The Schlep, Part Two.

In the beginning I called the process of getting Adelyn out of the house "the great schlep." Those first few voyages with a baby are so daunting--it's such a shock to your old life that you can no longer up and leave the house at a moment's notice.

Five months later, and I've come to terms with it. Working between your schedule and your baby's infinitely more complicated schedule (you can wait until you get home to eat. She, on the other hand, cannot. Or will not.) is a delicate balancing act. Next month when I officially start working Adelyn will be with a babysitter three days a week (the other two I get to work at home), which should make our conflicting schedules a little easier to manage. But, still, getting Adelyn ready, myself ready, and the entire gamut of Adelyn's necessities ready before work will require additional planning. For instance--Addy still sleeps in her NapNanny. In fact, Jason and I are thinking we need to break her of this habit. We're wondering if it's maybe why she hasn't rolled over (because she doesn't get to squirm around in her crib all night and in the morning). It's getting harder to stay out with her for long periods of time (when we can't just lay her flat on her back at her grandparents' houses for a nap). And when I think about what I'll need to carry with me each day we leave the house--I don't want to add a bulky, pink, sleep-assistant to the load.

We started talking about this yesterday, when we were planning our trip to Delaware with Addy for my sister's wedding in August. We'll bring the pack 'n play, obviously, for our stay in the hotel. And tons of formula, bottles, clothes, bibs, burp rags, toys. And what about the Nap Nanny? Do we pay extra to check it in on the plane? Then haul it through both airports and cabs and through the hotel along with bags and bags of her other stuff, just because we--it's not her fault, really--are scared to endure a few sleepless nights weaning her away it? No. I think the time has come. Adelyn doesn't, I think, have reflux. Or if she does it's no longer a major concern for her. She's just not used to being on her back at night. Our fault.

So. The "great" schlep? I wish I could go tell myself five months ago to chill out. She weighed, like, seven pounds and she slept all of the time. We hadn't even approached the true schlep of schlepping. I don't know if we've even hit the peak now.

Yesterday, I took Adelyn with me to a meeting. I went with a co-worker to meet the people who run a ministry here in Murfreesboro, because I'm going to be coordinating a lot of literacy programs with them (helping people earn their GEDs, people who have never learned to read, among many other things). Since I was only going to be gone two hours I brought Adelyn with me.

And I timed that thing like a pro--we left precisely when it was time for her afternoon nap. This would mean, I thought, I hoped, that she would fall asleep during the drive and stay asleep for the next hour. But the second I opened the car door at our destination, her eyes opened, too. And that's how they stayed--for the next three hours. Who needs a nap when there are buildings to look at, people to smile at, things to learn? I'd brought the stroller since we were walking from my organization's office to a building a few blocks down. And it was HOT outside. It's been hotter here than I can ever remember.

Adelyn stayed content for the majority of the meeting--a few squawks here and there, quickly remedied by being picked up and shown off.

By the time I strolled her back to the car, though, she was desperate to fall asleep. Rubbing her eyes, blaring crying, onesie soaked through from the heat.

This is where the schlep really starts. The people in the car parked to my left are waiting for me to get this done so they can escape the heat and drive. After giving them a little "sorry this is about to take so long" wave, I hold the stroller in place with my foot, right by the car. I twist and stretch my arms to the front door, open it, and put the keys in the ignition. It's too hot to put her in the car without some sort of ventilation already in place--even I feel woozy when I first get in. So while I'm stretch-Armstronging my body to make sure the stroller doesn't stroll away without me, Adelyn is still crying. Screaming. After a few seconds of blasting the AC I lift up her increasingly-heavy car seat and put it in the back. (How I don't have arms of steel at this point, I'm really not sure.) Then I put the diaper bag in the front seat, and wheel the stroller around to the back to put it in the trunk. The car next to me has started backing up at this point. Luckily, she has a toddler in the backseat of her car and shoots me an understanding glance.

I fold up the stroller and hoist it up into the trunk--teasingly close to being done with the whole thing--but then--oops!--I forgot I'd grabbed a Diet Coke from the office and put it into the stroller's cup holder. So the already luke-warm drink splashes down the front of my shirt, my pants, down to my feet. It's so hot I don't even mind. I just want the stroller in the damn car. Once it's safely in I slam the door shut, climb into the front seat, and speed off. As soon as we hit 30 miles per hour Adelyn is fast asleep--and she stays that way once we get home, even snoozing through the removal of her sweat-soaked onesie and the transition to her swing.

This is a schlep. Not the nonsense I was talking about months ago. Look up schlep in a Yiddish dictionary and there would be a picture of a mother, baby crying in the car, with a stroller halfway inside of the trunk and Diet Coke all over her outfit.

It does get easier with time, though, getting Adelyn out of the house. You learn new little tricks and timesavers every day. Mostly through trial and error (like, put the diaper bag in the car FIRST, then come back and get the baby, or use nap time or independent play time to get everything ready, rather than waiting for the last minute). If you have any tricks of your own, I want to hear them. Please. E-mail them to me, comment them here, or send them to me telepathically. Share your wisdom on making the schlep as painless as possible.

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Child-led Parenting. Or What Just Kinda Happened.

Yesterday I had lunch with three other moms. Two have babies three weeks younger than Adelyn. One has a baby who's seven months old. I've talked about that particular baby before. Her name is Ella and her cheeks are infinitely kissable and she hardly ever cries. Now she's developed the ability to say her name, which she does over and over while awake. "El-lalala-la. El-lalala-la." She's adorable.

At lunch we got on the topic of Baby Wise, because these are the kind of things four young moms talk about. Baby habits, formula types, breastfeeding vs. bottlefeeding, being hungover and taking care of your baby, the concern over a baby who doesn't care about rolling over, and, I think, the topic of spray tans made a brief appearance. But mostly we just talked about living as a mother.

One of these women, Ella's mom, works full-time. More than full-time, actually. The other just went back to work, working three days a week. The other goes back to work, working from home, in just a couple of weeks. And then there's me, who is caught somewhere between a former desire to devote herself, all of herself, to being a success and trying to figure out how to be a parent.

I did not expect to be a mom right now. I hope when Adelyn someday, inevitably, reads this she understands that that doesn't mean I'm not extraordinarily grateful for how things have turned out. It just means that I was thrown for a loop. Graduating from college and trying to figure out what to do for a living is confusing enough. Doing this with a baby is a bit more so.

I think--fingers crossed--I'm a couple of weeks away from getting the job I hoped for. It doesn't pay much, but it's for an organization I care deeply about and it would allow me to work from home most of the time. Between two family members who are teachers off for the summer and a great grandma who seems to have an infinite number of baby-tricks up her sleeve--along with the generosity of my mother-in-law's friend who's offered to watch Addy whenever I need her to--I think we can avoid putting Addy in day care.

The job does require a three-day training in Atlanta. I have to figure that out. My mom might come with me and watch Addy while I do the required stuff. But other than that, I think we'll be just fine.

But it brings up, once again, this increasingly-tricky question of creating a routine that is predictable. It doesn't have to be on-the-nose scheduled, but it has to be somewhat smooth, like, knowing that within the next three hours I will have an hour I can devote solely to work. And little Adelyn, God love her, does not like predictability. Our newest schedule involves getting up around four thirty in the morning, eating and playing until she's sleepy again, and then putting her in her swing to nap while mommy snoozes on the couch. I never used to need so much sleep. When I was pregnant, even, I woke up at six on the dot. Now when I hear Addy babbling over the monitor at four, five, six I'm desperate for just one more hour between the sheets. (Sleeping.)

I don't like the idea of Baby Wise. Neither do the other moms I was with yesterday. Ella, her mom told us, has developed a schedule all by herself. And she sticks to it. None of us are fond of forcing a schedule on our babies. I think the experts call this "child-led parenting." I call it trying to find something that works. I can't hold off giving Addy a bottle if she's hungry, a nap if she's tired. My neighbors--who are generally incredibly sweet--told us they used to do everything in their power to keep their daughter awake past six p.m. They'd even sprinkle water on her face if she was drifting off. (This might have been a joke. I hope.) And that meant she started sleeping through the night from the start.

I can't do those things. I've tried--not with the water on the face part--to plan out our day, thinking she'd get another bottle in three hours, then another at noon, then a nap, then so on. It never works for me. I always give in.

Am I setting myself up for disaster later on down the line? Am I raising a child who will get what she wants, when she wants it? Or am I just a proponent of this thing called child-led parenting? I don't know. But I do know that Addy wants another bottle, and I'm going to give it to her.

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Newborn Time-Management.

I'm sort of obsessive compulsive when it comes to managing my time. I've known this about myself since high school, when I realized I was really the only one of my friends who worried about every little thing when it came to what we were doing. And I don't just try to plan everything out--I stress and obsess and over-analyze every part of it--where we're meeting, where we're going, who's driving, who's drinking, who's gonna be late, how much sleep am I gonna get.

When I was working in broadcast news every single one of my coworkers made a comment about how fast I did everything. I worked overnight the majority of my time there, writing scripts for the morning news (the show started at four a.m. and ran until seven). And I never took a moment to breathe the second I sat down. I got in around midnight and didn't stop writing until the task was finished. Everyone always seemed impressed that I was so efficient, and I guess I could just pat myself on the back and say I was good at my job, but mostly it was that I was completely terrified of not finishing in time. Terror really fuels your work ethic.

Add a baby into the mix, one who has no concept of time or work, and the whole scheduling obsession becomes infinitely more complicated. I find myself borderline-manically planning out the most boring activities. While I'm holding Adelyn in one hand and getting her bottle ready with the other, I'm trying to decide if it would be better to put the laundry in the dryer while the bottle heats up or if I should instead devote that thirty seconds to peeing. It's exhausting, and it's no one's fault but my own.

It sounds pathetic even writing it out but you have to work your ass off to maintain any sort of a structure with a newborn around. I have to fight for it.

I'm now the girl who's always late. And, god, I used to loathe constant lateness. I can't tell you how many arguments Jason and I have gotten in over being on time. And now, I'm the one my friends have to work around to schedule lunch, I'm the one struggling to get a project turned in on time.

I used to drive myself crazy with this stuff, pre-Adelyn. I'd always wonder why I couldn't just go with the flow, why I couldn't just do something instead of planning out every detail of it beforehand. Post-Adelyn, now that her needs come first, I want even more to learn to chill out.

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Sleeping Through the Night.

Last night was the first night in weeks that Adelyn woke up before six a.m. We've all become accustomed to our little bedtime and morning routine, so much so that when it's thrown for a loop my body definitely notices. (Waking up at three a.m. felt almost impossible, even though I've done it more times than I can count the past three and a half months--well, really eleven if you count the non-stop nocturnal bathroom trips during pregnancy.)

At three a.m. on the dot I heard her on the monitor. But it wasn't the usual crying. All I heard was "Ehh." And then nothing. I tried to close my eyes again. Two minutes later, "Ehhhh. Eh."

So begrudgingly I dragged myself out of bed and into her nursery, where she was laying wide-awake. She took one look at me standing over her crib and the biggest smile I've seen yet spread across her face. I was tired, so so tired, but you can't resist that smile. I smiled too, broken sleep aside.

But the episode made me realize just how lucky we are that Adelyn is sleeping so well at night. I sort of had an inkling from the beginning that we'd be blessed with a baby who liked to sleep. And I've read that the patterns they show in the beginning, although they can vary from week to week, stay pretty consistent throughout childhood. And even with that fact under my belt I'm almost scared to write about how well she sleeps because then the baby gods will come down and screw it all up.

I don't know if what Jason and I do has anything to do with Adelyn's nighttime routine or if it's completely random. I do know, however, that I'm not about to go messing with what works.

Around eight every night, the ritual starts. Every other night she gets a bath. After that, I give her a pseudo-baby massage (I say pseudo because I have no idea what I'm doing, I just slather on some Johnson & Johnson Nighttime Lavender Lotion and say job-well-done). We then change her into a comfy onesie and get ready to feed her the last bottle of the night, usually about 4 ounces. A lot of the time we sing to her during this last feeding, usually we just talk. In the beginning I read to her every night and I vow to do this more, starting tonight, in fact. Once she's almost finished, we lay her down in the crib on her Nap Nanny. Our doctor recommended this ridiculously-expensive product after I told her Adelyn liked to sleep propped up. My mom graciously got it for us otherwise I never could have justified spending so much on a contoured foam sleep thing, but Adelyn loves it. And, as it turns out, the thing is huge and she'll be able to use it for a long time to come.

(We don't strap her in because I'm evil and because I have no idea where she's gonna go all swaddled up inside of there.)

Then we turn on her noise machine. We have the Cloud B Sleep Sheep and love it--it clips right on to her crib. At first we used the heartbeat sound, but that started to sound sort of creepy to me night after night, so now we've switched to the sounds of the ocean.

We lay her on top of her swaddling blanket, already in the crib on top of the Nap Nanny, because she used to hate the act of being swaddled and this minimizes the disruption. We started out with the Miracle Blanket. That thing started to become more of a hassle than it was worth, though. The whole process of getting her in it took too long and upset her too much. And once we switched to the Halo Sleep Sack with swaddle, she started sleeping longer than ever. It's so much easier to get her in, it's so, so much softer, and I feel like it keeps her a little bit more cozy. Again, I have no idea if her improved sleep is by chance or because it's a great product, but I'm not gonna second guess it.

Finally, we feed her the rest of the bottle. Adelyn hates pacifiers and looks at me like a crazy person when I try to give her one. But she usually polishes off another half an ounce in her crib, and then once her eyes are good and heavy Jason and I leave the room and shut the door.

Because Adelyn is going to bed earlier (between eight and nine), Jason and I get a few hours of alone time to, you know, watch and discuss Lost without screeching in the background.

I've said it before and I'll say it again--sleeping through the night is the newborn-parenting holy grail. That first time you get it, when suddenly your eyes shoot open and you realize you've been sleeping for hours uninterrupted, once you get over the initial paralyzing fear that your baby has not woken up, it's like winning the lottery.

A while ago some woman on Baby Center went on a rant about how she annoyed she is with all this "sleeping through the night" talk.

"Why is everyone so obsessed with their babies sleeping all night?" she asked us. "Didn't you know you were signing up for no sleep when you got pregnant?" And I say to her, and anyone else thinking something similar, we are obsessed with it because we are human and like to sleep.

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The Patience Game.

There's a key to this whole beginning part that I think I've been missing. Or at least lacking.

Patience.

I don't have a lot of it. I never have. I'm an instant gratification sort of girl.

The hardest parts of my parenting day come at the very beginning and the very end of the day, when my patience is at its thinnest. In between, there's very little crying or mommy breakdowns. I feed her when she's hungry, play with her when she's awake, change her when she's wet, and put her down when she's sleepy. It's really not much more complicated than that.

First thing in the morning, though, I'm usually half-asleep. And since I've been sleeping until I hear her crying to eat, she's already hungry. So I have to listen to her crying for a good five to ten minutes while I make a bottle, warm the bottle, change her diaper, and try to slap myself out of exhaustion. (I know, especially by now, that crying is all she can do. I still haven't gotten used to the sound, though. I'm still not inured to it. It still makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong. I thought that would've gone away by now.) By the time the bottle gets to her mouth she's frustrated and gulps it down. Which means she usually spits up midway through, and an hour later, once she's been fed and burped and calmed, I invariably have formula all over my shirt, my hair.

The hardest part is at night, right before bed. I always get nervous around eight, anticipating what this bedtime ritual will include. And the harder I try to figure out a solution, the more we struggle.

At night, I'm tired. I'm ready for a break. So I probably don't burp her long enough; I'm anxious to get her quiet and in the crib. And rushing makes it worse--if you put her down too soon, before all the air is out of her little, confused tummy or before she's had a chance to really get sleepy, she's crying again in five minutes. That's when Jason and I start to scramble, trying to figure out what's missing. Is she still hungry? Does she need to burp again? Are you going to go warm another bottle or should I? Can I go lie down? Are you sure you don't mind if I go lie down?

Every night, it's the same struggle.

On the nights that I go to bed early and Jason finishes the last feeding by himself, everything seems to run more smoothly. I've said it to Jason and to myself countless times but I feel like he's just so much more patient than me. He always take a lot longer at nighttime, feeding her, rocking her, comforting her. When we do it together, I get stressed because I'm tired. I try to follow a routine I've concocted in my head rather than what she's demanding because I'm so anxious for it to work.

I don't know how it is that you learn patience. I listen to Adelyn wailing for a bottle, and I want to teach her that the bottle is coming, to just hold on. But I'm smart enough to know that I'm the one that has to teach it to her--every survival mechanism she was born with is telling her to wail for that food and to wail louder the longer it takes to get there.

In most ways it's getting so much easier by the day, this whole parenting thing. As she stays awake longer during the day, though, there's more pressure to move beyond the eat, sleep, poop equation, to start teaching her things when her eyes are open. To establish rituals that let her know the bottle is coming, that it's time to play and time to sleep.

The more I try to follow advice (from my doctor, from stupid books and parents who have been there before), the more stressed I get. When Jason puts her to bed, he just does it.

I'm impatient. Anxious for the day I can rationalize with her, to tell her that a warm bottle takes just a little longer than a cold one.

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Forgiveness and Stuff.

Adelyn and I made it through our first fight, and we're now getting along perfectly. I forgave her for her non-stop screeching the night before, the screeching that had me pulling out my hair and pleading, and she forgave me for not being able to figure out what was wrong.

Jason and I had some trouble getting her to sleep last night, too. We started the bedtime ritual at nine, and at midnight we were taking turns trying to solve the puzzle and stop the cries. Once she fell asleep, though, she slept for six and a half hours.

I still can't figure it out. There's no rhyme or reason to her night time ritual yet; the same thing that works one night infuriates her the next.

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Night Terror.

I think I bragged a little too much about our incredible sleeping baby. Adelyn spent the last week sleeping in consistent six, sometimes seven and a half hour stretches, and I let this fact be known. To everyone. People who asked and people who could care less.

Sleeping through the night is like the newborn holy grail. There are those women, the ones on BabyCenter or whatever forum, who just casually say, "Oh, she's just such a good sleeper. It just happened naturally." And when you've been up since three in the morning and have formula powder all over your pajama pants--the same ones you've been wearing for three days straight--or two huge wet spots on your shirt where your milk is leaking and you forgot to put in new breast pads, you want to take those women by the shoulders and shake them until that smug grin or emoticon wipes off their faces. Maybe this is just the sleep deprivation talking. But that's what I want to do to myself, two days ago, back when I thought I just might've figured the nighttime riddle out early.

We put her in her nursery for the first time on Saturday. I didn't think I'd be ready to put her in her own room this soon, but I realized I was barely sleeping, even when I was, since I could hear every one of her little grunts and snores. And her nursery is just steps away from our bedroom.

The first night we had her home, and I was in the depths of a sleep deprivation I hope I'll never find myself in again, we laid her in the Pack 'N Play and nervously tried to shut our eyes. I really couldn't, though. I tried to sleep on the side facing away from her, because otherwise I would have just stared at this strange, unpredictable creature I'd created snoring next to me. So, instead, I asked Jason every ten minutes if she was okay. Rather than turning over and looking for myself. If I looked, I'd want to stand up, go over to her, put my finger under her nose to make sure she was really breathing. I tortured Jason for at least two hours, making him sit up to look. And then, finally, the sun was up and neither of us had slept.

Six weeks later I've gotten oh-so-much better at just letting go of watching over her.

The first night she slept in her crib was that magical night where she slept for seven and a half hours, and I naively thought I'd stumbled upon that parenting holy grail so many blindly grasp at for months, even years.

I don't know what I was like when I was Adelyn's age; I do know, however, that I struggled for way too long with a need to sleep with my parents. I had an insanely active imagination as a kid, one where vindictive skeletons were rattling around in my kitchen and that distant beeping noise from the leaving room was a bomb a team of Nazis had assembled. I spent years trying to sleep by myself without concocting these wild fantasies. My parents tried everything; they bribed me to sleep through the night on my own, rationalized with me, explained the unlikelihood of Nazis in Middle Tennessee. I don't even remember when it stopped. Actually, I don't know if it ever did. I've just learned to better ignore the fear and focus on sleep.

I don't want Adelyn to go through the same thing. Not that it's preventable. The only thing my parents ever did wrong was encourage me to read and imagine as much as possible. But now that I have a child of my own and I get to try to fix whatever was wrong with my own childhood in her, I want to start early.

So at six weeks, she was going to sleep in her crib like a big girl.

Last night. Oh, last night. Jason and I gave her a bath (which she loves). We sang to her. Read to her. Swaddled her. Fed her one last time. She fell asleep at 11. At 2:30, I heard her crying over the monitor. I woke up, warmed her bottle, fed her with all the lights off. She ate four ounces and then burped like a champ. And then proceeded to cry for four more hours.

Nothing was working.

It got to the point I had hoped, prayed, it would never get to. When absolutely nothing was calming her and the screeching was starting to ricochet through my brain like nails down a chalkboard. I put her back in her crib. Turned off the lights. Shut the door. I walked outside to my back porch for exactly five minutes. I hope this doesn't qualify as "crying it out"; that really wasn't my intention. I just needed a minute--or five--to quiet myself.

When I went back upstairs, she was fast asleep.

Two hours later, I heard the crying again. I had just fallen back to sleep myself. She was fed and burped, and has now been asleep for three and a half hours.

I need a nap.

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Victory chant.

Seven and a half hours. Seven and a half hours! I'm repeating it over and over in my head. It's my new victory chant. It's a chant that means things are starting to work. Things are starting to fall into place. Jason and I are starting to sink into our new lives, after five weeks of blindly wading through these new waters.

The type-A part of my brain took over yesterday morning. I decided to keep a chart for just a week of Adelyn's daily routine, hoping that it would clue me in to her schedule. Because I know one's in there somewhere, I just have a hard time remembering it day after day.

So I frantically tried to keep up with when she slept, ate and pooped. And yesterday, of course, Adelyn decided to sleep in one-hour intervals and only eat 2 ounces at a time. It took until 9 p.m. for me to say screw it and focus on playing with her rather than running back to the kitchen to mark intake on my fridge. But I think I'll leave the barely-completed schedule up there for a while, maybe to remind myself that she's only five weeks old and will do as she damned-well pleases. Or maybe I'll just take a permanent marker and write "Seven and a half hours!" over all of it.

If you've ever had a newborn in your house you know how triumphant this feels. Jason and I had mastered a pretty decent rhythm over the past five weeks, but it was one of survival, not life. I'd been heading to bed around 10, while Jason stayed up with Adelyn until one. He'd then feed her one last time and bring her upstairs to the Pack 'N Play in our room. (This way, I'd get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep, or even just to myself.) Then I'd get up with Adelyn the next time she cried, usually around four or five in the morning, letting Jason sleep until 7 or 8 without interruption. While that was working, it also meant that Jason and I didn't get to actually go to bed together. And that's perfectly fine in the beginning, I think. As long as we were both functioning, breathing human beings with a newborn at home, we didn't have room to complain.

Last night, though, we took the plunge and disrupted the working schedule. We stayed up--together!--watched Lost--together!--gave Adelyn a bath and fed her one last time--together!--swaddled her and put her to sleep. This was at 11.

I woke up in a panic at 6:45 when I realized that Adelyn still hadn't cried. I jumped out of bed and ran to her bassinet, where she was just stirring from sleep, sucking on her fingers.

Seven and a half hours. Seven and a half!

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A One-Month Old's Itinerary.

I've come to understand that getting a one-month old on a schedule is a lot like trying to train Louie to talk. A fun idea, but next to impossible. Before Adelyn arrived I said funny things like, "I'll let her nap in her crib and sleep at night in the Pack 'N Play," and "We'll feed her every night at 10 and then read her a book before bed," or "I'll get work done while she sleeps."

Funny, funny things.

It turns out that Adelyn will sleep where she wants, when she wants. I can try to get work done while she sleeps, but as soon as her eyelids start to droop I'm confronted with a 10-page list of things I want to do--sleep? shower? write? read? clean?--and inevitably she'll wake up before I've barely had a chance to tackle the first task. I can bathe her 'til my fingers turn into raisins at night but it doesn't mean she'll sleep any better than if she was covered in her own filth.

(Keep in mind I'm talking about my daughter here, she who is perfectly content sitting in her own soiled diaper. I have to play the guessing game on the whole diaper-changing front.)

In another month or so I think I'll jump back on the schedule-train, mostly because I'm the sort of person that doesn't do so well without structure. I'd like to say I'm a free-spirit--it's certainly what I've always marketed myself as--but truthfully I'm happiest when I wake up at the same early time every morning, when I have certain landmarks throughout my day.

Adelyn's created her own sort-of schedule for the time being, and Jason and I have done a pretty good job, I think, at finding a compromise within it.

When Jason gets home from work, we eat dinner and spend a little while hanging out with each other while Adelyn naps. Sometimes we give her a bath (usually every two days or so) or we sing and play guitar for her. Then, around 10 or so, I go to sleep. Jason stays up with her until 1-ish (it's his only time throughout the day to really get one-on-one time with her), feeds her one more time, and then swaddles her and brings her up to our room, where she sleeps in a Pack 'N Play next to our bed. She--usually--will sleep until 5:30ish (today it was 6:30, but I don't want to jinx it), and I get up and feed her. Jason sleeps until 7:30 or 8 and goes to work. It's not perfect, but it's working. For now. I feel almost bad saying that we're both getting survivable rest with a newborn at home.

I thought it was supposed to be the night-time that made new parents want to rethink the whole procreating thing. Jason and I have found a pretty good rhythm, though, when the sun goes down. It's during the day that I feel so frazzled and constantly on-call.

The mornings are the only sort-of predictable thing. Adelyn's been staying awake for a good two or three hours after her first feeding, and this is the time I get the most interaction with her.

From this morning, for example:

And did you have any idea that when babies sneeze, you can actually hear a teeny, tiny, audible "achoo?" I can't get enough of her little achoos.

Adelyn had fallen asleep right before I started writing this. Writing took first place among my list of to-dos for the morning. And now that I'm done, she's awake and hungry. So the rest--like washing my face or finishing the laundry from yesterday--are forced onto the back-burner. Until the next nap.

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