A real confession Sept 2006

September. This entry is really a true confession. Are you sitting down? Maggie might be the youngest child in this house... now and forever. Yes, you read it correctly. There might not be a number three. I will never say never (because you know were that got me... married with two kids and a minivan on the horizon). Maggie is adorable and funny and all the great things parents say about their kids. BUT she is a handful. She is a HANDFUL and we just don’t know if we would be able to add #3 into the mix without a greater struggle than we already have.

For example try this on for size -- Maggie wakes up crying every morning and after every nap. I can count on two hands the number of times she has woken WITHOUT crying. I am not kidding about this and I have witnesses (Allie is one of them). She has a piercing cry and no matter what we do she wakes up crying. Those helpful parents out there who give us good-intentioned advice say, “Oh she isn't getting enough sleep.” Yes she is. She goes to bed at 7pm and sleeps til 7pm and takes a two hour nap in the afternoon. All the books I have read confirm that her sleep amount and process etc. is right on target. And I have read MANY books about this issue. She usually will not go 5 consecutive days sleeping fully through the night so we are STILL waking up at night with her. A couple weeks ago it was every night, several times a night. We say, it must be teething, it must be a cold, it must be gas... nope. She just doesn't want to be sleeping. Those same well-intentioned parents giving advice say, “Oh you need to let her cry herself to sleep.” First of all, do you know how hard it is to hear your child cry -- and no one knows how hard it is to hear Maggie cry... The sound is piercing. The other night we had to just let her cry it out. She did so, on-an-off for two hours. From 11:48pm until 2:00am. She is persistent and hopefully that quality/power will be used for “good” someday.

Like I said before, I will never say never, but adding number 3 will put me over the edge and I know it will throw Mike over the edge because he is already teetering on the edge as it is. Needless to say Mike insists we are done and I say, “Well, maybe.” :-) That doesn’t stop me from cleaning out some baby stuff.

Opps gotta run, Maggie is waking up from nap --- CRYING.