The title comes from the fact that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has been playing on (our promotionally free for some months) HBO incessantly lately. As in, right now.
Also happening right now? Child asleep. Husband asleep. Me, drinking a hot buttered rum for the first time in...I have no idea. A long damn time.
If you're not a Potter fan, Felix Felicis (which I might well have misspelled terribly) is an elixir Harry gets as a prize in class. It's "liquid luck," guaranteed to give good luck for one day to whomever drinks it.
What on earth does that have to do with anything? you ask.
I just want to say this about my generally well-sleeping child: it's luck. Really. I firmly believe about 90% of her good sleeping habits are sheer blessed random chance, and not anything I did to earn it or deserve it or make it happen.
I have no idea how to make a baby sleep. I think I have the sort of child who sucks you into having another child, because you think, "come on, how hard can this be?" and then you have a second one who's colicky and doesn't sleep through the night until they're three, and you realize that it was all dumb luck the first time around.
If it makes you feel better, her napping skills suck donkey balls. Really. She's a terrible napper and I'm frantically reading all the sleep books I can to figure this out, but most of them say something like, "it all works out after six months or so," so I'm probably just screwed for another eight weeks. My husband says it's better to have good nighttime sleep. Most of the time I agree with this, until it's 4pm and he hasn't been home all day and she hasn't napped for more than 15 minutes at a time, at which point I start to question his logic.
But otherwise, life is okay over here. We survived round two of vaccinations today; quite a bit easier than round one. We had our first adventure with Department Store Photos, which was actually pretty fun until the end, when I was trying to parse out why I didn't need six 8x10 photos of my child and both she and I were running out of patience. (But we did get some super cute pics.) Balancing work and parenting is - um, yeah. A work in progress. For the rest of my life, I suppose. It will (she says with gritted determination) start to get better next week, when my husband's schedule lets up a bit.
I realized the other day that my memory of nursery rhymes is truly, utterly, pitiful. I get one line in and can't remember anything else. "This little piggy went to market, this little piggy...uh-oh. Let's try another!" And does "You Are My Sunshine" have any other verses? Please? Because we are singing things like, "oh you should sleep now, should really sleep now, please take a nap now, before I scream," and I'm pretty sure that's not an official verse.
Also, you can make up a lot of diaper-related songs to "Mary Had a Little Lamb." I'm just saying.
I think that you're right that a lot of this early behaviour is the luck of the draw: your baby's great nighttime sleep, my baby's super mellow personality. I guess the true test is seeing if we can make these things last when the babies actually start to take note of our parenting skills! Also, your made up lyrics are great. Google the words to 3 Blind Mice, or just about any nursery rhyme, really, and you may be glad you repressed the memory.
ReplyDeleteLOL, I make up all sorts of unofficial nursery rhymes too - All sorts of weird things happen after the wheels on the bus go round and round. The bum on the bus stinks, stinks, stinks, etc.
ReplyDeleteAnd I do think sleep is somewhat programmed in, if the parents are good sleepers, the kid most likely will be too. Or maybe it is just random, who knows. We've had good luck with napping too, but it will all go to hell at some point I'm sure.
Sounds like you are doing a great job!
Fun! My partner discovered that you can sing Rubber Duckie, You're the One to the tune of Surfer Girl.
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