The Witching Hour

"The witching hour is a the time of day when supernatural creatures such as witches, demons and ghosts are thought to appear and be at their most powerful..."

Wikipedia

I briefly touched on this in Sadie's 9 month post, but during the past month Sadie has decided to have meltdowns almost every single work night. Between 5:45 and 6:00pm it's just a mad dash to unpack the daycare bottles, spot treat any dirty clothes that came home, fill the humidifier up, get her dinner heating up in the microwave, go outside and holler at the dogs to stay on our property and not the neighbors, all without having Sadie LOSE HER SHIT! (yes, that did require caps and boldness) before we start dinner/bedtime routine. And if I'm honest with you guys it's actually been longer than a month. When it first started happening a few months ago I took it as Sadie being over tired and moved starting her dinner/bedtime routine up by 15 minutes and thing were great! So why don't I just move her dinner/bedtime routine up by 15 minutes again? Well, that's because I already start her bedtime routine at 6:00pm and remember, we get home at 5:45pm. There are a few things I just have to do as soon as I get home before I can start with dinner/bedtime, so moving that up by 15 minutes is out of the question.

Sadie will generally fall asleep on the car ride home and if I am lucky I can get her in the house still a sleep and let her nap for 5 more minutes. Maybe this is my downfall, maybe I should wake her up as soon as we get home. But, man, having her asleep for 5 minutes when I get home is awesome. It gives me time to do all those things I mentioned above without having Sadie flip-a-lid. If Sadie is awake when we get home, or wakes up while I am getting her in the house, I'll take her into the kitchen with me and sit her on the floor with some toys, sing and talk to her, swoop in for kisses and playing all while trying to do the above list of items. Inevitability I have to leave her line of vision for something, to grab the humidifier, to go check see what the dogs that are barking their heads off at (generally the llamas next door and not an ax murder, still gotta check though!), in those 5 seconds I am out of her site Sadie will start with the whine crying. I can usually get back to her fast enough before she completely loses it. I get it, she is with other people all day long, so when it's just the two of us and I leave her (for 5 seconds) it's scary for her. Oh, but don't worry, she can leave me for 5 minutes and it's nooo big deal, because she did the leaving!

I can normally hold off these mini-meltdowns until one of two times: she finishes all of her dinner or the pajamas go on. She eats sooo fast and if you don't have a spoonful of food ready and waiting to go in her mouth when she is done swallowing it's like you want her to starve. Oh and then when the food is all gone you can clap and say "yaaaay Sadie!" till the cows come home, she's still pissed it's all gone (...we have discussed upping her dinner). Then it's time to put the pajamas on...and it's like the pajamas are made of hot searing fire and I'm going to scream my face off until you put a bottle in my mouth.

I really don't think she is flipping out because she's hungry. Generally she has her last bottle at daycare between 4:30 and 5:00pm and then 5 ounces of food at 6:00pm (how she fits another bottle in her belly at 6:20 is amazing to me!), but like I said we are considering upping her dinner amount.

I've tried changing things up and instead of immediately going into the kitchen with her, we'll have some cuddle time on the couch and play on the floor a little and then move to the kitchen. This method works great for the separation thing, I can leave her and she will generally be totally fine. But by that point we are about 10 minutes behind where we should be and we still end up with a sad Sadie by bedtime.

I'm 90% sure that all of this is related to being tired. Monday's are generally great! I love Monday's! I have my happy, happy Sadie for 45 minutes and it's awesome. But by Friday? Not so much. What changes between Monday's and Friday's? Her naps. Remember back when I talked about how Sadie would not nap at daycare? Well, when she moved up to the next class and started crawling her naps got better. Monday's she generally has a 2-2.5 hour nap, by Friday I'm lucky if she naps for 45 minutes.

Maybe I need to let her take a nap when we get home. Perhaps that would solve it all. Lay her down as soon as we get home and let her nap for an hour and a half and then wake her up for an hour or so, feed her dinner, give her a bath and then put her down for the night. But I worry she will be every bit as grouchy, if not more so, because I work her up. I get so worried messing with her like that though. She is an awesome sleeper, she sleeps for 12 hours straight every night and on the weekends it's close to 14 hours!

Y'all, it sucks. I love working and I love Sadie, but it totally blows when the small fraction of time I get with Sadie during the week is spent trying to get her to not cry. I'll sit down after she is in bed and feel wiped out. Not to mention when 85% of the time it's me doing bedtime by myself and the 15% of the time when Robert is home she is happy as a clam, it's hard to not take it personally and go to that place where I am mad at Robert for not being home in time for bedtime because if he was home every night she would be happy every night, or the even darker place of thinking she looooves him and screams at me.

So, if anyone is still reading this, got any words of wisdom, suggestions, brand of wine to buy while drinking suffering through this stage? I'd suuuuure appreciate it.

This Texas Baby: 9 Months

Sadie, Sadie, Sadie, what a month this has been! I left you TWICE this month. I managed to survive both. The first time your daddy and I went on road trip to New Orleans to celebrate our anniversary. Your Gigi came to stay with you and from all accounts everything went swimmingly well! The next time I left you was just a week after we got back! Your daddy is a HUGE Oklahoma Sooner fan and are trying to go up to Norman every year for a game, this year we went to see them play Texas A&M and we dropped you off in Arlington to hand out with your great aunts and 2nd cousin (? still not sure if that relation is right.) Again, you did great!

With all of this leaving you I am looking forward to the next few month full of holiday festivities!

Here is my fun bulleted list of your accomplishments:

• You have graduated from the ducky bathtub to having the whole bathtub to play in. I think this freaks you out a little still so you tend to sit in one place instead of trying to climb out of the tub like you were in the ducky tub.  
• You're pulling up on EVERYTHING. So far you're not doing much traveling once you pull up and you don't walk with us holding your hands, but you'll get there. I think you might be a late walker, just because you were an early crawler and can get wherever you need to by crawling.
• We had to lower your crib mattress all the way to the lowest setting. You weren't really in danger of falling out (yet) on the second setting, but we figured better safe than sorry, especially since we have wood floor and not even a little carpet for padding.
• You decided your crib tasted delicious while your daddy and I were on vacation! So, now there are great teeth marks on the side of your crib. It's ok, we bought these awesome tie-on cover things to help prevent that. Lowering the mattress helps too!
• You still only have your 2 bottom teeth, although I think your top ones are coming. You've been extra drooly the past few weeks and you have been chewing everything in the front of your mouth.
• You are still loving he baby food I made for you, you start whine/crying if daddy and I don't get it in your mouth fast enough at dinner. 
• You have NO desire to feed yourself. You'll hold your mouth open all day for baby food/puffs but if we try and hold one out to you on the palm of our hand you wont touch it. In fact, you've been known to lean over and try and eat it out of our hands!
• Oh! We took you to the doctor since I started this list and you now weigh in at 18.3 pounds and 28 inches long.
• We celebrated your 1st Halloween by doing nothing. Please don't hate me for that later in life. I have no problem spending money on you but for some reason I just could not justify spending $30 on a costume that would probably be too hot for you to wear and we weren't even going to go trick or treating! I did make you a pumpkin onesie and tutu to wear to daycare and to the pumpkin patch, you hated the pumpkin patch though so we don't have many great images of that.
• During the past month from the time we get home till the time you go to bed is a mad dash of making sure I get all your pre-bedtime stuff done all while keeping you from having a major meltdown. I'll delve more into this later.
• Your allergies are still terrible, but you're such a trooper and never let it get you down. Could just be because you've been like this since you were born! The Zyrtec does seem to help though, sometimes I'll forget it on the weekends and by the end of the day I can tell you are more snotty etc than normal.

Holy cow baby girl, you have some exciting months coming up! Your first Thanksgiving! Your first Christmas! Sniff sniff, then it'll be your first birthday! Just between you and me, can you make these next few months of holidays go by slower than normal? Ok, thanks, momma loves you for that.

EARTHQUAKE!

Y'all.

I experienced my first (and hopefully last) earthquake on Saturday night.

It was nuts.

We were in Norman, OK for the Sooner game, the epicenter was about 60 miles east of us.

It was about 11pm and we were already asleep (because what else is there to do when you are baby free besides catch up on sleep? Go see a movie? Go have a few drinks? Nope, we sleep!) and I woke up to EVERYTHING SHAKING side to side.

Again, it was nuts.

I reached over and woke Robert up with "EARTHQUAKE! It's an earthquake! I think we're having an earthquake!" Great way to wake up right?

It lasted for all of a minute.

But, it was a scary minute.

I always said I would never want to move to California because the idea of earthquakes scare me. That fear was reaffirmed.

Who knew I would have to worry about earthquakes in the middle of Oklahoma!?

I survived...

...but work is kicking my ass this week.

Suppose that's what I get for taking a week off.

We are gearing up to leave on Thursday night for another out of town trip.

We're going to Norman, OK and we'll being staying here:

Be jealous, haha.

So, as much as I want to tell you all about our trip, there is simply no time this week.

Plus, I need to sort through the 1000+ pictures I took.

I will leave you with this one photo, oooohooh, I'm sparkly.