Operation Pequita Sleep: Day 8,456,902

To steel myself for another day of solo baby training, I vowed to have the most fun we could have all waking hours. I put a good spin on the day by putting our new CDs into the stereo - Pete Seeger, Raffi and Taj Mahal all singing kid songs shuffled for hours. We danced, played knock-down-the-tower-Mommy-built, and broke in her new shoes by playing chase Maya to much giggling and joyful screeching. For my own amusement I dressed Pequita in a hand-me down outfit from a distant New York City relative. French couture baby, can you imagine? I'll be selling the top after today - it is hand wash wool fully lined with silk. (I don't even have fully lined clothes any more.) Can you imagine trying to get hot dog stains out of that? The cotton jodhpurs we may keep, since she looks quite jaunty in them. By the time she is actually on a horse, though, I imagine she'll be wearing denim.

Pequita is getting better at going down to sleep. By that I mean she spends less time screaming herself hoarse and more time crying and tossing toys out of her crib. Since it seemed pretty clear after a week of crib training that she was waiting for us to return every 10 minutes, today (with Homestead Mama's cautious blessing) we have switched to full on CIO, no visits but with a folk lullaby CD playing in her room. I put her eye-rubbing, ear-tugging, yawning butt down for a nap at 10:30 this morning. She cried and jumped up and down for a half hour, then shifted to intermittent crying / listening for a response / more crying & jumping. I really hope our hand-me-down crib can hold up to extended angry 25 lb baby bouncing. Books, singing & rocking, and 60 minutes of crying brought us to noon. I pulled her out and we had a great lunch. She'll eat anything these days as long as we place it on her spoon and help her get it into her mouth. She grins each time - so proud of herself.

After lunch, we tidied the house until Monito was tired. I put him in a sling where he promptly fell asleep & took Miss Pequita outside, where she slogged around the too-tall yard (nice and exhausting with short legs) trailing after me as I pruned our fruit trees and baby maples. The dogs frolicked around her & she played with their toys. After a respectable amount of fresh air and eye rubbing, I brought her back inside, decanted Monito into his bassinet for the rest of his nap, and started again with Pequita at 1:45 pm. Book/ song/ nurse and into jail, then I retired down to the living room to blog, which ends up being my best emotional outlet these days. She's managing to get some of her larger items tossed out of the crib; each time the crying pauses I hear a loud thud above my head. I assume the entertainment is good for her. At 2:22 pm the noise upstairs stopped. Dare we hope? I crept up and peeked in.Totally sacked out in a lump on her shearling. Clearly, some of her alone time was spent shaking her milk onto the floor below the crib before tossing out the bottle. And how she got her pants off I don't know - they are the black corduroy lump on the floor.

Goddess help me if I'm ruining her. I've already decided to write a letter to Vanguard Investments asking if they can make a Roth IRA that allows for tax-free withdrawal for college OR therapy.