I'm tired.

Here's the thing.  As I've sat down to blog over the past couple days, I find myself with nothing good to say.  Or with a strong desire to just complain.  And so I write nothing.  But the thing is, when I was pregnant and reading baby blogs, I sometimes found myself wondering if that was what life was REALLY like with a baby.  You know, all smiles and cute baby-ness and happy mom and happy dad and achieving milestones and totally in love with every single second.  That kind of thing.  And I swore that when I had a baby, I'd be real.  But then there's a fine line between being "real" and just complaining.  Ya know?  Because I have definitely read blogs where the mom just complaaaaaaaaaains and to be honest, I stopped reading after a while.  It gets old.  So I didn't want to be that person.  But I also didn't want to be the everything is all puppy dogs and rainbows all the time kind of blogger either, feel me?

Anyway.  So, being real... I'm tired.  We seem to be going through a bit of a sleep regression.  And by we, I mean the little bald one.  Last night she fell asleep easy peasy at 7.  Sweet!  Until she woke up at 7:30...and 9...and 10... and 1... and 3... and 4:45.  And then she was up for the morning.  Oh and did I mention from 10:00 onwards we slept like this??.... (thank you computer camera)

When she wakes up once or twice in the night, I can deal.  But 4-5 times (sometimes more)?  Holy exhaustion.  Now there seems to be hugely different opinions on how to "solve" this. (1) Sleep training. (2) She'll grow out of it.   I've read like 6 sleep training books, and umm, it's going to involve a lot of crying.  And Riley is able to go from a whimper to completely hysterical/hyperventilating crying in under 3 minutes.  Impressive, I know.  And I'm not really into the whole cry-it-out thing, not yet at least.  But when I have these sleepless nights and tough days, I start to second guess myself.  Is this my fault?  Do I hold her too much?  Is it because we part-time co-sleep?  When will she sleep through the night?  Am I keeping her from doing it? Should I let her cry? And on and on.

But here's the thing.  She can and does sleep well on her own (remember that one time she slept through the night?  Yup that was in her crib).   So this whole sleeping thing is only sometimes a problem.  I guess this has just been a tough week. And when you're tired, everything else just seems so much harder.   

So... to get myself out of this funk... top ten moments of the week (in no particular order)

1. Riley was laying on our bed, and when her daddy came into the room, she went nuts flapping her arms and kicking her legs and smiling.
2. She started to cry at the start of a 20 minute drive, so I sang wheels on the bus to her... the whole. way. home.  Haha I had to come up with new verses too (the santa on the bus says ho ho ho...).  She was silent the whole way!
3. She gave me a whole bunch of laughs all week!
4. Listening to her daddy sing her songs trying to get her to sleep.  And then coming into her room to see the pile of 10 books he read to her, also trying to get her to sleep.
5. Seeing Riley somehow manage to pee through her diaper, all over her dad, but not get her own clothes wet... his reaction was priceless!
   
6. Listening to her discover her very loud voice.  AND.  She says mom.  She obviously does not know what it means, but she makes the sound quite clearly!
7. Stanford SMOKED Cal in football.
8. I won a bet with my husband and earned myself a foot massage.
9. I got to talk to one of my BFFs on the phone all the way back in the US of A.
10. Riley now really likes outings so we've been able to go out shopping without me being totally stressed with a crying baby!

Aaaahhh.  Ok.  Yup.  Life is good.