Wednesday, September 29, 2010

My Yellow Wall

When we first moved into our house we knew we were going to paint. Choosing colors was horrifically painful, but we finally settled on a bright yellow/gold for our downstairs living room. A few people have mentioned that the walls are a little too bright.

For the last few days I've been looking at those yellow walls as my own personal yellow wallpaper. The trapping walls of a wife stuck in just a few rooms, ignored by a husband, tortured by her own thoughts. Only I don't have wallpaper and I do have a screaming baby in pain.

But last night I spent three hours with Emily staring at those walls while she tried to get comfortable enough to sleep. We started at 2am and she didn't sleep till 5am. Those few hours of sleep deprivation on top of sleep deprivation on top of sleep deprivation made my yellow walls seems lovely. Swaying back a forth till neither of us could see straight those yellow walls were a little bit of happy.

More happy because my little girl was looking at them with her much brighter blue eyes.



Friday, September 24, 2010

Look what I made!

Emily has been going through a phase where she eats every 30 minutes (for 30+ minutes). In between eating she either naps for 10 minutes (enough to tease Mom into thinking she'll get some sleep) or she fusses. She fusses about having hiccups, burps, gas, poop, dirty diapers, clean diapers, or just cause she's hungry...even though she just finished eating.

This morning was pretty rough. After a few nights of very little sleep and a lot of fussing we spent four morning hours of eating, rocking, eating, and rocking some more. Finally she was sated and I could carry her back into the bedroom and lay her on the bed next to my sleeping husband and my oh-so-cold (figuratively) side of the bed. I should have curled up immediately to catch some extra sleep, but I took a moment to admire what I had achieved through hours and hours of work:
A sleeping baby!

(And yes she woke up ten minutes after that to eat again.)

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

My Kind of Baby

The other day Emily started to snuffle as the sun rose. It wasn't an urgent snuffling, but it was pretty clear she wanted Mom to wake up. Which of course I did.


Instead of her big blue eyes staring at me, which is often what I get to see when she wakes me up (sometimes accompanied with a screwed up face ready to get red and angry) I saw a pile of white blanket. One corner was folded over nicely and when I lifted it I saw a grinning little girl peeking from under it. Emily had grabbed her blanket, covered her face with it and wanted Mom to see her new trick.


She's done this a few times. Usually during diaper changes. However, this time I wasn't awake to see her do it, so she made sure I knew how incredibly cute and silly she is. And how much like Mom, who also likes to cover her face with soft things (I've been known to sleep with a pillow over my face), she is.


There are other similarities in our blanket and sleeping styles. Emily also likes to cover her eyes with her forearm, a trick I've perfected in most napping positions. She likes to curl to the side, both arms pressed against her far cheek. Head propping on laced fingers is also a favorite of hers and mine. It is in fact one of the things that D. first noticed about me and one of the things I first noticed about Emily.


What kind of baby laces her long, thin, elegant, fingers together on her first day? My kind of baby.