Silence is Golden

So Madeline, the baby previously knows as I’ll-sleep-thirteen-hours-straight-no-problem has now started to wake up randomly in the night. She has learned a new wrist bending move that she practices during the day (we call it her doing “the motorcycle” because it looks like she is changing gears on an imaginary motorcycle) and at night she uses said new move to pop the pacifier out of her mouth. Once it is out, clutched in her little hand, she immediately regrets it. And while she tries her hardest to get it back in, she doesn’t succeed. So she cries. And cries and cries.

Heretofore we have been going in, popping the pacifier back into her mouth and enjoying the immediate result of her sucking herself back into a deep, cry-free sleep. But it can’t continue, this pacifier tuck-in service. The last few days, we are letting her cry it out. I hate this, I really do, listening to her cry. And now, she wakens Avery, who went through the cry-it-out phase never hearing a peep from Madeline because Madeline just never cried it out. Madeline took so quickly to sleeping without waking that it was ridiculous. Now Avery is adjusting to the fact that sometimes her sister makes noise. And Avery is not thrilled.

The worst is when she cries and then she stops for like three seconds. And you think she is done but she is just recalibrating. Or adjusting her volume. Or listening to hear if we are approaching. Or recasting to hit a different pitch.

Right now it’s going on thirty minutes of her crying, on and off. This is my shift so I inexplicably have rise from my comfy cozy bed, retreat to the living room and stay up and listen to her cry. I try to convince Nicole that we should just turn the monitor off in our bedroom and let her cry, but Nicole is uncomfortable with that. She thinks if we do that then we will wake up and find both girls all twisted with their limbs stuck in the spindles (yes, we have bumpers). I understand where she is coming from, but I am such an awful sleeper that any interruption in it pretty much guarantees that I will feel like a train wreck tomorrow. And right now it seems like a silly trade-off: Me up, listening to her cry and eventually sob herself to sleep and then me not being able to fall back asleep myself.

So tomorrow [today] is going to be rough.

The thing with babies is that even when they have a schedule they don’t really have a schedule. I am addicted to organization and structure. Like crack-addicted. Children do not lend themselves to this sort of life. I guess having children is going to teach me to be more go-with-the-flow, but for now, in the here and now, it is just so hard.

These days, they go to bed between 5:00 and 5:30 and wake up between 5:00 (not fun) and 6:30 (more fun) on the flipside. They usually take a brief half-hour nap about two hours after they wake. They take a longer nap around 10ish and then an afternoon nap between one-ish and two. In between they are up to three meals a solids a day and bottles in between. So there is some structure and order, but if it is not 100 percent reliable (and obviously it is not) then it doesn’t qualify to me as structure! Yes, I am that all-or-nothing. Can you imagine living with me?

Here’s the great thing: Because they go to bed so early, we have our evenings back. We actually can sit at the table and eat together. It is a wonderful thing. We can linger over food. And then take baths. Or read. Or write. Or web surf. Whatever. A girl could get used to this.

She stopped crying. I’d breath a sigh of relief but that would be jinxing us, no?

Pictured above is Avery on the go. She seems so ready to crawl, which both delights and terrifies me. She gets up on all fours and rocks back and forth. That’s the first stage, right? That rocking? Lifting her giant tummy off the ground?

Maddie is not doing the all-fours thing yet, but she exhibits MUCH more control in her rolls. Her rolls in both directions are fluid and graceful, almost ballet-like. She twists her leg, then trunk and then her head and viola, she is on her tummy. She can practically hear her saying “Ta Da!” Avery throws herself from back-to-front and front-to-back, whacking her little head on the ground. She’ll cry sometimes but is so easily distracted by anything, be it a toy or some crazy stupid noise coming from my mouth.

Below that is why we need to fix our wireless! Our wireless has been broken for a while. I think we need a new router. In the meantime we have resorted to (gasp!) using landlines again. But they prove to be a very attractive nuisance to both girls. Let’s just say this isn’t the first time I have taken pictures of the girls tangled in wires. I send these images to Nicole in hopes that she will put wireless-fixing on the top of her to-do list! So far, she just laughs at the pictures and talks about other network interference.