Ruth is definitely walking now. Absolutely, undeniably walking. She doesn't always initiate it, but it's clear that she's got a new kind of balance.
Please forgive the scary facial expression at the beginning.
...
Remember how I wrote earlier about Ruth sleeping (mostly) through the night? Oh, how premature that celebration was. I don't know what prompted her to rescind her position of "crib = awesome" but boy, we had a few rough nights since then.
So Steve and I have made a radical decision: we are sleeping in the living room now, on the futon, in order to see how much her waking is sheer habit, or exacerbated by our proximity to her in the bedroom.
So far, we've had mixed results. Ruth is obviously more distressed in the morning when she wakes up and sees we're not there. At nighttime, we're both sleeping a little easier without worrying about waking her up. We're trading off night duties now, too. First waking is Steve's job to calm her down and see if she'll go back to sleep without nursing. Second waking, she's probably hungry and I get up to feed her.
So I've had a few nights with relatively undisturbed sleep, and then a few nights where I wanted to poke someone's eyes out right after waking up for the umpteenth time. I don't want to make this a power issue, but I had become so resentful and angry that we had to make some kind of change to preserve my nighttime sanity.
Last night went beautifully, if bumpily at first. She woke around 10:30, very inconsolable, but daddy got her back to sleep. Then, at 2 AM, she wanted to eat. Finally, at 7 AM, she announced it was time to start the day.
Not too bad.
And now I leave you with this photo, an adorable shot taken by Stephen back in August, with my toy Diana camera.
I love how misty and dreamy it is.
