sleep

10/3

I’m cooking the green tomato jam right now. Kind of an interesting recipe, calling for green tomatoes, lemons, salt, sugar, black pepper and cinnamon. I hope we like it, since I’m not full of ideas for what to do with the rest of the green tomatoes. I’ve heard of green tomato pie that is supposed to be similar to apple pie. Perhaps I will try that if this jam turns out to be less than wonderful.

Julia’s been waking a lot at night. I read about it in my baby book, and they suggest that periods of intense development can lead to a lot of night waking, as can a new home setting, teething, or about 20 other causes, several of which seem to directly apply to our situation. I was working on getting her to sleep in her crib, but the pattern has been Julia falls asleep with me in bed, then I move her over to her crib where she sleeps for about 2 hours, then I feed her and put her back when she’s asleep again, and an hour or so later she wakes up again, and I bring her back into bed for the rest of the night. It used to be that in bed with us she’d sleep almost all night long. Now she’s waking every couple hours no matter where she's sleeping. Let’s hope it is a phase that passes soon. I tried the cry-to-sleep thing a couple times when she was too keyed up to nurse to sleep. It worked, eventually. I’d rub her back, and she’d quiet, then I’d stop and she’d cry again. And repeat, and repeat and eventually she’d sleep, but man, what a emotional drain. I’ve given it up for now. It’d be nice to have a kid that went to sleep on her own, but I’m not ready to pay the emotional price right now.

It’s hard to know what is going to be the best sleep method for us. My mom nursed all 7 of us to sleep every night for a major portion of her life. My friends have kids that put themselves to sleep, freeing them to have a life beyond 8 pm. I want both worlds. Emotionally secure children that say to me, “you are an incredibly good mother. I’m going to go to sleep on my own now and not wake up until 9 am tomorrow and I won’t suck my thumb either, to save you on the orthodontia bills!”

It could happen.