Matt called me at work this morning to tell me a little urchin had come into our room to wake him up. Not the 6 year old male one. The other one. My baby. The one I haven't yet moved out of her crib because she never tried very hard to get out of it, it was a safe place to stash her during showers, and because she's a constant whirl of motion whilst sleeping and if we had moved her into a toddler bed she would have just ended up sleeping on the floor.
My baby figured out how to crawl out of her crib, onto the end table, and safely maneuver herself onto the floor (he watched her do it later). She figured this out the day immediately after she figured out how to scramble up the kitchen chairs. She's also bending her arms when she runs now, like a little girl - no longer my baby with her arms straight out, zombie style.
My heart is bursting and I don't know if it's from pride or fear of the trouble she'll get into at 3am, or fear I'll never sleep again, listening for her door, or fear I'll never sleep again because now we'll have TWO kids kicking us in the face in the middle of the night, or fear that she's growing up and starting school in the fall and here were are, about to take off on this grand new adventure. And I can't figure out what to pack for it.
[Do you remember the dream in college where you had to take a final for the class you'd forgotten you'd signed up for and never attended? And you can't figure out which room the test is in? I know I'm not the only one to have that, right? Well now my stress dreams are about packing: Can't find the right things to pack, can't find a suitcase, it won't all fit, can't pack fast enough... A shrink would have field day with me.]
I DO remember those dreams and the insane ones I had, too, when I worked as a waitress. It will all be all right. It will.
ReplyDeleteI just had a variation on that dream...I signed up for several classes that all met in the same time slot so I could only go to each one some of the time. And I was juggling madly and failing all of them.
ReplyDeletewhat could that mean?
The bed thing..ugh. We had a doorknob cover on the inside of Abby's door, so she was trapped in her but she just figured out how to pull it off...not sure what's next. Hook and eye on the outside? I really don't want her wandering, even if she does find her brother and watch TV with him.
Oh, no, escape from the crib! This is one of those growing older things that I'm happy to resist. Biffle keeps wanting us to transition Maybelle to a toddler bed, and I'm insisting that she not only stay in the crib, but that she has the crib enclosed in a zip-up tent--originally purchased to keep the cats out of the crib, but with the convenient side-effect that it keeps the person in the crib.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't going to work forever, I know. At what point does it become inhumane for me to zip my daughter up into a tent at night?
Congratulations to your daughter for making your life so much more challenging!
We moved Ben to a Big Boy Bed last winter, but bizarrely enough, he almost never gets out of it of his own volition -- I think they trained him at daycare to Stay Put. As desirable as this seems, it's confounding our attempts at night toilet training.
ReplyDeleteYeah, been there, dreamed that. And the travel dream, too. Another weird recurring stress dream that I have is about moving. Sometimes I have the other side of the college dream -- I'm the professor and I don't know where the classroom is or what I'm teaching and I don't have the book. Same deal, really, just the other side of the desk.
Feel free to e-mail me: julia.wilsonATfredonia.edu. We haven't chosen a name sign for Ben yet, because (a) his name is short and easy to finger-spell, (b) when his equipment is off (which is when signing is more critical) he's the only deaf dude in the room, so he knows we're talking to him, and (c) I've been intimidated by the Deaf injunction against hearing parents choosing a name sign for a deaf child -- apparently, this is supposed to be endowed upon the child by a respected Deaf elder when the time is ripe. My husband wants to go ahead and choose one, to heck with cultural sensitivity, so I suppose we will soon.
ReplyDeleteWhat a little Houdini!
ReplyDeleteI'm dreading the day that Miss B figures out how to open doors--then all thoughts of me having peace of mind while showering are in serious jeopardy.