It's not that I haven't tried to blog since November 19th. Really, I have. It's just that there exist only so many ways to moan pitifully, "I'm so tired and Emerson will not let me sleep or, indeed, even out of her sight" in an even vaguely entertaining fashion. And I think I just used that one up.
The truth is that Emerson is kicking our ass.
She doesn't look capable of it, does she?
Oh, but looks can be deceiving. She's darling--everyone tells us so--but she turns into a raging beast with a kind of astonishing regularity. She's perfectly happy so long as either Chip or I is holding her, but failing that--held by a grandparent, sitting in the carseat, playing in her new jumperoo, lying on her activity mat--we've got about 15 minutes, max, before she starts to get upset. The doctor says she's "neurologically advanced!" to have separation and stranger anxiety this soon, which is a nice way of saying that she wants us and only us, 24 hours a day.
The bitch of it is that she has been a total reverse baby. As a newborn, she was so sweet and docile that I actually called the doctor's office to ask if a baby could sleep too much. (I look back on that call now and can't decide whether laughter or weeping is more appropriate.) And I was prepared for the worst. I remember Connery's newborn days in a sort of terrible, weepy fog, and I swore to myself that I would be prepared this time for the craziness that comes with a new infant. When she turned out to be an easy baby, I felt like we had gotten really lucky and that even better days were ahead. I wasn't counting on her sleeping less at night, crying more during the day, and generally moving into what I would classify as "challenging baby" territory seemingly overnight.
Of course, karma being what it is, it's a sure bet that we brought some of this on ourselves. As much as we swore up and down to our fellow new parent-friends that Connery's sleep habits were just a happy accident, in our hearts we truly believed that he slept through the night from 12 weeks of age on because we had done something right--something, crucially, replicable.
The universe laughed. And sent us Emerson of the Micronappers.
Given the separation and stranger anxiety and the difficulty with sleeping, you can all imagine just how well the newly-instituted three mornings a week in childcare are going. Not. Well.
The two care providers in the infant room (where the baby-to-care-provider ratio is basically 2:1) are experts at baby soothing, and they've got nothing. The only thing that soothes her is when Chip comes up from his office to visit or when she falls into an exhausted heap on one of the providers' laps. Not exactly sustainable.
We're basically at a loss. She can't come to work with me anymore, at least not every day, because she won't let me get anything done. (I'm writing this with the carseat beside me, listening to her grouse.) But she certainly can't spend hours upon hours crying. We need a break, and she's unwilling to give it.
And with that, I must remove her from the carseat to stop her crying and then duct-tape her to my chest so that she will be happy and I can get something done.