WAS WRONG.

Lucy is going through separation anxiety plus trying to figure out all her emotions and learning how she can get what she wants without having a vocabulary.  It is kicking my butt.  What happened to my happy smiley baby? Sure she’s still happy and smiley alot of the time but she’s starting to throw tantrums and cry and not sleep.  It’s hard.  It’s really hard.  I guess I deserve it.  I had such an easy go of it and now it’s not so easy.  She’s also getting to be more fun-it’s weird.  Her little personality is emerging and we can play with her and know what makes her giggle and get her sense of humor but at the same time if we do something she doesn’t like (like take away the remote or my watch or the keyboard) she throws a tizzy fit.  We don’t give in but then there’s the sleep issue.  Sometimes she just doesn’t want to go to sleep and she’s screams and cries.  What do we do then?  I have never been a fan of the “cry it out” method but I was desperate the other night and tried it.  I let her cry for 5 minutes and then went in there to soothe her.  They tell you to not pick them up but to rather rub their backs and speak gently to them.  When she realized that I wasn’t going to pick her up she got PISSED and started wailing and then choking/gagging.  Of course I picked her up.  Oh and she doesn’t want Daddy through all of this.  If he tries to soothe her and rock her she flails her body, tries to hit him, and screams like someone is hurting her.  It’s exhausting. It took us 2 hours to get her down that night.

Last night she went down without a fight at 7:30 but then woke up at 9:30.  I nursed her and tried to put her back down but she did not want to go to sleep and started screaming.  I tried to soothe her for about 20 minutes but every time I would make a move to put her in the crib she’d start screaming.  Well, I was running on 3 hours of sleep and was tired so I brought her into bed with me and she slept on my chest (after screaming while laying on my chest for 15 minutes) until about midnight (I think?) At that point I put her in her crib.  She woke up at 5 to nurse and started fighting the crib again so I brought her into bed with me again.  Thus giving her exactly what she wanted BUT Mommy needs to sleep!

I know that this is a stage and that it will pass but it is just really hard.  Really, really hard.  I hope it passes quickly.

We got the Eye-Fi installed last night.  It was doubtful for a bit whether it would work or not.  We got the card that has Geo-Tagging capabilities-Shaun really wanted this for his mountain biking pictures-and that card only comes in 4 GB.  Our camera shut down when the 4 GB card got put into it and we thought we were toast.  Then our camera said “Card Reader Error.” Well…dang.  Super techy husband to the rescue!  Shaun was able to find a firmware update for our camera that would allow it to take a 4 GB card.  He just saved the update to one of our other memory cards, stuck it in the camera and there you go-our camera now takes 4 GB cards!  Technology (and my husband) are cool!

Thus, I give you Lucy’s daily picture(s)!

Shaun thinks a daily picture is a great idea too so hopefully we can keep this up.

Last night I was walking home and this was parked in front of my house:

Sweet ride, eh?

Did anyone see The Office last night? Oh.My.God. It was ridiculously funny. Shaun and I laughed out loud at least 15 times. Between watching Survivor, The Office, and getting the Eye Fi all set up we didn’t get to bed until 11 last night-that’s late for this Mommy!

I had another nightmare filled night-boo.  If this doesn’t stop I’m going to schedule a visit with my therapist.  We’ll see how tonight goes.  I know that I’m really stressed at work and home life is crazy (just because taking care of Lucy and the house and my husband takes all my time) but I don’t feel like these two things should be causing these major anxiety dreams.

Speaking of home life being crazy, my awesome husband was super helpful this morning. Lucy woke up at 5:10 to eat and didn’t want to go back to sleep after I fed her. I brought her into bed with us to try and get her to fall back asleep and it worked for about 30 minutes but at 6 she wanted to be up.  Shaun got up with her and got her ready for the day.  He let me “sleep in” until 6:45.  He even got her bottles ready to go and put the bag on top of her “Daily Communication” paper that we have to fill out for daycare everyday.  He was then playing with her and had a little finger puppet on and the finger puppet was telling Lucy how she is lucky to have a Mommy that works so hard and does so much for her.  I’m getting all teary writing about it.  Seriously?  How sweet.  I really do have an awesome husband.  He knows just what to do to make me feel appreciated and loved.

The Weekend

It supposed to rain all weekend.  BOO.  I still need to go to Bare Essentials to get my make-up. That’s the one thing from my to do list for last weekend that didn’t get done since Lucy was sick.  Maybe I’ll go to the mall all by myself.  I think this will be a great weekend to finish our baby proofing.  She’s starting to get more and more mobile and inquisitive.  We need to change out the electric outlet covers and brace the furniture to the wall and then we’ll be done.

Yeah….Lucy was sitting in Shaun’s lap and pulled herself to a standing postion last night.  Before we know it, she’ll be doing that on EVERYTHING.

We didn’t get the Eye-Fi set up last night because I was dead tired.  Shaun went mountain biking after work and didn’t get home until 7:50.  That meant that I did the whole bedtime routine by myself which isn’t a big deal it’s just more difficult.  By the time I got dinner done and we had eaten it was 8:45 and I was ready for bed.  We were in bed by 9 and lights were out by 9:15 (get your minds out of the gutter-we were reading).  My little superstar sleeper slept until 6:15 this morning so I got 9 hours of sleep last night.  WOO and HOO!  Of course I had crazy stress dreams all night long but oh well, at least I got to sleep for 9 hours.

Even though the Eye-Fi did not get set up, I still took my first daily picture of Lucy with my phone.  She was so smiley this morning-see?

She’s started giving kisses on command!!! Last night I asked her to give Mommy a kiss and I got a big wet slobbery one. We played a game where I would kiss her and say “Mommy gives Lucy a kiss. Will Lucy give Mommy a kiss?” And then she’d kiss me and I’d say “OH THANK YOU!” and she’d crack up. We did that for about 10 minutes last night. I was covered in Lucy slobber and it was so worth it!

I had the realization last night that since I’ve been back to work (4 months now) I haven’t done anything for myself without Lucy. Breastmilk is such a precious resource that I never leave her with Daddy and a bottle. Plus I miss her so much while I work that I don’t want to leave her alone when I have the chance. But, I think I need to get over this and leave her with Daddy for a few hours one weekend. I do need some “me” time and the train ride to work, work, grocery shopping, and cooking don’t really count. Maybe I’ll take a babystep and go for a run this weekend all.by.myself. I do have an issue in that I don’t know what I’d go do. Sad, huh?

Time to start brainstorming.

Titles are going to be difficult to think of so I’ll start the blog with that-Hello World!

I’m really excited to start writing here.  I haven’t been writing as much as I’ve wanted in the past few months and I’ve missed it.  I’m hoping that Being Chelsea will be just the outlet I need to get it out of my head and down on “paper”.  When I made the decision to leave where I was journaling before I started looking back at my old entries and they said so much.  I wrote with abandon during my pregnancy and I’m so happy that I have a record of that to save and hopefully one day show Lucy.  I hope this can be that too.  If no one visits, I’m okay with that.  A year ago? I wouldn’t have been okay with that.  I’m not looking for validation.  I’m just looking to get it all down.  If others enjoy it, then great!  If not, oh well.