OK, so I love all facets of Alex, even Grumpy Alex who pouts and Early-Onset-Teenage Alex who stomps and slams doors. Chatty Alex, who won't stop talking for a single minute for all the world. Delirious Alex, who spouts incoherencies and flings his body around the living room until he inevitably smacks head-first into a wall and instantly becomes Grumpy Alex.
But Tired Alex has a special place in my heart because he's the one who's not too big to cuddle with his mama. He says sweet things like "I'll put you in my dream and the whole world will be made out of cheese and we can eat however much we want." He melts into my arms while I sing the alphabet song, which is the only song he's requested at bedtime for going on a million years. He's soft and warm and unconcerned with that recently born goal of being "just like Daddy."
Wait, he's "Dad" now. Much to his displeasure. ("I'm too young to be "Dad," he insists.)
I'm still "Mommy" most of the time, except when "Dad" is around. Then it's much more crucial to play the Big Kid role, and I become "Mom," and that's fine with me because it's just part of the growing up he's so busy doing most of the time.
Except, that is, when he's tired.
Katherine will be three months old next week, can you believe it? I can't. The birth is still so clear in my mind I can almost FEEL it if I try ... which I don't, very often, because wow. That was some serious pain.
They say (I listen to They more often that perhaps I should) that three months marks the peak of crying. If that's true, then we were truly blessed. She has days where she's a little more, shall we say, vocal? than others, and they seem to have been occurring one on top of the other for the past week or so. And yet she still sleeps like a rock through the night and is usually quickly consoled by a bottle or a pacifier or a well-timed shift in position.
Some days I'm frustrated. Some days, like today, I'm just exhausted. But it never seems to be too much, and I've yet to regret a single moment spent with her. This weekend is going to be chock-full of work I didn't do today because today she was fussy and today I was utterly wiped out. But even that's OK with me, because working from home was a decision I made, and stand by, and am determined to see through even when it's not as easy as one might imagine. Is anything, ever?
My sleep habits are still fraught. I have the best almost-three-month-old sleeper in the world and yet since her birth I've lost my own formerly unparalleled ability to zone out at any time and under any circumstance. Now, for instance, my body says "sleep," but my brain says, "do."
I guess that's better than last night, when I got home from a wonderful girls' night and my brain said "sleep" but my body said "eat." Thank God Steven had ordered pizza for dinner.
On that note, I'm going to bed. To sleep, or to think, or to overthink, or to worry, or to brood, I never know. No matter what, though, somewhere in the space that separates the waking world from the sleeping one, I'm hanging out with Alex, eating stuff made out of cheese.
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