Note: I was pondering last night, and I began to wonder... How many of the itty bitty details of my daily life with Amelia will I actually remember in a year? In two years? Ten years? Fifty years? I decided not to risk it and record all these little details. I've decided to write an "A Day in the Life" post every couple months or so. These are mainly for me, then... but, as always, I am willing to share with die-hard members of the Official Amelia Dilts Fan Club.
In the morning, we wake up. It might be me, or maybe it's Amelia, who wakes up first, but we do both eventually wake up. When Amelia wakes up, she's in her very bestest mood: smiles everywhere! It's cute. I've also noticed that if she's the first to wake up, she doesn't really rush me. She'll chew on her fists and maybe look at the light streaming in from between the blinds, maybe make a few soft noises. And she'll certainly wiggle some. When I finally wake up, I say, "Good morning, Amelia!" and she turns to look at me and cracks open a large gummy smile as if to say, "Good morning, mom! I've been waiting for you to wake up!"
I play with her a bit before we we get up off of our mattress on the floor, usually pretending to eat her tummy with a loud OM NOM NOM NOM! Amelia sometimes laughs when I do this, but usually she just opens her mouth wide into a silly gummy grin.
I scoop her up and stumble off into the hallway where I made a makeshift changing table out of one of our cupboards. I have this sneaky suspicion that Amelia enjoys being naked, and would go diaperless1 if she was in charge. To keep her occupied during the diaper change, I sing to her. I think her favorite "diaper change song" is "Build Me Up Buttercup".2 I put her into a daytime outfit, which if things go according to plan, will last all day.3
Then, if Becca's around, I hand Amelia over to her so I can pee and eat breakfast (my top two breakfast foods are chocolate Cheerios and English muffin sandwiches). I don't usually get to do much else in this time before Amelia makes it clear it's Mommy Time, but if I do get more time, I check my email and Facebook.
By this time Amelia is a little annoyed that I was purposely ignoring her while I attempt to scarf down the remaining Cheerios in my bowl (I swear, when I poured in the milk she was super happy). Then I get comfy on the couch with Amelia on my lap. Even before I get out the boob, she knows it's coming and shuts up promptly, eagerly head-bobbing into my shirt, possibly complaining if I have difficulty getting the shirt out of the way fast enough.
I know she's done when she does one of two things... she'll either start leisurely playing with the nipple with her gums, which can hurt... or she'll do my favorite thing. With the boob still in her mouth, she'll peek up at me and smile real wide, and coo at me. "Hoo, hoo hooooo!" she'll say. And my heart will melt.
Then it's play time. We have lots of games we play. First I might put her on her back and OM NOM NOM her belly a little more. Maybe we'll play Patty-Cake, or This Little Piggy. Maybe we'll play the game where we make funny faces at each other for a whole fifteen minutes. Or similarly, we might make funny noises at each other for a whole fifteen minutes. Amelia has recently discovered that gurgling spit in a variety of ways can make a myriad sounds. She's also shrieking a lot. If I'm not paying close enough attention I might mistake this for unhappiness, but I'm realizing that often enough she is just experimenting to see what sorts of sounds she can make.
In any case, after a little play time, she'll eventually get unhappy. I don't know if it's because she's getting overstimulated, or if she's just fed up with her inability to do... whatever it is she was trying to do. I think Amelia does not find babyhood very becoming for someone such as herself. Really. I get the feeling she thinks she should be able to do everything perfectly.
I nurse her back to calmness. This takes anywhere from thirty seconds to five minutes. Then it's playtime again.
This time I might pull out a toy. It seems that Amelia has only recently become interested in toys. For a while she wouldn't even look at them... she much preferred to look at people. Just during this last week, she started reaching out for these newly-discovered toys, and she is starting to practice grasping skills.4 We also spend some time "reading" books. She has four books. One is all black and white. Two of them are soft books, and one of them is interactive and squeaks and moves and stuff. The newest book is all about red. It even has a big hole in the pages that she likes to put her hand through.
She will eventually get upset again, so I'll nurse her once more. Perhaps this time her eyes will roll back in her head and her eyelids will flutter madly. This means it's nap time. She'll nurse to sleep and nap in my lap (still attached to my chest) for maybe half an hour.
When she wakes up, maybe we'll practice standing. She is particularly fond of standing (with our help, of course). She reminds me a little of Godzilla when we play this game. She is less fond of practicing sitting up on her own, but she is warming up to the idea. James says that on Monday she sat up unsupported for an entire three seconds! Oooo!
If I'm brave, I'll do tummy time with her. She doesn't really like it very much, but if I catch her in her very, very best mood, she'll put up with it for a few minutes. Maybe. A friend just let us borrow a colorful flashy light to help make tummy time less torturous. Amelia does seem to like this toy. We can get her to do a weak mini push up for a few seconds using the flashy light method. And then she'll invariably become completely distraught and need more comforting via nursing.
Then more play time! And so on and so forth. In the afternoon, Amelia gets really cranky. She makes tired eyes, but isn't really falling asleep at the breast. She rubs her face, tries to bury her head into my chest. It's time for a real nap. Upstairs to bed we go! I lie down and let Amelia lie alongside me, nursing until she falls asleep. I'll usually fall asleep too, and if not, it is at least restful to lie down. It is not uncommon for her to sleep for three or four hours, all without letting go of the nipple.
After waking up, we do a little more of the alternating playtime and nursing (with possible nap) until James gets home. Then I eagerly pass the baby to him; it seems by now Amelia tires of my antics and is ready for something different, and James is certainly different. James is more vigorous when he plays with her... if he plays with her. Sometimes it takes him a while to wind down after a long day of using his brain. During this wind-down process, he will probably be found at the computer, bouncing a possibly completely unconscious puddle of baby.
I try to read my scriptures and such while James is on baby duty. We'll do our partner scripture study, and then when I'm all ready for bed, I settle onto our gloriously comfy mattress. James puts the baby next to me, and she nurses. There's a good chance she'll nurse herself to sleep. If not, James will usually bounce her on the ball until she falls asleep, and then redeposits her next to me.
Nighttime is calm and peaceful. Amelia is so fond of sucking that she sometimes stays attached to me the entire night. It is good that I have found a way to be comfortable lying like that all night, so I sleep through this. Sometimes, though, she falls off the nipple when she gets into a deep sleep and stays deeply asleep for many hours.
Amelia does kind of wake up in the night5, but she almost never wakes up fully. If she's still attached to me, I might wake up only because she's noisily gulping down milk. It can sound like she's happily drowning. James is less fond of this sound, because he prefers to not wake up at all in the night. Eventually, Amelia is done eating and falls back asleep, still sucking at the "empty" boob, just for the pleasure of sucking. If she lost the nipple in the night, no problem. She makes a halfhearted whimper or two, I'm instantly awake, I guide the nipple to her, she gulps happily, and I probably fall back asleep before she's even done.
We sleep soundly.
Love and lots and lots of milk (best stuff in the world, I hear),
Jenna and Amelia
1 I was surprised to learn that this is actually possible, provided you are with your baby 24/7. Before diapers were widely available (can you imagine how costly cloth diapers would be for those in poverty?), it seems that parents relied on what is now called "elimination communication" to know when their babies need to go. And then they just pulled off the baby's pants, held the baby over a good spot and let them go. They might even cue the baby by making a sound (like "psssss!" or "pee-pee!") to tell the baby it's time to relieve themselves. It still sounds to me like psychic superpowers, but apparently it's possible. It is, however, really hard to do in today's society because usually modern-day mothers unavoidably have to be gone at least some of the time. I'm too scared to try it, despite Amelia's apparent nakedness preferences.↩
2 That may sound odd, but I could swear she much prefers that I sing that song at diaper change time. She gives funny looks if I sing it when she's not naked.↩
3 Am I the only mother on planet Earth who thinks playing dress-up with baby is dumb? I think I must be. I can't count the times I've heard someone say, "Aw, such a cute outfit. Isn't it your favorite thing to dress her up in lots of cute outfits?" ...↩
4 Amelia is a test subject in a motor skills study. The researchers are particularly interesting in reaching and grasping skills. So far Amelia has not obliged the researchers even once in demonstrating her reaching abilities. One of the Relief Nursery workers who comes over once a week was telling me that before a baby actually succeeds in reaching for and grasping an object, you can see them trying to do it, but failing. Apparently they stare at the object intently then flail for it. I was watching for this, but I never saw it. Instead, I just realized that her hands often magically end up on the toy when I dangle it in front of her. Apparently she didn't want to bother with reaching until she felt she was good enough at it. Ha.↩
5 Am I the only mother on planet Earth who isn't eagerly anticipating the day when Amelia finally goes through an entire night without waking up once? One of the most common questions I get from people is: "Is she sleeping through the night yet?" I usually don't feel like launching into a long discussion about how she isn't, but I don't care, and I'm not even going to bother trying to discourage it because that will make her miserable and disturb my sleep way more than letting her sleep attached to me all night, and how else can I make this an epic run-on sentence? So, instead of having a long conversation, I just say, "Yes. From the very beginning, she's slept through most nights entirely." Even though, technically, that's not true. I imagine that if I had ever attempted to make Amelia sleep by herself in a bassinet or crib, James and I both would have gotten only two hours of sleep every night.↩
No comments:
Post a Comment