I left Scout at home with DH while I went to my weekly Weight Watchers meeting last night, per usual. She didn't even notice I was gone until she heard me coming through the door. You'd think she'd be all smiles and happy to see me, but instead her little heart was broken as the realization hit her that I had been missing from the house for the last hour and a half. Babies are funny.

She was having a tough time snapping out of fuss-butt mode, so I did what normally makes her happy and sat down to nurse her. After a while of checking my e-mail and stalking blogs, I realized that she was not being her normal squirmy self so I looked down and saw a sleeping baby. Crap. Here it was, 7:30 PM, a whole hour or two before her normal bedtime and she was asleep in my lap with a fairly wet diaper, banana-oatmeal-peach baby food crusted on her cheeks, and no socks on her ice-cold piggies. I needed to get her ready for bed, but I couldn't bring myself to unlatch her. For one thing, it would've REALLY upset her. But more importantly, waking her from a little 20-minute power nap at 7:30 PM would've pretty much ensured that she would not go back down until midnight. I swear, everytime she falls asleep for 10 minutes in the car on the way back from the grocery store, her would-be 2 hour afternoon nap is completely shot. Power naps are great for adults, but for babies...they are of the devil, I tells ya.

So, I did what any innovative mom who had suddenly realized that she might be able to have her baby in bed by 8:00 so she could watch the new episode of Grey's Anatomy would do. All while she was peacefully latched onto my boob, I proceeded to get up, move to the couch, change her diaper with one hand, and walk to her bedroom to lay her down. I laid with her for a few minutes while she got settled in and then I tucked a blanket around her icy toes. To hell with wiping her face off, I thought to myself as I proudly waltzed into the living room to announce to DH that the baby was in bed.

I had just enough time to fix a snack and get back into the living room before my show came on. Aahhhh. Mommy time.

But it came with a price. The early bedtime got her internal clock all out of whack and she decided it would be fun to get up to play at 12.45 AM. I refused to turn the light on, for fear of encouraging her insanely cute playful behavior. She would sit up and crawl away and I would scoop her up and lay her back down on the mattress so I could nurse her back to sleep. After about the 10th time, I just started rubbing her back and legs and she went limp like a stunned rabbit. After a few minutes, she would snap out of the trance and try to crawl off as she blew raspberries and made sweet squealy noises. I would not back down. It's freakin' 1:00 and you are NOT going to play, you adorable little girl, you! I kept laying her back down and rubbing her little back and belly and limbs. She loved it and would lay there all calm and zonked for a few minutes and then would remember that she was on a mission to crawl off the edge of the mattress and the process would start all over again. She finally fell asleep. Now I am up blogging about it instead of sleeping. Stupid, stupid mommy.

Labels: baby sleep, general complaining