Finding Our Normal

It seems like we spend weeks chasing normal.  That is, what we want normal to be.  Even though we have the same routine, every day is different.  No two days are the same, even if we do the exact same thing. And, when we make a major change, such as dropping a nap, we find the first couple of days something that we can accept as our new normal.  Then, they fade away, as if a facade in the desert.  This only to spend the weeks after that trying to get us back there.

After we went from three to two naps, the next two days were perfect.  I would give up going to the gym and any activity in the morning (Le Leche League, Rise and Rhyme, library story time, etc) if most days were like that.  It was perfect, because Lily would wake up after 6:00am, easily fall asleep for naps and bedtime, and she would sleep on her own for 30 min to 2 hours.  For two days. Two days of heaven.  It was like two days filled with cake and ice cream.  Two days in June where it was my birthday.  I want our life to be like those two days.  It's like reliving that wonderful vacation in your mind.  Oh, this is the life!

When we find a normal that works for us, she figures out our hijinks, and those things stop working.  She gets onto us so quickly!  Every day, she seems to be pulling us farther and farther back to the way things were.  To this normal all too familiar that we cannot live with.  She wakes up between 5:00am and 5:30am despite my monumental efforts to keep her asleep.  She doesn't want to nap, but she is so tired and cranky for hours.  And, she won't let us lay her down for long before waking up.  That is, if we can actually set her down without waking her up in the first place.

We keep going through this pattern of finding our little bits of heaven and then loosing them, struggling to keep us from being sucked into the natural normal around here.  It's been a lot better since we dropped a nap.  I get to spend more time playing with my baby girl and the nap windows aren't so critical.  She does let us set her down for a little bit.   But, we are slipping back to the old normal.