Parenting is hard, ya'll!

Having been at this gig for just over four months now, I can say with certainty that YES, parenting is hard. And that's having a super dooper easy baby too - the easiest (and cutest) baby I've ever encountered, really.

baby girl? gearing up for ski (or snowboard) season!

She's pretty straightforward and happy. She's hungry and she eats, she's tired and she sleeps. She's playful and happy and plays and smiles. You get it. But even still, she'll throw us curve balls every now and then and completely catch us off guard and wonder HOW in the heck we will make it through.
The other night after a great day, she wouldn't stop screaming for almost an hour and a half. I guess that's not entirely true - she'd scream and then get distracted and stop, but then remember her mission and keep on screamin'. We tried everything - swaddle, unswaddle, feed, change clothes, change diaper, burb, tummy, back, leave alone, play with, tylenol, etc...  What the heck girl?? Finally we stripped her down to her nappy (that's Lacy talk for diaper. We fancy ourselves English. Just like I sometimes fancy myself southern, ya'll, and fry stuff in bacon grease. But that's another story). Soshe was happy playing on the floor in her nappy until it was without a doubt past time for her to go to bed, so we put her back in her jammies (cue screaming) and I gave her a bottle, after she flat out refused to nurse. She gobbled down that bottle and her little eyes rolled back in her head in no time and she was completely out. Girlfriend is confusing sometimes. She pulled the same screaming stunt this morning at 5:30am, and again, it was bottle to the rescue. And this is all from the baby who came out of the womb ready to nurse. Bottle, really? What's the bottle got that I haven't?

Sleeping in the crib. Like proud parents, we took a picture. :)

Also - another true story about our baby. We moved her to the crib last night after realizing she has about an inch left in the bassinet before she outgrows it completely. But lately the issue has been to swaddle or not. She seems to not like the swaddle and fights in and yells at me when I try to put her in it, but when we leave her arms out, she flails about and hits herself in the face and wakes herself up (or her mama if we are snoozing together). Then she removes her paci, throws it across the room, realizes it isn't in her mouth and yells at us to come get it. What's a parent to do?

I guess we might have some answers if I (ahem - we) bothered to read any parenting books. But I/we don't, and I really have a hard time subscribing to any one school of thought when it comes to parenting my unique chid anyway, so we wing it. And so far, I must say, we've done a good job, but she does throw us off our game every now and then. Which is what makes parenting so hard.

Hard, but so, so so beautiful and perfect. Mindblowing that I get to be a mama to this perfect angel. And now I know what it means that we were created in God's image.

The other things? Even with the world's best, sleepiest baby, we still sometimes find ourselves walking around like zombies, and basically coexisting in our own silos, which overlap only a very little. We each have things we have to do for ourselves, we each have chores we have to do for the family, we handoff the baby to each other when we need to change direction and then realize it's been several days since we've been able to snuggle up to each other in bed (thanks to me crashing out an hour earlier than him most nights, and him moving to the couch in the wee hours of the morning when I wake up 45 minutes earlier).  Even right this momemt - baby naps, he naps, I write and clean up a little. When she wakes up, he'll wake up, and I'll probably lay down. Oh well, it's the season of life we're in, I just miss my husband. This morning we tag teamed the 5am meltdown and once she was alseep, in the dark silence, we snuggled up under the covers and I realized just how long it had been since we fell asleep in each other's arms.

So, in conclusion: parenting is hard, even the easiest baby is hard to get sometimes and I miss my husband. AND, I know she's only four months old and everytime we "get" her, she'll go and grow up a little and we'll find ourselves having to relearn it all anyway. Yikes, it's a daunting thought.

But, it goes without saying that hard does not mean not worthwhile and hard most certainly does not mean without more rewards, more joy and more happiness than I thought was humanly possible. Sometimes my heart hurts when I think about what an awesome gift I've been given and what a sweet, beautiful baby girl I get as my very own. And sharing her with my family? Icing on the cake.

smooches from Granddaddy

Chillin' with Grandma at the cabin