Not All Days are Created Equally

Today was a hard day. Really hard.

So hard, that if you don't want to hear an extremely boring rendition of my day's events, you might as well stop reading. I won't be offended. Or even know, actually. But if you do keep reading, at least you know now that it's going to be boring. How I wish I had simply felt bored today.

School's started. Brandon's giving it another go (after taking last semester off). That means that Caleb and I are now home alone together. All day.

We got off to a rough start.

First of all, Brandon's been on the morning shift ever since we decided to start weaning the baby (yep, that was the first feeding to lose out...I wonder why). Yesterday, Caleb woke up at like five in the morning and Brandon was up with him for an hour before he could get the baby to go back to sleep. So when Caleb woke up at 9:30, even though it was technically him waking up for the day, I still got up with him. Which meant, that when I needed to get up again this morning, life was tough.

Usually, Caleb's up for two hours in the morning before Brandon puts him back down for a nap (although, some days they don't make it that long). Today, Brandon had to leave for school before we hit the two hour mark. Which meant that I had to put the baby to bed.

That didn't go over so well.

Eventually, I let him cry himself to sleep. (If you read BabyWise, I was actually giving my child the gift of sleep by letting him soothe himself to sleep.)

I don't know if he was mad at me about that an hour or so later when he woke up from his nap, but he was CRANKY! So our midday didn't go so well. So bad, that when it came time for the afternoon nap, I didn't even try to put him to sleep. Just laid him down in his crib, turned his mobile on, and left the room.

I think he only cried for ten minutes or so. Not too bad.

Brandon came home for a bit in the afternoon. He needed to run an errand, and seeing how stressed out I was from my day, he took the baby with him. I took a nice hot bath and read by candlelight. It was extremely relaxing.

Which was a good thing, since Brandon had to go to a work meeting tonight, which meant that I was left alone with the baby again. We did good for a while. He ate dinner better than he'd eaten lunch. Passed a lot of gas though. So much so that the poop ended up blowing out the side of the diaper. So then Caleb got a bath. He's doing so much better at baths. No longer cries when I try to put him in. But now he wants to stand up, which annoys me, since he's in a baby bath and it's likely to fall over at any second with him pulling himself up. Then he wants me to pick up his sopping wet body. I mean, I'm glad that he loves me and all, but...

Bedtime is the biggest struggle. If I thought I had issues trying to get the baby to nap, oh my, I don't even know how to describe bedtime. I used to nurse Caleb to sleep at night. He's completely fine with the bottle every other time of the day. In fact, he gets so super excited when he sees his bottle after he gets up from his nap. But at bedtime, he will not take the bottle at all. He squirms everywhere and it always turns into a huge fight. Caleb wins every night. But not without a lot of spilled formula (usually on him).

I'm trying to get him into a bedtime routine. It's so hard to do because his mood is so different every night. And we haven't been very consistent lately about what time we put him down. So, after the bath, then reading, very little bottle, and several songs, I put Caleb in bed wide awake. He screamed bloody murder for five solid minutes, but then went to sleep.

So that was the day in it's simplicity.

Only, it was so stressful. So overwhelming. So taxing.

At least Brandon doesn't have school tomorrow, so I get a day off before the insanity resumes. Hopefully, Caleb's cranky phase won't continue to coincide with Brandon's class days. (Especially since I'm starting to think that he likes Brandon better than he likes me. But in reality, he's usually much better for me than he is for Brandon, so how do you judge?)