The Chair

The Chair has become the bane of my existence. It's the gold swivel rocker in Brittany's room where I spend at least two hours a day rocking her to sleep -- late morning nap, afternoon nap, and bedtime. I get numb from having 25 pounds of baby stretched across my lap for so long.

It's been getting harder and harder to get her to sleep at night. Sometimes when I've rocked her to sleep, she'll pop awake as soon as I stand up from The Chair to put her in her crib, and then I'm back to square one. Some nights it takes an hour and a half -- I'm not kidding.

Anyway, I've been thinking about eliminating one of her daytime naps so that she'll go to sleep earlier at night, say 9:30 instead of 11:00. It would be wonderful to have that extra free time.

So I started yesterday by skipping her afternoon nap, but it didn't work because she climbed up on my lap at 7:00 and fell asleep. I only let her sleep about 15 minutes and made her wake up, but still had a hard time getting her to sleep last night.

Today I skipped her late morning nap and let her decide when to climb up on my lap and fall asleep, which she did at 3:00. Then I went and put her in her crib, but she only slept for an hour so I thought I'd have it easy tonight. I was wrong.

I made Mikey feel sorry for me so he rocked Brittany to sleep tonight. I was so happy -- a whole day with NO time spent in The Chair. Woo-hoo! Grandpa rocks! Then we went out to the garage for a celebratory smoke but our delight was cut short by the friggin' baby monitor.

(***sigh***)

So, I rocked Brittany to sleep again, and when I stood up to put her in her crib she woke up again, so I rocked her to sleep again, and I am damned tired of rocking.

Anyway, there is good news: Brittany's brushing her teeth now! Or rather, I am and she's letting me! To know how truly amazing this is, you have to understand that this child won't hardly let me stick a finger in her mouth to check for new teeth (only four so far), so I wondered how on earth I was gonna manage it.

She loves to copy whatever we do, though, so when she takes her bath I leave her in her safety seat to watch me while I go brush my teeth at the sink, and then I brush hers and she loves it! I'm not sure if it's because it makes her think she's a big girl like Grammy or because she likes the taste of her Strawberry Shortcake toothpaste but, as long as it gets the job done, who cares?