I love my adorable daughter.
Let me rephrase.
I love my adorable, but difficult daughter.
Sleep still remains an unattainable goal for Ella. She falls asleep, we put her in her crib, and she's fine until around 12:30 or 1am. Then, she's up, screaming, until well after 4am. Sometimes later.
A few people have told us to give her a little bit of cereal before putting her to bed, because it might help her sleep better. We thought it would be a good idea, so we tried it.
The first night: success! She slept all night! So did we! Hooray! The curse is broken!
The second night: epic fail. She woke up around 12:30am, didn't go back down til somewhere after 4:30am.
Last night wasn't too bad. I decided to try without the cereal. She went down easier than usual. She woke up around 2am, but safely out again by 3:30am. Just an hour and a half. Not bad. AND she slept til 9am. To me, any morning she sleeps til 9am is W.O.N.D.E.R.F.U.L.
We're trying to get her down right now, well, Tom is. I'm in the living room blogging and watching Jerry Springer's dating show, Baggage. For those of you who haven't heard of this, I know what you're thinking: "Jerry Springer hosting a dating show? YES! Where are my tap shoes?!?!" (Side note: this one chick is crazy - she eats 3 boxes of chalk a day! What the?!?!? Where does Jerry find these people???)
So, today Ella was particularly difficult. She didn't want to eat or play. This kid always wants to eat! As soon as she woke up, "Nuh-nana, nuh-nana!" was all she said. I wanted to give her a break from the norm (oatmeal or rice cereal, mashed up fruit and milk) and decided to make her a cheese omelet.
One bite. She took one bite, then looked at me with a look on her face that said, "Why are you doing this to me?" It broke my heart.
I ate the omelet.
"Nuh-nana!"
"Okay, baby, Mommy will get you a banana." I peeled her a banana, sliced it up and put some on her high chair tray.
She ate about half, then the rest was sent to the floor. That's been our cue that she's not hungry anymore.
Well, I can't really say that she didn't want to play, because she played for a long time in her playpen, actually. I love to watch her when she's playing with her Elmo phone, real cell phone (minus the battery) and her yellow phone that sings songs. It's like she's her own little call center.
It wasn't until after her nap when she decided she didn't want to play anymore. She stood up in her playpen, she reached for me and Tom, she hurled toys at us. And let's not forget the super fun trail of endless screaming!
So, then I picked her up out of her pen and attempted to hold her for a while. That was a challenge. She's going through a "phase" (I think) where she wants to be flipped upside down all the time. I swear she's going to be a gymnast because I'm pretty sure she'd rather be upside down than right-side-up most of the time. And, when I've got her upside down, I need to remember to watch where her feet are; she likes to kick!
(Side note: OMG, watching the end of "Baggage", the guy's baggage is that he impregnated 9 women! Holy crap! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY!)
Anywho, so, when I tried to get her to stop flipping around like a tiny tree monkey, I tried to work with her on more words. (She can say "yummy" now, very cute!) Every word I said, she shook her little head, eyes tinkling with glee, tiny tooth-budded smile. She's doing the head-shaking thing with alarming frequency now, even more than that one blog I posted, if you can believe it.
I'm reminded of an episode of "Friends" where Carol and Susan go to pick up little Ben from Ross' apartment, and they ask Ross how he was doing.
Ross: I asked him if he wanted to eat, he said 'no'. I asked if he wanted to sleep, he said 'no'. I asked him what he wanted to do, he said 'no', so he's sweeping.
Cut to a shot of little Ben sweeping Ross' floor with a tiny yellow and red broom.
That's SO going to be Ella. If only she'd stand on her own longer than 10 seconds.
*sigh* I love my adorable daughter.
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