Sunday, March 25, 2007

Good Parenting 101

*Especially for those with new babies*: look and learn, folks. I'm here to enlighten, to educate.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Unpredictable

Y'know...I don't think I am ever going to understand babies. Last night, Daisy went to sleep at 7:30 and slept all night without needing any help from us. We were a little freaked out, and at 7 AM, when we were still hearing silence from the monitor, Mark went in and checked on her. There she was, lying pleasantly and quietly awake in her crib, with no fussing. Not only that, but she also took a nap of more than an hour yesterday and is currently taking one today that's lasted more than an hour. ????? I am NOT going to jinx myself by assuming this is her new pattern; I realize now that I don't understand the first thing about how any of this works, and that what's true one day can be entirely untrue the next. Huh.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Excusable wifely bragging

Mark got a phone call from the dean of his college today, officially promoting him to Associate Professor. YEAH Mark!

Addendum

Last night, after hiking, Daisy slept for 8 hours without needing any assistance or intervention of any kind from us. She then woke up briefly, nursed, and slept for 3 more hours. I think I have found my preferred method of sleep training... if only I could go on a rigorous hike every single day. Hmmmm.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Daisy goes hiking

...on San Bruno Mountain with her parents and her great-aunt and great-uncle, Barbara and Andy. She gets a good view of a hawk, and experiences the backpack for the first time:





--Always the photographer, never the photographed
PS
Could YOU sleep-train that little face? C'mon, be honest....

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Milestone

I'm not sure whether this is a milestone for me or for Daisy, but it certainly is one: this is her first night sleeping alone in her own room, in her crib. Till now she's been sleeping in a Graco Pack and Play bassinet next to our bed.

This is something I've been wanting to do for a long time, and sensing was the right decision for a long time, so I wasn't expecting to feel so sad. When I looked at her empty bassinet sitting next to our bed just now I felt heartbroken.

She is sleeping alone in her crib right now, and we'll see how long she makes it. She's been waking up a lot lately, crying and wanting to be in our bed. So we'll see. I feel so shaky inside that I don't know how tough I can be yet, and she's sick with the same cold I have so I don't think it's great timing to get really tough.

But this wondering is connected to the larger confusions I've been having lately about what it means to be a good mother; who to believe? The experts who say you need to be tough to be kind, or the ones who tell you to follow your own instincts, whatever they may be, and regardless of being told you are creating "bad habits" or "bad sleep associations" for your child? I have been swinging back and forth, back and forth, on whether or not to try a sleep training method with Daisy. There are days I feel more or less decided that it's not for me; then we'll have a really rough night and in the middle of it, I swear to myself that I WILL get up the gumption to try sleep training.

I don't know what to do, but whatever it is, it's going to have to wait till I'm not sick anymore and she's not sick anymore. It's too hard to make a big change under these conditions. And I want to give her at least a bit of a chance to get used to her new room and new crib before getting too hard on her.

And then? I don't know. I honestly don't believe that people who do sleep training with their babies are doing them any harm, and I DO believe that they are teaching them good habits for the future, if they are successful. And yet I still am not sure I can do it, nor am I sure I believe that I am doing her any harm if I DON'T choose to do the sleep training.

Sometimes I wish I were a more decisive sort of person. Anyway, till I am better, the decision is postponed. The positive side of all this wishywashyness is that I feel such a powerful love for Daisy and desire to do the right thing for her that it kind of blows my mind.

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Sentence of the day

I do feel bad for laughing, but the student himself (who was very sweet) thought the sentence was hilarious once I explained what it meant.

"Unfortunately, children all over this country who are afflicted with cerebral palsy will never realize their dream of immolating America's great baseball heroes."

I blame Spellcheck.

EDIT:
In case it isn't clear from the sentence, the paper was arguing that it was unfair that the American dream as specifically manifest in the ability to rise up from obscurity and become a sports hero was denied to people with severe disabilities and "life-threatening illnesses." I have to admit that I was having a small problem with this thesis before I got to the immolation, and was trying to figure out how to politely frame the potential objections to the logic of it...so that when I got to the scores of youth with cerebral palsy dreaming of setting Barry Bonds on fire, it was very hard not to chuckle and I am proud of myself that I did not.

Monday, March 05, 2007

Prefaced with an apology

I hope this doesn't offend anyone, but... this morning, zombie-like with exhaustion as usual, I found myself thinking about how much sleep I will be able to get eventually, when I am on my deathbed.

Apologizing

A few days ago, I had the desire to apologize to someone and I decided not to. It was a big decision, since I am such an apologizer. I would venture to say I am an over-apologizer. There have been people in my life who begged me to stop apologizing. And I notice that I sometimes begin a sentence with "Sorry" almost as a reflex, even if there's really nothing to apologize for.

So I decided not to apologize this time and it's been weighing on my mind a bit. It's not as though this person and I are in a conflict and she is expecting an apology. I don't have any reason at all to believe she is. It's in my own mind that I might owe her an apology, and the old Sarah would have apologized profusely and time-consumingly.

Now that I'm not apologizing, though, it strikes me that the effort NOT to apologize is sucking up a whole lot of energy... mightn't it be easier just to apologize? Then I could stop thinking about the decision not to apologize, which seems to be taking much thought. Hmmm.