four months

Note to self: do not blog via iPhone because you will misspell your title. Yeesh.

So that's what Molly is doing right now. As I type. I put her in the sling a little earlier and she just drifted off. I didn't want her to sleep because sleeping all day sure isn't helping us get to bed any earlier than one in the morning, but I couldn't wake her up.

And Jack, for those of you who are interested, is helping fold laundry upstairs. I know this because Phillip just yelled, "Maggie? Is the gate closed?" And I yelled, "Yes!" and he yelled back, "Then Jack must have crawled under the gate!"*

There goes the baby gate.

It's been a stressful couple of days here at Chez Cheung because we have hit Four Months and there is some kind of turkey timer in my brain that pops out at Four Months shrieking, "OMG! OMG! FIX ALL THE THINGS YOU HAVEN'T BEEN FIXING BECAUSE YOU'VE BEEN ALL 'EH, WHATEVER, SHE'S NOT EVEN FOUR MONTHS OLD YET!" In other words, be happy I do not know your phone numbers.

Last night I busted out the Ask Moxie website, typed 'four months' in the search box and spent an hour reading this comment thread. And then I felt a million bazillion times better. Turns out not every four-month-old is on a perfect 2-3-4 napping schedule and going down for the night at 7. FANCY THAT.

Molly is not a bad sleeper. YOU GUYS she slept FOUR HOURS this afternoon. STRAIGHT. And when she finally goes down for the night she will sleep a 10-12 hour stretch (if I let her) and it's not a given that she will wake up to eat. People were asking if this late bedtime thing was a sleep regression- no, because she's been doing it since day one. She's been waking occasionally in the middle of the night for the last week, but I don't know if that's due to a regression or the fact that the holidays completely disrupted everything.

And she is still sleeping on the couch with Fat the Bunny, even though Jack is now running back and forth across the living room shouting, "DAAAAHHHHH!!!!"

What Molly is is a PERSON who has her own set of preferences and who am I to say that going to bed at midnight and waking up just in time for lunch is not okay?

And what *I* am is a Neurotic Am-I-Doing-This-All-Wrong kind of psychomom because I am practically shaking from the indecision. Do I put her down in her bed? Do I wake her up? WHAT IS THE OPTIMUM STRATEGY AT THIS PRECISE MOMENT IN TIME?

There was a bit of a Tense Conversation last night re: two children and how to manage it all. I am not reeling from the two children thing so much as the not wanting to make the same mistakes the second time. (Which: pointless, as the second child is not a carbon copy of the first, DUH.) I'm somewhat of a wackjob (if you haven't figured that out already) and the wackjobbiness makes me a little, uh, uptight about the fixing everything. Phillip, however, is pretty strung out about going to bed late, waking up early, missing the bus, not being as focused as he should, not having time to get his hair cut or go to the bank or eat some chips or la la la. Oh, and the fact that Molly pretty much only wants me. I don't know how many times he's tried to console her and rock her and soothe her only to have her scream louder and harder, then instantly quiet down the minute she lands in my arms. If I wasn't so secretly pleased and smug, I'd totally understand how much that must suck.

ANYWAY. Wasn't I saying that I feel better about this? And am not valiantly trying to manipulate every second of every day so that Molly goes to bed spot on at seven pm? I'm not! Honest! But I am sort of relieved she just woke up on her own so I am not sitting here wondering how long she is going to catnap and if we will be going to bed at THREE.

Oh! Also! Those of you with babies living in your rooms: have you debated moving the baby into the closet? The bathroom? The hallway? I have some thoughts about this and some reasons why we're considering it, but dear God have you seen how much gibberish I've written already? Right. Moving on.

It's Sunday night and after Jack goes to bed we're going to watch WALL*E. Not because I want to, but because all the Oscar articles say I should. I am not a fan of cartoons, much less preachy messagey cartoons, but who knows, maybe I'll like it. And tomorrow I shall have a weigh in post at Hot By Thirty and WATCH OUT people, because I have been chowing down on the leftover Christmas chocolate like the chocolate factories are going to blow up tomorrow.

*Our gates are installed sort of high so as to clear the abnormally tall baseboards. Like, high enough so that a toddler could crawl under them. Oops.

Comments

[Carrie]

Aww, she's still so cute!

[Lindsay]

Woohoo! Way to go Molly! Tres cute. You go girl!

[Liz]

I was exactly at that place 4 weeks ago when Lu was 4 months. Schedule! Predictable naps! Early bedtime! Must happen NOW! And a few short weeks later, now she's doing all of that more or less. And more or less on her own.

Stop stressing, girl. Seriously, that shame-on-you church lady in your head needs to be gagged.

[Dr. Maureen]

Oh, I am TOTALLY always wondering if I am doing the ideal thing for this precise moment in time. At least when it comes to sleep. There's a constant niggling terror that if anything in the bedtime or naptime routine changes even the slightest bit, everything will go to hell and no one will ever sleep again. But then things HAVE to change and when should we do it and augh! Which is why we end up making major sleeping transitions on the spur of the moment, and Jack is now sleeping in his big boy bed after an emergency trip to BRU to get bed rails.

Regarding the baby gate: We have crazy tall baseboards, and so when we installed our harware mounted gate at the top of the stairs of death, Andrew first screwed a couple of planks of wood into the wall above the baseboard so that we could attach it to the baseboard and it would reach the wall. We painted them the same color as the wall, and they look basically fine. I mean, I'd rather we didn't have blocks of unfinished wood and all, but see above re: Stairs of Death.

[Jess]

Torsten LOVES cartoons, and he still didn't like WALL*E. I am meh about cartoons, and I was meh about WALL*E. Apparently we are the only two people in the country who saw that movie and didn't love it. But OMG the preaching and the oversimplifying! Ugh.

[Elaine]

Four months post-partum -- isn't that when your hormones start going a little whacky again and your hair starts falling out in clumps, and whatnot? That could explain the four month turkey timer in your brain.
Well, okay, MY hair always started falling out in massive quantities at four months post-partum, so maybe I'm just projecting my hormonal issues on to you . . .

[Lisa]

I have this little conversation always going on in my head about the optimum strategy about when to put Olivia down for nap and whether she is ready to get up or not when she fusses. I usually do fine with getting her optimum nap in, unless my husband is home to tend to her every fussy moment, which leads to premature waking-from-nap and ultimately a rough afternoon. I'm still working on training him to read my mind and understand the conversation in my head, but he hasn't figured it out yet.

[Jennifer]

I think, in terms of STYLE, and TONE, and RHYTHM, this is your best post. EVER. And it also manage the STYLE-TONE-RHYTHM of my approaching four month plus 19 month old life so, YAY, you.

And B is cruising around pointing and screaming DAH at everything. My poor Dad is really cute--he thinks that his name is Dah for her. I don't have the hear to tell him she calls the floor-her diaper-the garbage man-and Uniqua "Dah"

Well written post. Even though it felt like gibberish it was a clear channel of gibberish brain to gibberish writing that I really appreciated.

[Jennifer]

PS M has the exact same pjs btw. Two pairs of them. One from each grandmother. they are all the rage, apparently.

[Kate P]

Fat the Bunny's shrinking again. Molly looks super-cute (love the jammies!). And apparently Jack's doing an impression of Benjamin Bunny, squeezing under the gate (instead of the fence).

Hope you can chuck the turkey timer. . . from my POV, I don't know how you manage to DO so MUCH!

[Laura]

What a sweetie she is...Fat the Bunny is one lucky rabbit to get to nuzzle her : )

[Manda]

Loving the four-month cuteness and the jams are to die for!! I keep telling my baby to stop growing up but she's NOT LISTENING (precursor for adolescence? You betcha).

[carrie]

My baby has that sleeper AND those cheeks. The sleep is cute, but those cheeks, my gosh, those cheeks. They're absolutely edible, aren't they?

[carrie]

Has it really been so long since I've posted that my old blog URL is the one saved? Eeep.