All three of us are sick with a cold these days. My daughter started it, and she's generously shared it wih both my husband and myself. She has been so fitful and changeable. I know she's feeling miserable herself and doesn't know what she wants, but my being sick too doesn't help me to deal with her very well . And today it's just she and I, as my husband is off at work. So, the two of us are trying to cope with each other. It was really hairy there for a little while, but it seems things have calmed down for the moment. Hopefully we won't have too many freakout sessions today.
So all this craziness is making me appreciate what a good little girl I have MOST of the time. It's because she's usually so sweet, happy and even tempered that her recent illness-induced behavior has been so hard to deal with. For her first 3 or 4 months of life she would scream every evening for hours. There was nothing we could do for her during these bouts to calm her down - it was just her time to let out the frustrations of the day (it is so tough to be a new person in this big, crazy world, after all). But otherwise, she's been a joy. She's slept through the night - waking only once for a midnight feeding - since 2 weeks old. And I think it was between 2 and 3 months before she was truly sleeping through the entire night.
She's always napped well, for the most part. One adjustment we had to make was to have her nap in her playpen in the living room, as opposed to taking her upstairs to her crib. This is because I am home alone with her at least 1 day of the week, with many other weekend days also landing her in my sole care (my husband is constantly busy doing home improvement projects on our 100+ year old home), and I was not able to carry her up the stairs to bed myself. So she got used to napping in the darkened living room, and my husband and I got used to quietly tip-toing around for the 1-2 hour time period. It was the way it had to be and worked well for us. It was only weird when friends or relatives called or stopped by during her naps, as we had to all whisper and tip toe around. But as soon as she was old enough to climb the stairs (as well as climb out of her downstairs playpen), we moved her nap time to her upstairs crib. And that's were she's napped for almost one year now.
Well, she has justed toddled up to me and declared "I'm all better now, mommy." It just may be a good day after all.
Exceptional Parent Magazine published an article I wrote about my experiences with pregnancy, labor and child rearing as a disabled woman. This magazine is a wonderful resource for parents with disabled children, and they liked my viewpoint as the disabled parent. My article can be found in their September, 2004 issue, which I've linked to on the sidebar. There you can see our picture and at least read the small blurb about my article, unless you subscribe to the magazine - then you can click in and read the text in full.
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