We're going cold turkey on your ass. Lots of lovely things happened in the last few weeks, but unfortunately, much of the loveliness was overwhelmed (for me) by a poorly waged battle against your incongruous sleeping habits.
We didn't feel comfortable letting you cry it out when we were with relatives so instead we relied on singing, humming, shushing, rubbing your back, and finally letting you collapse upon us (me) in our bed so that we could all get a few precious hours of sleep between the hours of 5 and 7am. But every nap, every bedtime, someone had to put you down--and here I purposefully use the terminology of pet death since sometimes we came close to desiring to do the same to you. Because sometimes you simply wouldn't go to sleep. On Christmas Eve, for example. The table was spread with a festive tablecloth, with an advent wreath, with candles and silver and scarlet once-a-year-napkins. The china with blushing pears and a delicate rim of gold (or something like gold). Grandma Dorothy made shrimp risotto. A salad with pears and gorgonzola cheese and candied walnuts. There was wine. Manhattans. Orange martinis. It was time to feast! But I was upstairs with you. Because you wouldn't go to sleep. And I could have come downstairs but I wouldn't have been able to taste the food--my taste buds cease to function when you start to sob. So I fumed and you stayed awake and I fumed.
This is not your fault really. It is ours too. You had some legitimate sleeping issues just before the holidays but we feared that we couldn't go cold turkey during our holidays and so we coddled instead. And really, that was probably best.
Because last night you cried for 90 minutes straight before falling asleep. I put you down today for your nap at 12:30pm. It is 2:48pm and according to your father, you are still crying. That's 138 minutes. I am at Blue Monday writing and drinking a latte and this is what makes it possible for me to love you still.
Now that I've finished venting, I have no energy to talk about all the lovely blessedness of the season (such as sled rides with aunts and slinky-time with uncles, a new found adoration of skyways, your very first sugar high, your New Year's stay-awake coup, your "yes" and "juice," your penchant for Bonhoeffer, countless rides on the moving walkways at the airport, cookies fed to you on the sly by lovely grandmas, books read ad nauseum by patient grandpas, mad skilz with plastic blocks, etc, etc, etc.)
At church today, where I was miraculously able to listen to the sermon because (praise be to Jesus) you were in the nursery, Pastor Charlie talked about how Christmas is about getting, not about giving. It's the moment when we receive God, in the flesh, in the guise of this tiny infant. God interrupts our space, said Pastor Charlie, God wails his way right into us. This would have been good for me to remember a week ago--that God didn't come down quietly in the middle of a lovely dinner--God is in the voice that won't let us sleep, that calls on us to look to the cores of our very beings for patience and gratitude and love.
I love you, dear girl, you and your stupendous will.
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