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I feel like every blog post lately is either “we’re all dying from The Snot Crud OMG send help aaaaiiiieeee….”, or it’s some version of “hey, we survived and I think we’re all better now.”

As for today: I don’t know. I suddenly got waaaaay worse and had to go back to the doctor’s office, and Catie has an ear infection, so at the moment, we’re both on antibiotics. I’m hoping we can knock this out once and for all.

Lucy seems ok for now. She’s got the eternal case of Drippy Nose, but she doesn’t seem terribly bothered by it, she’s still happy and funny and sleeping well.

(Oh man, can I tell you about the sleep? I mean, no, I know I can’t tell you about the sleep because that will jinx it and she’ll go back to waking up every 3 hours. But suffice to say: God bless sleep training. We seem to have hit some sweet spot of sleep, and I know it’s likely temporary and we’ll have to start over the next time she gets sick, or a new tooth comes in, or she hits some other developmental milestone. But for now, it’s so, so good, y’all.)

Maybe this makes me a terrible mother, because you know, unconditional love and all that. But I find her much cuter when she lets me sleep at night.

As for crawling – yes, Lucy is crawling, kind of. She gets herself into a yoga downward-facing dog pose on her hands and tippy-toes, then can’t seem to figure out what to do next, and she gets really mad about that. Sometimes she’ll kind of throw a leg out sideways and scoot like a crab. I’ve seen her do a normal hands-and-knees forward crawl only a handful of times. So, unlike Catie, who started crawling one day and then never stopped crawling, Lucy seems to be taking her own sweet time with this.

Or, you know, maybe Lucy just prefers to sit on the floor and scream for me to come pick her up. It certainly seems like it some days.

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A couple of other random Lucy developments:
1. Probably because Catie and I have been sick so much, Lucy has developed a fake cough. Seriously. If I cough, she smiles and echoes me, like it’s a game. It’s both cute and pathetic at the same time. How many times do you have to cough in front of your baby before they learn this? APPARENTLY A MILLION COUGHS. WHICH I HAVE DONE.
2. She’s started waving bye-bye and saying “ah-bah,” sort of like bye-bye. The only problem is that she seems to have no idea of the appropriate context of how or when to use this. She says bye-bye to the bathtub, to her toys, to the TV, to her own shadow. I think she just likes doing it over and over.
3. According to her teacher at daycare, she learned to say “uh-oh,” but I have yet to get her to repeat that one at home. The few times I’ve tried saying “uh-oh” in front of her to see if she’ll parrot it back to me, she just laughs at me like I’m hilarious. So, who knows.

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Unrelated to anything: I’m in the process of registering Catie for kindergarten. I just… man. That’ll be a whole other post someday, when I come up with the words to adequately express my feelings about it. For now, I think “overwhelming” about sums it up.

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It’s generally a bad idea to talk about a particular parenting style on the Internet, because it always leads to disagreements – breast versus bottle, stay-at-home moms versus working moms, natural childbirth versus medicated… all of those arguments we’ve had a hundred times or more.

Which is why it’s probably a bad idea for me to write about this, but a couple of posts this week got me thinking about it, so here it is.

I’ve started sleep training Lucy.

Let me back up: for the past four months, my mom has been living with me, so the idea of letting Lucy cry it out simply wasn’t an option. My mom is respectful of my parenting decisions, but she’s also a grandma, and it goes against her instincts to let her grandbaby cry. Besides, I never would’ve let Lucy cry it out when she was younger than 6 months old anyway.

But lately, bedtime with her has turned into this ridiculously elaborate dance, and it basically feels like she’s training me, instead of the other way around, and I have to put a stop to it.

Lately, Lucy’s sleep routine has been:
* Bathtime.
* Bottle.
* She starts to fall asleep on the bottle, then wakes up and wants! to! play! (Which, WTF? Wasn’t the whole POINT of the bath to make you sleepy, kid?).
* She rolls around on the floor and plays for at least an hour, sometimes longer.
* She eats some solid food – because I figure what the hell, we’re awake, and maybe having a little extra in her tummy will make her sleep longer. (Tip: it doesn’t.)
* Play some more. I get increasingly desperate for sleep.
* Another bottle. This time, she falls asleep while drinking it.
* Burp.
* Caaaaarefully transfer sleeping baby to crib. If she wakes up, she screams bloody murder, then I have to pick baby up and rock her until she falls asleep again, then repeat transfer process. (This may take up to 5 times or more, before successful crib placement actually occurs.)
* I crawl to bed and collapse, and pray that she sleeps through the night. Which she’s done, like, maybe 4 times in her life. Normally she wakes me up after 3-4 hours.

So. That’s completely ridiculous, right? I mean, I know it is.

The thing is, when I’ve tried to let her cry it out, I end up caving in. She screams and screams, and eventually I just can’t take it anymore, so I go get her. (Of course, the message she receives from this is, “If I scream loud enough, Mommy will come back and get me.” So that’s completely useless.)

Last night, she woke me up at 4 a.m., as per usual. I gave her a bottle, burped her, and put her back in the crib. As soon as I set her down, she woke up and started shrieking. I sat down on the floor next to her crib, reached through the slats, and tried to pat her and comfort her, to get her to go to sleep on her own.

I did that for half an hour. She never stopped screaming.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I could feel myself starting to get angry – which is completely irrational, I know. She’s a baby, she can’t help it. But she had me up past midnight, then woke me up less than 4 hours later, and I was just exhausted and I couldn’t take it anymore. So I left.

I lay down in my bed and I stared at the clock. Lucy screamed for 22 minutes, then she finally fell asleep.

(For the record? Catie slept through the entire thing.)

I don’t feel that guilty about it – I mean, she wasn’t hungry, she wasn’t sick or in pain. She was just pissed off and didn’t want to sleep. Or she didn’t know how to get herself to sleep. Which is mostly my fault, because I haven’t made her figure out how to soothe herself yet.

I don’t know if this is something I’m going to do long-term. All I know is that I’m raising these 2 girls by myself, I don’t have a partner who I can tag-team for nighttime duty. And I have a full-time job, and I am useless during the day if I don’t get enough sleep. So I have to do something.

This is less about a particular parenting philosophy, and more about basic survival.

Besides, based on the smiles and laughs I got this morning when she woke up, I’m pretty sure no major long-term damage has been done. Yet.

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In case you were wondering what it sounds like at our house ALL THE TIME now.

(TwitVid won’t show up in an RSS reader, so you need to click through to see the video. Sorry about that.)

Actually, I take that back. Usually Catie is louder than Lucy. So you combine the two of them shrieking and it’s no wonder that Mommy is slamming a handful of ibuprofen every night. (My eeeeeears.)

I mean, it’s sweet. Of course it is. But, man. The VOLUME on those kids.

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Well, this is probably going to be depressing, but it seems to be my annual tradition…

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?
Got separated. Hired a divorce attorney. A lot of other things I’d rather not remember.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I just checked last year’s meme, and this was my resolution:

Sometime in late spring/early summer, I plan to deliver a happy, healthy, preferably human baby. Let’s see how it goes!

So, yeah. I did that. Yay me! I didn’t make any other resolutions.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
ME! Plus about a hundred or so other friends and family members.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Yes, my dad’s cousin (sort of like an uncle to me). He was a very sweet man, and he’ll be very missed.

5. What countries did you visit?
Huh. I’m not even sure if I left the state of North Carolina this year.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
Stability. Calmness. Serenity. Less drama. Two kids who sleep through the night in their own damn beds. Little things.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
May 31st – Lucy was born.
August 9th – Dave and I separated.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I went from a temp employee at my job to a permanent employee in February. That was a pretty big deal at the time.

9. What was your biggest failure?
My marriage. Enough said.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Nothing major, no.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Technically my health insurance paid for it, but I’m going to say it was the epidural when I had Lucy.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
My mom. I hope that my kids grow up and know that 35 years from now, if they need me, they can call me and I’ll drop everything to be there for them. If that ends up being true, I’ll consider myself a successful parent.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
I refuse to answer this for legal purposes. If you know the inside scoop on my life, you can probably guess.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Daycare. Lawyers.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
The arrival of Lucy. The sale of my house.

16. What song will always remind you of 2011?
Most stuff by Bruno Mars. For this reason.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Most definitely sadder. But optimistic because I know it’s temporary.
b) thinner or fatter? Well, I’m not pregnant anymore, so I guess I’m thinner.
c) richer or poorer? Poorer. So much poorer.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Traveling. Reading books. Doing fun stuff with my girls.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Moping. Yelling. Crying.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
At home with Catie, Lucy, my parents, and my siblings. It was really nice.

21. Did you fall in love in 2011?
No. Sort of the opposite, in fact.

Unless you count falling in love with your kids, because…

My god, yes. Them.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
Not sure I had one. Probably Hoarders.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
See question 13 – no comment.

24. What was the best book you read?
I don’t think I finished a single book that I started this year.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
The Piano Guys. Who knew I’d ever have an obsession with the cello?

26. What did you want and get by year’s end?
My parents moved here. We sold our house. I found a rental house for me and the girls.

27. What did you want and not get by year’s end?
A sense of closure.

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
I’m suddenly completely blank. Did I see any movies this year that weren’t animated? I mean, I took Catie to see “Gnomeo and Juliet” and “Rio,” but those aren’t on my list of fine quality films, so… yeah. I don’t know.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 35. I don’t think we did anything since I was pregnant and miserable.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
If my marriage hadn’t fallen apart, that would’ve been nice.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
Total lack of fashion, all functional. I’m working on fixing that, though. I bought some cute boots as a Christmas gift to myself, and my goal is to try to take the time to make myself feel cute, because I feel a lot better about myself when I do.

32. What kept you sane?
It’s probably bad to answer this question with Lexapro, but… yes. Lexapro.

Also, my friends and family who let me vent whenever I needed to. Y’all know who you are. And you’re awesome.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I will admit that I have a huge crush on Matt Paxton, the extreme cleaning guy on Hoarders. Because I love the idea of a man who knows how to clean up after himself. That Corey dude isn’t too shabby either.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
Probably the Amendment 26 vote in Mississippi. It’s my home state and I still get worked up about a lot of political issues there. This is one of the few times one of their elections turned out the way it should have.

35. Who did you miss?
I missed my Grandmother a lot this year. She’s Lucy’s namesake, and sometimes I look at my two girls and think about how much she would have adored them. She died 15 years ago, and I still miss her. My sister and I wore some of her jewelry to church on Christmas Eve this year.

36. Who was the best new person you met?
My new friend Tanya, another single mom at Catie’s daycare, who has been an invaluable resource to me over the past few months. It helps to have a friend who’s been through all of this stuff before, and survived to tell the tale.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.
Sometimes the people you thought you knew the best, turn out to be complete strangers to you.

Also, I can survive a lot more than I ever thought I could. Who knew?

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
“Soap and water
Take the day from my hand,
Scrub the salt from my stinging skin,
Slip me loose of this wedding band.”
– Suzanne Vega, “Soap and Water”

(Yeah. I told you this was going to be depressing. Sorry.)

So, happy new year everybody. Let’s hope 2012 is far, far better than 2011.

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From this…

To this…

It’s amazing how someone so tiny could make my heart feel so much bigger.

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Somebody explain this to me…

Here’s Lucy’s hair when she was 3 weeks old.

(It’s terrible that this picture makes me laugh, isn’t it? TINY FURY!!)

And this is what her hair looks like now, at almost 19 weeks.

WHERE DID HER HAIR GO?!?!!

I remember that something similar happened with Catie, so I went digging through the archives and found this.

Catie at 2-ish weeks old:

Same full head of dark hair that Lucy had when she was born, right? But by the time Catie was 4 months old:

Her blonde hair was well on its way.

So, I’m just baffled. What is with Lucy’s head? How can a baby go from a full head of hair to almost zero hair? Isn’t it supposed to go the other way?

Luckily, she’s cute enough to pull off the look, but I have a feeling that when she’s older, she’s not going to like that one of her nicknames is Captain Baldy.

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