http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/ en-us Copyright 2008 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:41:02 -0700 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss A desperate attempt to immobilize the little one by lying flat on my back and holding her still. Didn't work. And finally, as is inevitable these days, it just deteriorated into a game of Grab the Camera. So much for art. ]]> http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/07/self_portraits.html http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/07/self_portraits.html Every day stuff Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:41:02 -0700 here on a court case in New Zealand involving a child's right to change their name in cases where parents have displayed the intelligence of zucchini when naming their children. I mention this mainly so that I can tell the story of the worst baby name I have ever heard. When we lived in Yazoo City, Mississippi, our family came across a birth announcement in the local paper for a little girl whose parents had chosen to name her Desert Stormy Ocean Country Cinnamon Blossom (Last Name Witheld). Really. Can you just imagine what it is like to fill out forms asking for your whole name if you've got six or seven of them? When I was pregnant with Kate, we used to sit around and try to invent awful names we could give our child if we were so inclined. I think the worst one we came up with was Zephaniah Wachdorf. I mean, if you put anything weird in front of "Wachdorf" you're asking for trouble, so for our kids I think we'll be sticking to fairly classic names. Classic, short names. The kids will already have a job in front of them when it's time to learn to write their names in kindergarten. Poor things. ]]> http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/07/little_zephaniah_alouicious_wa.html http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/07/little_zephaniah_alouicious_wa.html Every day stuff Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:06:19 -0700 Dan then replaced some air vents for me and set about doing something involving setting up our old laptop to act as a server for ... something. I don't know. The computer jargon just flies through my mind. None of it sticks. Anyway, Kate helped with that project by doing pushups on the keyboard of the old laptop. In the early afternoon, Dan headed out into the yard to mow and deal with some weeds that had gotten seriously out of control in our alley. To give you some reference for this picture that I took from the living room window, safe inside in the air conditioning, remember that Dan is six-feet-six-inches tall, and the weed he's spraying has exceeded that. Recently, the announcement sign at the entrance to our neighborhood has displayed the message "Will you win 'Best Kept Yard?'" No. No we will not. Meanwhile, a look at what I did while Dan was out battling The Weeds that Deserve Their Own Zipcode. Kate's interest in new foods is growing all the time, and while that's a great thing, it also means that sometimes in a meal, she'll go through multiple courses. As her personal chef and waiter, it is my job to keep the food coming. I also make largely futile efforts to keep it out of her hair, but as you can see from this shot of the aftermath of one of her meals, I'm doing well to keep the food out of my hair. Do you think we have enough Cheerios? Since Kate has a couple of teeth and more coming in every day, we bought her a little toothbrush, which she largely regards as a new toy. Here she is trying it out. And after a long day, daddy and daughter now like to relax with a few games on the Nintendo Wii. I have to blog about the Wii in the near future, because that's a story in itself. But here's a picture. Kate's steering-wheel remote doesn't actually work, but she doesn't know that and probably thinks she's totally kicking butt at Mario Kart. I'm hoping to make the same kind of arrangement when it's time for her to learn to drive. ]]> http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/07/daddys_little_supervisor.html http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/07/daddys_little_supervisor.html Baby Kate Rockin' the Suburbs Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:57:00 -0700 offend me the most is seeing certain self-proclaimed leaders of the Christian evangelical community turn themselves into political pundits during an election cycle. I bring this up because it came to my attention this evening that Dr. James Dobson is preparing to weigh in with his assessment of who Christians should vote for this year. I don't know about you, but this is an enormous weight off my mind. I have been having a really hard time considering the merits and claims of both presumptive candidates and applying a critical thought process to my vote. But now, apparently, I can rest easy and say "Oh! Dr. Dobson might endorse him? Well in that case, my decision is made!" I'm not saying that Dobson and Pat Robertson and whoever else is supposedly speaking for the Christian community these days don't have a right to their political opinions. But I don't think that the use of their Christian ministry platforms to endorse a political candidate is advancing anything other than A) their own standing as quasi-celebrity Christians and B) a perception among non-Christians that "evangelical" is some kind of third political party. The gospel is supposed to be a sacred thing, not some secondary vehicle to be rented out as ad space for a political message. So please, Dr. Dobson, focus on the family. Knock yourself out. But put a sock in it when it comes to politics. And I can make time in my schedule to vote this week, if everyone else could just check their calendars and get back to me so that maybe we could bump this thing up a few months. I'm afraid I'm not going to make it to November without blood pressure medication.]]> http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/07/moneychangers_on_the_radio.html http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/07/moneychangers_on_the_radio.html Every day stuff Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:42:57 -0700 Dear Kate, This morning I've been sorting through the pictures I've taken of you this month to pick a few out for your letter, and I have to say it was a little frustrating. This isn't because there weren't plenty of cute photos, but rather because almost every one I liked was blurry. A casual observer looking through the photos of you on our hard drive might think that some time around June of 2008, I developed a tic that prevented me from holding a camera steady, but that isn't it. So what happened? You started to move. And when I say that what I mean is that you never stop moving. The impact of this on my photos is that any given series starts with you a few feet away, then continues as you get closer and closer to the camera and ends with a blur of your face and hands as you finally reach me and put the lens cap to the camera in your mouth. The effect on the non-photographed part of our life is that I am spending a lot of time pulling you out from under furniture, fishing pieces of lint and other undesirable objects out of your mouth, and generally using the word "No" a lot more than before. It's surprising how much you can get into, because you aren't really "crawling" in the classic fashion. You are doing what my mom describes as "unching," a strange, inch-worm-like maneuver involving scooting around on your stomach. It looks terribly uncomfortable, but you seem to like it. Every day, you spend some time on all fours and I think maybe this will be the day you "really" crawl, but then you just get back down on your stomach and scooch off to your next project. As a result of this, I am developing a new kind of listening philosophy that I would describe as "no news is definitely not good news." Meaning that if you are babbling, laughing, or fussing while you go about your business out of my line of vision, things are probably OK. But the moment I realize I haven't heard you for, say, 20 seconds or so, I pretty much know you're into something. This audio surveillance technique is in effect at all times, just to warn you. This morning, I was in the middle of rinsing the shampoo out of my hair when it occurred to me that I was doing so in silence. Sure enough, when I looked around the shower curtain, you were nowhere near the nice little pile of toys I had left for you to amuse yourself with while I was bathing. Nope. You were doing a detailed inspection of the base of the toilet. With your face. Note to self: Step One of new showering strategy is "Set up playpen for baby." This month has been really busy and filled with lots of family and friends, which is always a good thing. Your Aunt Audrey came to visit us in June, and you totally fell in love with her and her shiny shiny cell phone that she let you play with. Here you are with her. We just came back from a trip to Mississippi, where you were endlessly entertained by your Gam. Really, the two of you are quite in love with one another. You got a little clingy to me on the first day of our trip, but we discovered that if Gam went and got you up from a nap without letting you see me, you were happy to hang out with her for hours at a time. This revelation meant that your dad and I got to go out a couple of times, including once to a movie. Outside the house. In an actual movie theater. With popcorn and everything. I have never been so excited to pay 15 bucks for snacks. We went to see Wall-E, because we are huge Pixar nerds. Since we didn't have a car, Aunt Hannah had to drive us into town and drop us off, and it felt like going on a "date" in junior high, when your mom drops you off at the front of the theater and you see a rated G movie and then go to Chick Fil-A on the way home. It was a great date, and when I rushed out of the theater at the end to call home, certain that you would be a hysterical wreck after three hours without me, I heard you squealing and laughing and having the time of your life with Gam. I admit, I felt a little sad at how much you were not needing me. But I think I can get used to it. I'm starting to think we need to get you some little musical instruments to play with, because you were completely enthralled with the piano at my parents' house, and when your Aunt Hannah started playing her guitar and singing you silly little songs one afternoon when you were being grumpy, you were fascinated. You also spent the next fifteen minutes trying to get the strings into your mouth, but I'm sure all future musical prodigies do that when they are teething. You've got two teeth now and you recently discovered that if you hold your Cheerios in just the right spot, you can crunch them up with those two teeth. There may be a less efficient way to eat Cheerios, but I can't think of what it is. Still, I'm not complaining. At that speed, you can eat Cheerios for a loooong time. We basically survived a flight from Albuquerque to Houston by going "Hey, look, here's a Cheerio! And oh! Another Cheerio!" Eight-hundred crunched-up Cheerios later, we landed. I hope they had a Dustbuster on board. In spite of all the eating, you are still kind of little for your age. Several people on our trip guessed that you were six or seven months old, and at your nine month check up, you only weighed in at 16 pounds and 4 ounces, which puts you in something like the fifth percentile for weight. But your doctor says as long as you're growing, which you are, it's OK for you to be little. And I agree, because you're changing so much that I can see clearly that the day is coming when you won't be a baby anymore. Some days, I'll admit, that's a comforting thought -- today, for instance, you are teething, and are behaving as if the mere task of breathing oxygen in and out of your lungs is more than you can contemplate without screeching in annoyance every five seconds. It is a little much. But last week, when we were coming back from Mississippi, we got on the last airplane of our trip, and you fell asleep in my arms during takeoff. Usually on a plane, I have a book and an i-Pod all ready to go to pass the time, and the thought of just sitting perfectly still without one of those things would sound like some kind of punishment. But you were so beautiful and sweet, sleeping with your face turned toward me and your cheeks all rosy, and right at that moment, I didn't want anything but to sit there with your dad and hold you and try to forget how quickly you are growing up. Slow down. I love you, Mommy ]]> http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/07/dear_kate_month_ten_1.html http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/07/dear_kate_month_ten_1.html Baby Kate Tue, 15 Jul 2008 07:35:27 -0700 Question: If you take a plane ride with your ten-month-old child and pack a bag full of entertainment objects including, but not limited to, a stuffed monkey, a measuring cup, a chewy toy shaped like a popsicle, a rattle, and plastic baby keys, which of these objects will entrance your child for the duration of a flight from Jackson, Mississippi to Houston? Answer: None. But during the beverage service, the flight attendant will hand your baby a plastic cup with the words "Continental Airlines" on it, and the baby will behave as if this plastic cup is the long-sought key to her happiness in life and play with it for the remainder of the flight. Whatever works, people. I do whatever works. ]]> http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/07/in_case_you_were_trying_to_fin.html http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/07/in_case_you_were_trying_to_fin.html Every day stuff Fri, 11 Jul 2008 20:55:17 -0700 "Is it possible that the baby is smarter than me?" This is the story of one of those moments. Back before Kate was born, I read about a study some group did on the effect of television on the development of a child's brain. The overall conclusion was that television viewing should really be kept to a minimum (none at all before two years old, if you want to know what they actually said) and that typical television programming, with commercials and rapidly-changing images and sounds is too much in any case, so age-appropriate programs should be chosen. This made sense to me, and so Dan and I have never really watched television around Kate. This means we watch a lot less T.V. than we did before she was born, which is also not a bad thing. She does, however, see us turn the television on and off when we put on her Baby Signing Time DVD that I've written about before. She likes the television remotes because they have buttons, but she hasn't seen them in action much. This is why we were really shocked when, about a week ago, after she had succeeded in pulling one of the remotes off the end table by our couch, she promptly turned around and pointed it at the television. And every time after that, when she managed to snare a remote of any sort, she would wave it around at the T.V. Of course, nothing happened, but it was obvious that she understood that something might happen if she just kept at it long enough. Then a couple of days ago, I was in the kitchen washing dishes, and Kate was tooling around in the living room in her walker. I heard her drag one of the remotes off the table, and didn't think anything of it until a few minutes later, over the sound of the running water in the sink, I heard this male voice in the living room. I came around the corner to see this: Kate had turned the television on and was enjoying a program called "Take-Home Chef," which, as I learned, involves a beefy blonde male Australian chef going up to random people in the grocery store and offering to go home with them and cook dinner. And yes, I let her watch it for a few minutes, just because she was so proud of herself for finally making the television turn on. She clapped, and laughed and bounced up and down in glee. So I let her have her little victory. But now the remotes live in a drawer in the coffee table instead of out in the open. I figure that will at least keep her from ordering pay-per-view movies for a few more days. Instead I think I will encourage her other recent hobby of stealing my cookbooks off the shelf in the kitchen. Who knows? Maybe she'll cook us dinner. ]]> http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/06/uhoh.html http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/06/uhoh.html Baby Kate Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:41:02 -0700 How to make me smile: If you are an adult, bring flowers for me, a rattle for my little girl, and a an inflatable globe ball for, I suppose, Dan, when you are our dinner guest. It isn't required for admission, but we like it. I mean, Dan played with that bouncy ball all night. Thanks, Bob. If you are the resident nine-and-a-half-month-old of the house, start dragging a stuffed animal (in this case, a monkey) around with you everywhere, and rub your face on it when you are tired. My heart will melt. By the way, Kate P, do you recognize the monkey in these pictures? Congratulations. I think you may have given us the toy that we will have to buy 3 extras of in case we ever lose it. On another subject, I think Kate is really close to crawling. I also think my life is about to get much more complicated. ]]> http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/06/how_to.html http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/06/how_to.html Every day stuff Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:08:42 -0700 here and a video clip here regarding Eric. There is also a beautiful photo of him on Summer's blog, holding his nephew and niece in his arms. One day, they will be reunited. ]]> http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/06/semper_fi.html http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/06/semper_fi.html Every day stuff Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:32:06 -0700 I had to put it out of her reach for the picture, and five seconds later, this is what happened to it, in case you think I am exaggerating: We miss you, Dan! Happy Birthday.]]> http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/06/longdistance_birthday_love.html http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/06/longdistance_birthday_love.html Dan the Great Thu, 19 Jun 2008 07:19:40 -0700 I realized a few weeks ago that a couple of people have tagged me in a blog meme that asks you to list seven random things about yourself that your readers might find interesting. While I sometimes worry that the Internet knows way, way too much about me already, I think I'll make it official and give you these last seven pieces of information you need to go on some kind of trivia show about me. 1) I never have cash. I mean, if you need a quarter to make a phone call from a pay phone, I am not your girl, because it will take me 30 minutes to scrape 25 cents together from under the floor mats of my car. And even then, it will be in pennies. This bit me in the rear on two very recent occasions, one of which I will recount for you. When I picked my sister Audrey up from the airport for her recent visit, I parked my car in the short-term lot, and because I basically walked up to the waiting area as Audrey was walking out, we were leaving again in less than a half hour. This meant that we only owed one dollar for the parking fee. One dollar that I did not have. So I got out my credit card. And it wasn't enough that I already felt stupid for charging a one dollar fee. No. The parking lot attendant, acting on behalf of the Universe or something, leaned out of the little booth and said. "Do you really not have a dollar?" No, I really, really don't. 2) I cut my hair short for the first time when I was 18. That first time, it was really, really short. Boy short. Too short. No, I will not show you pictures. But it's basically been short-ish ever since then. On an interesting note, Dan's sisters told me after we got engaged that on several occasions when they were growing up, Dan said he wanted to marry a tall girl with short, dark hair. So I guess that one worked out for him. 3) I have been wearing the same necklace for ten years. I have averted detection by the Fashion Police for this lack of accessory variation by moving states and changing my (last) name. But I bought my necklace, which is a silver Celtic knot, in Belfast, and I love it. That makes me sound more well-traveled than I am, when the truth is that I went to Northern Ireland when I was 18 and haven't been out of the country since. But it was an important trip for me because it was one of the first experiences that showed me in a very direct way that not everyone in the world is like me. In Belfast I saw that necklace and fell in love with it and bought it and I've been wearing it ever since. Meanwhile, people are still not all like me. So I suppose that lesson, like my necklace, has some longevity. 4) The single regret I have about college (aside from the usual stupidity and immaturity) is that I did not study abroad. I have since realized that it is never going to be easier to live in another country for a while than it is when you're a student. So heed that, youngsters. Go to Europe. And send an old lady a postcard. 5) I wish recommending books for people was a job for which you could get paid. Every once in a while, someone in my life will humor me and ask me what they should read, and I spend a lot of time thinking about my advice. When someone loves a book I have told them to read, I am ridiculously happy, like I set people up on a blind date and have now been invited to their wedding. Really, it's very rewarding. 6) The first three CDs I ever owned are as follows: Counting Crows, August and Everything After; R.E.M. Automatic for the People; and the Indigo Girls, Swamp Ophelia. And I still love all those records, and the Indigo Girls. I don't care how uncool that is. Shut up. 7) My ears are not pierced. I am not sure how that failed to happen, except that when I was under 12, I wanted to get them pierced and my mom wouldn't let me, and by the time she would have, I had forgotten about it and gone on to start my career as a person who wears the same necklace for ten years and is currently carrying a purse that has a lining so badly ripped that everything falls through it and gets lost. Which makes it hard to pretend to look for a dollar in change just to placate the parking lot attendant at the airport. ]]> http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/06/facts_that_benefit_you_in_no_w.html http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/06/facts_that_benefit_you_in_no_w.html Every day stuff Sun, 15 Jun 2008 20:15:19 -0700 On Saturday mornings, Dan is sweet enough to get up with Kate at 7 and play with her until it's time for her to take her morning nap so that I can get some extra sleep. Then we usually put her down for her nap and spend some time together. This morning, when we heard Kate wake up from her nap, Dan went to get her, and I stayed in the kitchen and drank coffee, but because I forgot to turn off the baby monitor, this is what I heard: Dan: "Hey Smiles!" (This is what he calls Kate when she wakes up from naps because most of the time she gives you this smile like you've been on a long trip and she's ecstatic to see you again.) Kate: Laughs and kicks, I can hear her heels thumping against the mattress. Dan: "You took such a good nap! Let's get you dressed so we can go out and eat breakfast, OK?" (Sound of drawers opening.)"We'll pick out a cute outfit for you. What do you think about this dress?" (More kicking, giggling, etc. from Kate.) And back in the kitchen, my heart almost exploded with love for the two of them for the millionth time. One of the most precious things about this first year with Kate has been getting to see what a great dad Dan is. I'm so thankful for him, and I'm looking forward to celebrating his first Father's Day, which is probably the last Father's Day that he won't be able to trick Kate into telling him what gift he's getting. Or at least showing him where I hid it. She's a pretty big daddy's girl, after all. ]]> http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/06/wrapped_around_a_baby_finger.html http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/06/wrapped_around_a_baby_finger.html Dan the Great Sat, 14 Jun 2008 21:17:29 -0700 ]]> http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/06/cuteness.html http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/06/cuteness.html Baby Kate Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:48:12 -0700 My sister Audrey, who is visiting us this week, was kind enough to bring me a picture of the aforementioned golden cow that you can see along Highway 49 South between Jackson and Hattiesburg, Mississippi. If I ever write a book, I think this will have to be the cover. ]]> http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/06/enough_to_make_moses_go_back_u.html http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/06/enough_to_make_moses_go_back_u.html Every day stuff Missing Home Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:02:19 -0700 Disclaimer: Towards the end of this letter, I talk about some thoughtless things people have said to me about an ongoing issue we've had regarding Kate's sleep patterns. Knowing that a lot of you who read my blog have given us great advice on this topic in recent months, I just want to make it clear that you are not the people I am talking about. Mostly, it has been strangers who have had the most outspoken or just plain nosy things to say after they ask if she sleeps through the night and I say "No." Y'all who are part of our real lives have been lovely and supportive, even on the sixteenth or twentieth time I have asked you what you think about a particular approach. Thanks for that. Dear Kate, In a week, you will be nine months old, so I am just going to give in an declare that I did, indeed, fail to write an eighth month newsletter, and so I am combining months eight and nine here. I am somewhat comforted by the fact that you can't yet count, and that by the time you read this and realize I skipped a month, I'll probably have humiliated you on your first day of junior high, or been the only mom who insisted on riding in the back seat during driver's education, and that will make this seem like a minor infraction. I hope you'll forgive me. I know that I have been putting off writing about last month, and now the last two months, because it is overwhelming to try to put on paper everything we've done, and how much you've changed in that relatively brief period of time. So in case I give up trying to capture it halfway through, here is a quick list of the things you do now that you didn't do two months ago: You wave your hands in the air. Sometime when we were in Mississippi, you started experimenting with this move, but it wasn't until we were seated in the exact middle of a lengthy pew at my parents' church in Hattiesburg during morning worship on Mother's Day that you decided to really show off your new skills. The pastor had his hands raised during part of the prayer, and suddenly you stood up on my lap and put your hands up too. You were so proud of yourself that it was hard to want to make you stop. But you were kind of distracting, waving your arms around like a miniature television evangelist. So I turned you around to face me, and you promptly started doing your previously documented dance routine for the entertainment of the couple seated behind us. This is cute, but I'm not sure if you got the memo: We're Presbyterians, baby. So you're going to have to take it down a notch. Here we are together on Mother's Day. You clap. You started doing this during a visit from your Grammy and Grandpa Wachdorf, and I'm a little concerned that it has made you believe you have the power of mind control, because every time you clap even a little, someone drops what they are doing and sings you either "Pattycake" or "If You're Happy and You Know It." And this look comes over your face like you're imagining your life as the star of a reality show called "Baby Kate: Parent Whisperer." Here you are with Grammy and Grandpa. That walker that I mentioned you could only drive in reverse? Well now you're driving it so well that I'm having to build little barricades in the kitchen to keep you from running into my ankles at high speeds. You love that thing, and your love was only intensified when it dawned on you, about a week ago, that with your new power steering capabilities you could go get the television remotes all by yourself. You laugh. You play peekaboo. You have learned to throw things. I'm not sure that is a good thing, but you find it entertaining, so as long as you're throwing plastic toys and not valuable china, I don't think we have a problem. And how could I have waited this long to mention that you finally have a tooth? After faking me out for months -- MONTHS -- you have at last sprouted a little teeny tiny tooth, and you spend a good portion of every day checking it out with your tongue. Maybe it's because of this that you also babble a lot more lately than you have in the past. I don't know what it is, but I'm loving it, because you have such a cute voice. In the week before your tooth finally broke through, you would chew on anything, including the hard plastic flower attached to your walker. It doesn't look very tasty, but you couldn't get enough. Probably the thing you are most excited about this month is your new-found ability to feed yourself. For a long time, you didn't understand how to open up your fist and put the food in your mouth. You'd just sit there, putting your fist in your mouth, then take it out and look confused when the Cheerio was still in your hand. But then it clicked, and you are a self-feeding wizard. The only unforeseen side effect of this is that you are so enamored with feeding yourself that you are very impatient with foods that I have to feed you with a spoon. If it were up to you, you'd be on the 100 Percent Bread and Cheerios Diet, which I'm not sure would pass muster with our pediatrician. So you might have to put up with me and my pesky spoon a little longer. It's going to be a while before you can handle a steak knife. So now that I've talked about all the things you can do, I'm going to take a moment to write about the one thing you don't do. At almost nine months old, you still do not sleep through the night, or anything close to it. For a long time, I thought this was my fault, and that somehow I was doing something that was getting in the way of your natural desire and ability to sleep for 12 consecutive hours a night. This is how most baby sleep books make it sound. And I have read a lot of baby sleep books in the last nine months. That fact in itself is notable, because above all else, I hate to read "How To" books. But I haven't had a solid night's sleep in nine months, and around month five, I hit the baby books pretty hard, looking for some answers. Yet, you still don't sleep through the night in quite the way all those books promise you will if we just do everything the way they say. I am not going to blog about the combination of steps we've taken recently that have started to show some results, because I don't want the Internet to yell at me. Sleep philosophies, I've discovered, are really controversial, and no matter what you do, someone out in the world of parenting literature stands ready and willing to call you a terrible person for it. But I'm writing about this struggle we've had because these letters will also serve as a record of what this first year of your life was like for me, and I want to remember how frustrating this part was, how inadequate it made me feel, and how little 95 percent of the books I read helped. I want to remember those things for two reasons. One is so that I can be sympathetic to someone going through the same thing one day. I truly believe that there is some kind of fog that descends on the minds of parents that prevents us from recalling in detail just how hard some of the parts of having a baby really are. And sometimes, when you're in the middle of those hard things, people can't access the memory of what you're going through, even though they went through it themselves. So, with the best of intentions, they say things like "Oh, this is nothing. Wait until she's a teenager. Then you'll have problems." That may be true, but it is not helpful, and I don't ever want to say it to some poor sleep deprived woman. The other reason I want to remember this is because trying to get you to sleep has taught me what I am pretty sure is a major parenting/life lesson: No matter how much I want there to be a well-defined answer for how to fix any given problem we may face as your parents, the fact is that you are a unique little person, and even if Book X worked for 6,235 babies before you, none of those babies are just like you. In some ways, it's tough for me to embrace that, because it means that there are probably never going to be any easy answers, and that instead, we will go through various incarnations of the same process we've gone through with sleep stuff -- trying something we think might be a good idea, trusting our instincts enough to decide what isn't going to work for us, trying again and then the really hard part, being patient when the results we want don't magically occur. But at the same time, that lesson also makes me feel really lucky, because it's another reminder that there really is only one of you. And there isn't any other baby I'd rather have, even if you never do sleep 12 hours straight like the babies in all those books. (But for the record, the offer of $500 in cash in exchange for six to seven hours of sleep at a stretch still stands, at least until I finish reading this book on how to teach you to fix yourself a sandwich and read a good book when you wake up in the middle of the night.) I love you, Mommy ]]> http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/06/dear_kate_months_eight_and_nin_1.html http://www.wachdorf.com/haley-blog/2008/06/dear_kate_months_eight_and_nin_1.html Baby Kate Sun, 01 Jun 2008 20:49:24 -0700