She's asleep!

As of this second, the Peanut is asleep for her afternoon nap. And she fell asleep by herself. Sure, it may have taken 30 minutes of fussing and crying... but she did it. I'm very proud of her. I have to remember not to throw too much at her at once. I thought that maybe she'd enjoy having an arm free of her swaddle. She couldn't handle it so I had to take her arm away. After that, though, and a few rounds of "drop the paci" and she's out. Yes! The poor dear is portrayed as a bad sleeper. That isn't true. She's just a bad PM napper. She sleeps at night just great (usually I wake her up for a feeding) and AM nap has been going great. I'm just greedy. I like having more time to get stuff done, like laundry. Or Facebook :) Of course, she needs a nap. She's so tired. So it's win-win.

We've been having a difficult week. We upset her apple cart Saturday by taking her to Lancaster for a visit. Bob wanted to pick up some of his dad's mementos. We then stopped by the grandparent's house. This meant that she didn't have any real naps. Just an occasional cat nap here and there. And she only seems to fall asleep in the car when we are 25 minutes away from our destination. This made Sunday a battle. And then Monday, for some reason, was a real problem for me. I totally crashed. I don't know if it was hormonal, being tired, or what, but I felt like I was the crappiest mom in the world and that I had no business being Peanut's mommy. She started to cry and then I just let loose with my own tears. I think this perplexed her and she stopped crying. I don't know. I feel better today. I'm back to the mantra that I'm the best mom for her. It's tough. Being a mom is so hard. You want to do so well for your kids. You want to give them the best start in life possible - all the tools that they need to be a happy, healthy, functioning adult. I guess it makes sense that you would start to doubt your ability to do this - especially when you start to question how happy, healthy and functioning of an adult you are. I know this is all ridiculous consciously. But I have to admit that it's there inside somewhere. Floating around. Ready to bubble up to the surface when I least expect it. I mean, I've been cruising along. Aside from one day early on where I hit a bottom (I was exhausted, hardly ate and still recovering from my surgery) I thought the baby blues weren't going to hit me. I thought it was because we were too busy dealing with other difficult issues - I couldn't even focus on what I was feeling or not feeling. But I'm not going to get myself down even more because of Monday. I think it's normal for mothers to feel this way. A lot is going on - physically, emotionally.

Then Tuesday wasn't too much better. I had to take her to the doctor's solo for two vaccinations. Don't even get me started on that whole topic, which totally scares me. Anyway, usually Bob goes with us, but he can't keep taking days off for this sort of thing. He has to work. So I took her myself. It took a lot to keep it together (so I could drive home). Seeing her little body get stuck with the needles - and then her crying was just so hard on me. Seeing her in pain just kills me. I don't know what I'm going to do when she's older and starts feeling emotional pain. Ugh. I need to get tough.

She kind of did this cool pre-crawl thing today. I put her on her stomach for the dreaded tummy time and she kicks and kicks her legs. At one point, she kind of propelled herself a teeny bit. Of course, she's a ways away from actual crawling. She's got a lot of upper body stuff to figure out first, but the legs are going to be there. It's cute - even though she gets super upset about the whole thing. Earlier in the week, I was worried that she wasn't reaching up and grasping at toys like "they" said she should be. This was a part of that whole I'm-a-crappy-mom thing from Monday. I felt that I wasn't giving her enough opportunities to grasp at things, etc. So I was determined to make her grasp at her toys by pretty much shoving them at her. Another ridiculous thing. I vow that I'm not going to worry about her development timing. Okay, I'll promise to try not to. She's going to do this stuff on her time. She'll get there. I'm not going to have to carry her from class to class holding her pencils for her because she can't walk or grasp at things. She'll talk, too. And she'll eventually sleep unswaddled. I just need to relax.