Learning to let go

Of control, that is.

I'm a planner and live and die by a schedule.  Having a baby has taught me or is in the process of teaching me to let go and be more flexible.

Several friends recommended the book, Babywise, to me.  It's basically a guide to help your baby sleep throughout the night and has an emphasis on scheduled feedings with a little parent intuition rather than feeding on demand.

Anyway, you'd think it'd be right up my alley,  but babies give zero fucks about schedule.  I tried so hard and stressed so much that Baby Girl was not staying on schedule and wouldn't nap for long enough.  I felt like such a failure that the formula of Eat, Wake, Sleep was not working for me.  One and a half hour naps were only lasting 45 minutes for me.  I was timing naps and playtime and feedings and it was driving me crazy and adding to my stress.  I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong, but you know what?  All babies are different.

For my own sanity, I had to stop.  If she's only napping for 45 minutes, I should be glad she got that nap in.  If it takes me 30 minutes of crying to get her to sleep, then it's ok.  If I'm creating sleep habits and sleep associations, I'll deal with breaking them later.  Right now, I'm only concerned that she is happy, gaining weight, and generally healthy.

*breathes in*
*exhales*

Pretty Pleased

If you've ever spent any time with my mom, you know she's a little (a lot) OCD.  I think I picked up a little of that from her.

I got a manicure and pedicure on Sunday.  A sweet little treat for myself away from the baby.  Thanks hubster.  Usually the place I go to is amazing, both manicure (shellac) and pedicure last forever.  My luck ran out.  I had chipped my big toe sometime during the night and saw it during my middle of the night feeding of Baby Girl.

I was more upset that it lasted less than 24 hours, but that giant chip just ate and ate and ate away at me.  It's a good thing that I knew the name of the color because 9 out of 10 times I get this color.  It's China Glaze's Flip Flop Fantasy.  Before going back to bed, I googled where they sell China Glaze and instructions on how to fix a chip.

After my morning run and feeding Baby Girl, we made a field trip to Sally Beauty supply where I spent $27 to fix a chip on a $25 pedicure!  I bought the nail polish, a good top coat, pure acetone, and a nail buffer.  I justify all this because I needed most of those items anyway and can now do my own pedicures, but not totally forgo them.

I spent about 15 minutes fixing it and I'm pretty pleased with the results.

Baby Girl and I also stopped by Target because it's on the way home and returned one of the onesies I bought (we kept the bigger one) and I bought some pants and a hat for her on clearance.  It's Target, you never leave empty handed whether you want to or not.

I Just Can't

I don't even know if that is even proper English, but I just can't deal with my mom sometimes.  She's your typical Asian parent where everything is too expensive and should be free.

Case in point:

We talked about seeing the Lion King when it comes to San Diego.  I think my brother put the idea in her head.  I saw it with said brother and some friends in Costa Mesa last year.  It was good.  She asked how much I paid and said $50.  They weren't the best seats (in the top most section), but you can still see and I enjoyed it.

In San Diego, it's in the San Diego Civic theater which is where we saw the Nutcracker this past Christmas.  I showed her where we sat and said they were good seats.  For Lion King, I think they were going for $80.  She asked how much I paid for the seats for the Nutcracker.  It's a completely different show, but the same seat, so the price should be the same... local ballet company vs touring Broadway show.  Yep, totally get it!

I show her the cheapest tickets on the Ticketmaster site.  They are either in the farthest away from the stage and to the far corners or are listed as seats with sight obstructions.  Duh, they ARE the cheapest tickets!

She just scoffs.  Who would pay for those seats?  Who would pay for any seats?!?!

I'm done.  I just can't.

Discovery!

It's amazing what one can learn when one reads the manual that comes with things!

Yesterday was a sleeping struggle for all of us.  I was completely wiped out from a 2 mile run, then 3 mile walk and Baby Girl was just not into napping.  She had one good nap and I was dying for a nap.  I should have taken the nap when she napped like they say you should, but I was researching day care options.

Anyway, she skipped over her 7 pm nap and after 1.5 hours of trying to get her to nap, I gave up and fed her where she promptly fell asleep while nursing.  She didn't nurse for long, so I was convinced she would be up in 2 hours, but surprisingly she made it to 2:30 am!  When I heard her over the monitor, I went to mute it so that the crying didn't wake up the hubster.  I hit something that made the camera turn off.  After I fed Baby Girl and put her back in her crib, I had to figure out what the heck I did.

I pulled up the manual online and was able to get the monitor to work again.  I also found that the monitor has a power saving function where it sleeps until it registers a noise and turns itself back on.  That's great because I've been putting a towel over it to block the light when I sleep.

Something I never would have known about if I hadn't accidentally turned off the camera.

If I had a nickel...

For every time Egg Roll gets locked in the  nursery, I'd have a lot of nickels. 

Egg Roll loves to follow me around the house. Wherever I'm at, she's sure to be right behind me or in a location where she can watch me. So every time I'm in the nursery, she's under the bed. She used to be on the bed, but we got a new chair which is too short for her to use as a launching pad on to the bed. She is not pleased. 

Anyway, every time I put the baby down and leave the room, Egg Roll is a bit too slow to follow or too wary of me telling her to get out that she inevitably gets locked in. Then after 10 minutes and we realize that she is "missing", we let her out. 

So annoying. I expect my dogs to be relatively self sufficient at this point. Well as self sufficient as a dog can be.