Mr. Sandman, Bring Me a Dream. And Whiskey for the Baby.

You know what's funny about having an infant live at your house? How you never, never, ever get to really sleep again. EVER. (Sleep deprivation may have perhaps contributed to the rambling quality of this post, now that I think about it.)

I know, I know, you have a friend who has a friend whose baby started sleeping through the night at eight weeks, right? Well guess what? I think your friend of a friend is a big lying liar who wants to impress people at parties by talking about his or her excellent-sleeping baby. In fact, I only have one person I trust who claims with a straight face that her baby sleeps through the night for eight or more hours, and I think she feeds her baby whiskey and Vicodin. As far as I'm concerned, babies who sleep through the night are like unicorns: lovely, but mythical.

This weekend Matt and I spent time with some friends of ours (we'll call them "Sam" and "Sarah") who excitedly confessed to us that they are expecting a baby; Sarah is eight weeks along. We were and are thrilled for them, and we spent much of the visit oohing and aahing and talking about their upcoming attraction. About thirty minutes into the "hooray you're having a baby!" conversation, though, Sarah began talking about how her pregnancy symptoms are making her miserable. (Just to be clear, I am totally sympathetic on this point. I remember how miserable pregnancy can be, even though the ultimate outcome [Gabe the Chubby and Delicious] was excellent for me.) Specifically, she talked at length about how she's "so sleep deprived" because she has to wake up twice a night to pee. She went on for a while about how sleep is really important to her, and how this has taken a toll on her. Sam nodded gravely and held her hand as she regaled us with her tales of repeated nocturnal bathroom visits.

I couldn't help myself - about four minutes into her speech I rolled my eyes so hard I'm surprised they didn't fall out of my head (yes, I am evil and judgmental, thank you very much). And I wasn't alone in my evil judgment, either: as she talked and talked, I could feel Matt tense up next to me. He never quite relaxed again during the remainder of their visit, and the minute we closed the door behind them after kissing them goodbye and congratulating them for the hundreth time, Matt turned to me and said, "They are so screwed. They are so screwed." I just shrugged my shoulders and nodded. He was right. They are doomed, doomed, doomed.

We haven't had a solid night of sleep in months. MONTHS. (Actually Matt has had one single night of good sleep: the night after he pulled a muscle in his back and his doctor prescribed him a muscle relaxer sufficient to fell a Shetland pony. It knocked him out cold and made him a little groggy even the next day. I won't even try to describe my jealousy when the baby began howling at 4:00 a.m. and he didn't so much as twitch.)

You see, without fail, Gabe wakes up at least once a night to eat. We "dream feed" him at 11:00 p.m., but that doesn't carry him through til morning. He needs one more feeding. Usually this takes place between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m., but it can happen as early as 1:15 a.m and as late as 5:00 a.m. The exact time doesn't really matter to me anymore. I know that at some point in the wee hours Gabe will start to cry loudly enough to wake Matt and myself, and I will stumble in and feed him, then rock him, kiss his fat cheeks, lay him back down in his cozy crib, and hope like hell that he falls back asleep easily. If he cries a second time before 6:00 a.m., then it's Matt's turn. (I used to feel guilty about making him take a turn, but nearly eight months in I've decided it's only fair to share.)

So back to Sarah and Sam. As we watched them pull away in their car, it occurred to me that maybe it would have been kind of us to try and adjust their expectations slightly. Maybe we would have been better friends if we had honestly told them that the nightime peeing really wasn't a big deal, and that they had many more long and sleepless nights in their future. But I couldn't do it for two reasons.

First, because you can't understand it until you're living it. When I got pregnant I knew, on an intellectual level, that I would be very, very tired as a new parent, but I didn't understand the depth of the exhaustion that awaited. No one can. Sleep deprivation is cumulative. It wasn't until I had gone several weeks, never sleeping more than three hours in a stretch, that I grasped completely what Matt and I had gotten ourselves into.

Second, I didn't want to break their spirits by telling them that I find Gabe's current dream-feed-then-up-at-least-once-a-night situation to be totally and completely livable, and that I actually think we're lucky. But it's true. His once-a-night schedule is not that bad. It's certainly a huge improvement from Gabe's first twelve weeks of life, when he would wake up every two hours like clockwork, whether he was hungry or not. (That was tough, people. That was really tough.) It's also much better than my friend L's baby who at 14 months old wakes up three times a night to eat.

Do I like getting up at 3:27 a.m? No, but I don't really mind it. There is something sweet and fine about curling up in the big armchair with my baby in the middle of the night, feeling his soft breath go in and out, feeling the weight of his little body against mine as he eats his late-night meal. Often after he has finished he will smile up at me sleepily, and his small hand will reach up to pat my cheek. These moments have a delicious, stolen feeling to them - I know when I am old and gray I will remember how Gabe used to pat my cheek and smile his milky smile.

So I didn't say anything to Sarah and Sam. I just watched them pull away from the curb, and I smiled a little to myself, thinking of the long nights that await them in the coming months. Or not. Maybe they'll get one of the mythical babies who sleep through the night at three weeks, and I will feel like a big fat idiot about this entire dumb post.

Three Things

1. I hate the 405.

Not to rehash my Thanksgiving post or anything, but my good gracious, Los Angeles traffic is absolutely unbearable sometimes. I left work at 4:00 today in order to meet my parents and my grandparents for dinner and sort of kick off the Christmas festivities (I wanted to sneak out even earlier, but forces were conspiring against me - I actually had to, you know, work at work). The trek from Burbank to the South Bay took me no less than two excruciating hours. All I can say is that I have the best baby in the whole world, because for one hour and fifteen minutes of that time he chatted happily to himself in the backseat, working on his pronunciation of "da da da da" and smacking his Very Hungry Caterpillar rattle onto the arm of the carseat enthusiastically. Next he cried for ten minutes, then blissfully fell asleep for the remainder of the drive, all while I was practically eaten alive with guilt for forcing the poor lamb to be in the car for so long. These days I feel worse and worse about working so much and leaving him in day care for so long, and I just flat-out miss him most of the time. Spending such a big chunk of our precious mommy-baby time stuck in a hideous (and pointless - there was never any clear cause for the gridlock!) traffic jam was almost physically painful to me. But I digress.

2. The drive was totally worth it.

I arrived at the designated restaurant feeling miserable and generally beat down, and I'd been driving in traffic so long that my right thigh was literally cramping from going back and forth between the gas and the break. But much like the night before Thanksgiving, I was so, so glad we'd made the trip. I adore my grandparents, and they adore me, and they really adore Gabe. After about ten minutes of watching them talk to him and play peek-a-boo with him, the treacherous drive on the 405 was all but forgotten. (That's a lie. I remember every wretched minute of the drive. But I'm trying to say it was worth it. I'm not very eloquent right now, OK?)

3. I miss my friend Heather.

This has nothing to do with Nos. 1 and 2 above, but it's been on my mind a lot recently, so I wanted to post about it. About four months ago my wonderful, big-hearted, empathetic, always-willing-to-listen, hilariously funny friend Heather moved across the country with her lovely husband and two fabulous children. The move was absolutely the right decision for their family, but goddamn I miss her. (I miss her husband and her kids, too, but I miss her most of all.) Heather's kids are five and three, so she has been there and done that as far as babies are concerned, and she gives the best and most level-headed advice of anyone I know. Plus I think the two of us sort of think alike, maybe because we're both lawyers and ridiculously type A.

Anyhow, the holidays are making me feel nostaligic and a little wistful, and more than anything I wish I could go over to her house with a bottle of wine and we could order a pizza and feed her kids (organic, unprocessed, baked) fish sticks and just talk for a couple of hours. We still talk, of course, and email, but it's not the same. I want to give her a squeeze and show her how big Gabe is getting and see what awesome purse she's carrying these days, and it's hard to effectively do those things on the phone or over email.

This is actually really selfish of me, because the move has been about 1,000 times harder for her than for me. I just miss her, whereas she has to live in a new city and make new friends and get her kids into new schools, and do new things, ad infinitum. But there it is, universe. I miss my friend Heather, and I love her, and hope she and her family have a Merry Christmas.

Plague

I am sick again. How is this possible? Didn't I just have the flu about three weeks ago? Actually now that I stop to think about it, it seems like I have been sick off and on for, oh, I don't know, about three and a half months.

In totally unrelated news, Gabe started daycare about three and a half months ago! Isn't that funny? What an amazing coincidence! No chance those two events could have anything to do with each other, is there? Ho, ho! It's so amusing!

The silver lining to the constant low-level illness (and this is a big silver lining, Dear Readers), is that while Matt and I have been trading the same cold back and forth literally for months now, complete with coughing, aching, runny noses, etc., Gabe is doing great. He has been sick exactly one time. It lasted about forty-eight hours; he had a low-grade fever and general fussiness. (And can I just say: thank goodness his illness was brief and mild. That forty-eight hours nearly broke my heart. I am such a freaking wimp.) Plus Gabe might not have even been sick for real that one time. His doctor opined (yes, of course I rushed him to the doctor like a typical overreacting first-time mom) that he was probably teething. Who knew teeth could cause a fever? Babies are so weird.

Anyhow, the moral of the story is that Gabe is immune to all of the plague germs carried by the fourteen other snotty-nosed babies at daycare, while Matt and I succumb to each and every virus we encounter during the twenty minutes of drop-off and pick-up. I think Gabe is sneaking out of his crib at night and stealing vitamins from the bathroom or something.

OK, I have to go cough and blow my nose and feel sorry for myself now. Distract yourselves with this picture of the chubby chubkins nom nom squishy cheeks. Mmmmm, delicious!

Noel, Noel. (Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel.)

We put up the Christmas tree this weekend. I always get a little thrill of excitement when retrieving the boxes of ornaments and decorations from storage, unwrapping the angels and snowflakes and Santas from their tissue paper, plugging in the strands of Christmas lights to make sure none of the bulbs have burned out.

Of course, this year the little thrill was better than usual, because of this:

There are many reasons I love this photo: the old-mannish sweater; the slightly elfin chapeau; the chubby legs sticking out of pants that are decidedly too short ("Capri pants are not a good look on baby boys," my good friend Wendy would say). But most of all I love, love, love that open-mouthed grin. Here, take a closer look, why don't you:

Could he be more charming, I ask? Could he? I think not. He was just so pleased by the whole thing, so enamored with the lights and fascinated by the ornaments. He would have cheerfully spent the entire afternoon examining the giant thing full of colors and textures that had magically appeared in his living room. It even motivated him to work on his scooting. (Although he still hasn't figured out how to go forwards, and thus he spent much of his time accidentally propelling himself away from the tree. Much frustrated grunting resulted.)

Anyhow, as far as Gabe is concerned, the Christmas tree is the best toy ever. And he hasn't even noticed the wrapped packages underneath the tree yet. Never mind that I suspect the wrapping paper will entice him far more than the actual toys contained in the wrapping. As far as Gabe is concerned, Christmas decorations are a huge success!

Wait until we get to the menorah! That involves fire!

Success!

Applesauce, people. After a month of trying a startling assortment of homemade, organic, all-natural foods, what does Gabe decide to eat? Applesauce. Gerber applesauce.

I know, I know, I should only be feeding him cereal and green vegetables and maybe a Cheerio or two at this stage of the game. I definitely shouldn't be giving him anything as sweet as applesauce. I can hear you clucking your tongues and shaking your heads sadly as you read this, undoubtedly thinking to yourselves, "If you give him applesauce you'll never get him to eat green beans." "He'll hate vegetables forever." "You've ruined his palate." But for the first time in my almost-seven-month-long career as a mother, I don't feel guilty for failing to follow the Good Mom Rules. I've got to be honest: I'm just glad he's eating something.

Of course, I use the term "eating" loosely. When I say he "ate," what I really mean is that he smeared his hands around the bowl to feel the squishy processed apple goodness, then stuck two fingers in his mouth and sucked a little food off of them. Next he allowed me to put four tiny bites into his mouth (two with the spoon, two with my finger). Last and perhaps most effectively, he dipped his teething toy into the applesauce and then gnawed on the teething toy enthusiastically.

Hooray! Maybe he won't be the only exclusively bottle-fed child in his kindergarten class. Maybe he'll have bottles and applesauce in his little lunch box. I am so relieved.