I would like to stop practicing patience, and really just start to have patience. Does that ever happen? I know it's never been my strong suit, but ever since Colin started struggling to be put down for bed (which was never a problem before) and waking up multiple times a night (to scream and be awake - not to eat- sometimes for hours on end with no sleep in sight), I go out of my mind. I miss the days of him waking, me nursing, him falling back asleep. I don't have very many techniques outside of my boobs to soothe a baby... is that bad? I mean, he's 13 months old and when my "tried and true" doesn't work --- I'm at a loss and then I start to lose any semblance of patience I once had. It makes me so incredibly grateful for John because he has the patience of a god, or at least a demi-god. Of course it's not fair to him for me to give up and turn the cranky/screaming/unhappy/not-sleeping baby over to him every night after "I just can't do it anymore". So I'm trying to figure out this patience thing.... taking deep breaths... realizing this won't last forever (but 3am feels like forever).... praying this "phase" will end and he'll start sleeping again. So far I'm at a loss.
I think what bothers me most is the person I become - a total B - to Colin and to John. I get so frustrated and find myself telling a 13 month old "stop" (as though that's the magic word)... or sometimes, you know, saying the F word to a toddler. I'm sure he totally gets it, right? I hate the day-after guilt where I know that in the moment it was so overwhelming and felt like it was never going to end and there wasn't anything I could do.... so I wasn't soothing, I wasn't holding him softly and whispering "I love yous" into his ear and "ssshhhh" to calm him down. Instead I'm manhandling his squirmy little body that doesn't want to be held in any position, unceremoniously laying him down on his bed that certainly wouldn't entice me to sleep either, or leaving him to just cry in his crib. Or the moments where there isn't anything to do so we turn on Pitch Perfect or sit him down to just let him play at 3 in the morning.
I need to figure out how to remember this moment right now - where I am not as tired as I thought I would be, the 4 hours in the middle of the night that he was awake haven't completely taken over my day and I'm still functioning, and the cuteness that was this morning when he finally DID sleep and it was so hard to wake him and he cuddled against John's shoulder as I got everything ready to get him out the door. Those are the things that I need to try and remind myself when he's screaming and refusing to lay down to go to sleep... it's a phase... he's teething, he might be having dreams, he just wants us to be close. Those aren't a reason to be angry, those are reasons to finally start learning patience and using it.
I'm wanting to do our year wrap-up, but I thought that 1) I should be in a better place (one where he's sleeping, perhaps) so that I can see all the good things instead of being crabby myself and 2) we didn't take his 12 month picture until the day before he turned 13 months... so it's been a bit delayed.
Until then, here are some random photos of Colin from the last few weeks.
Finally sleeping
