11 Months

Man it feels weird hopping back on here and writing a post. It's evidently only been a month since I last blogged but it feels like lightyears ago. Living in quarantine on top of being sleep deprived has created such a strange reality to be in.  Time is so hard to keep track of. It feels like a million things have happened between my 10 month update and now. A couple of my family members have had confirmed cases of COVID-19. Amazingly symptoms have only shown up in the two people who were confirmed and no one else in their household, including the immune compromised and elderly. Their symptoms were also pretty mild, even compared to the seasonal flu (which btw, I've never had the flu *knock on wood* but that shit does not sound mild to me). I actually hope my family and I contracted it and gotten over it (without spreading to anyone else) with no issues so we can hopefully build an immunity to it. I have had an on and off very mild sore throat and slight headache but that is most likely allergy related. Natalie coughed a couple times the other day. Vanessa felt extremely hot in the middle of the night a couple nights ago and she seems a bit crankier and like she isn't feel great at times but that could be because of a million things.

I can't believe I didn't write it's own post for this but baby girl is walking now! She really started taking multiple steps 10 days into 10 months old. She isn't doing it full time but she is getting good and confident. She'll look so proud and happy and we'll cheer and clap and she'll clap with us when she walks for us. It's so sweet. She doesn't like shoes and even seems to dislike socks so she is always barefoot now.  She is still such a light sleeper and wakes up sooo much and so easily. She is also getting harder and harder to put down for naps/bedtime. I don't know what to do about it. She's hard work for sure but so precious and sweet. I can't think of much that's new with her aside from walking. She does a cute thing where she wrinkles her nose and she learned to shake her head no when she doesn't want something. She also really likes crawling under people's legs and doing something we call "baby yoga" where she peeks under her own legs upside down. The lack of sleep is really driving me crazy. A typical night is like this: takes an hours of rocking to finally get her to sleep. Then you have to hold her for an hour before daring to try and put her down. Then you finally sneak off and she wakes up 10-15 minutes later. The cycle of putting her down and her waking up continues until you just give up and go to bed. Then she wakes up every hour to couple of hours, sometimes needing a bottle, sometimes needing a snuggle/to be rocked. Around 3-5 am she'll start bouncing around and be wide awake. This takes more rocking for 45 minutes to an hour. Then she wakes up for good between 6-7:30 (7:30 is rare) and is up for the morning. Naps are no better. She needs to be rocked to sleep and held the entire time or she will wake right up. This results in a non-stop 24/7 no break ever kind of parenting. I know this sounds crazy and I never thought I would ever consider it but I am thinking about hiring a nanny a few days a week for a couple of hours. Matt is great but he works non stop and needs a break too. I feel like I constantly give him breaks and he sleeps in and I do the absolute brunt of child caring and am starting to lose my mind. His mom is my only real solace and I feel like I use her way too much as is. The other day I was so frustrated that Matt was taking forever to come upstairs to relieve me of baby duty that I took Vanessa down to him. On my way down I did not see the glass spice jar that was lying on the steps that Vanessa threw down earlier right before we took a walk. (I was in a rush and had my hands full trying to get out the door and just felt defeated that I totally forgot about it being there.) Matt obviously didn't see it either when he went down. Anyway, I slipped on it and somehow Vanessa flew out of my arms. I immediately started screaming and crying, freaking the fuck out that my baby was tumbling face first down the stairs. I couldn't tell you how I fell or how many steps we went down but thankfully she was okay. She cried for probably 2 minutes and then was her normal self. I was so scared and so so upset. I never imagined if something like that happened I would lose such control. I always imagine people in those scenarios as being less good parent's than I am. How the fuck would your instincts not kick in and you hold your baby even tighter? It happened so suddenly that I couldn't give you a single detail of the events. Just that I knew I slipped and dropped my baby and felt horrible about it. It was accident that I have learned a lesson from. I hope my head isn't ever too clouded to check the stairs before carrying her up/down them. So many fatal accidents can occur and I'm so damn relieved my baby is okay. 

I hope this post doesn't make me sound like less of a mother. I love that little girl more than life itself and think the world of her. She's the best and I can't believe she is turning 1 in 1 month, ahh!