Teething's a Real B

Lordy, teething stinks in the worst way. Grrrrr.

Tory had a solid six weeks of consistently sleeping through the night and let me tell you, it was glorious. I'll always remember fondly the age of 12 1/2 - 14 months. Late September through October, you were the best. How quickly I forgot the feeling of sandpaper eyeballs and the motivation to do anything above and beyond sitting my behind on the couch during nap time. Tory's cutting her one-year molars and her sleeping-through-the-night track record has taken a nose dive. Except, it's almost worse than it was a few months ago because she can walk now and wiggle right out of my arms when I attempt to soothe her back to sleep. Gone are the days when I'd just cozy her and I up in a blanket and hunker down in the rocking chair. Now she fights me with all she's got, kicking her legs and screaming bloody murder because she does not want to go back to sleep at 3:00am. It's happened that way twice this week and it's painful for both of us.

To make matters worse, Andi's been putting in 15-18 hour days the last two weeks, so I feel like he needs his sleep when he's home. I try my best to quiet Tory with all the tricks I know, but she is flippin' cranky in the night. On Wednesday, I literally threw my hands up and watched her flop like a fish on the floor, tantruming like a crazy lady, because I seriously did not know what to do for her. Sometimes I just want to shout, I'm only trying to help you, kid! Andi walked out into the living room and sort of gave me a look like, "what is going on out here?" and I felt embarrassed that I couldn't keep her in check. Randomly, Chloe came up and licked Tory on the hand and that's what distracted her enough to stop crying. Toddlers, man.

I get that Tory's the one really in pain here (because I can function on no sleep, right? I did it for whole first year of her life.) and I do feel bad for her. She's got a big ol' swollen lump on her gums where the tooth is about to pop through. Drool is pouring out of her mouth and today I even thought about putting a bib on her because her chin was seriously that wet with slobber. At least the diaper rash has gotten better. We're blowing through a tube of $8 diaper paste every three days to keep it at bay.

I really have no point to this story other than to say I'm exhausted and I'm going to bed at 8:30 pm on a Friday. Real happenin' life I lead around here. Andi's working tonight and as I solo-parented this evening, I struggled to stretch out our night to Tory's 7:00pm bedtime.

You know mama's tired when I resort to bathtub play.