We're down to only one nap a day now, and the transition was rough on all of us. During one month Lula went from a gal who napped twice a day, sometimes two hours each time, to someone who naps once a day for an hour and a half (if we're lucky.) It's been hard. She's still tired a lot of the time; she just won't (or can't) sleep more. She's still waking up at 5 am, too. It would make me upset, if I let myself believe it's a long-term state of affairs. Instead I delude myself every day, thinking, "Goodness, how early it is! I hope Lula's feeling OK, because surely a healthy baby wouldn't wake up so early in the morning -- or nap for such a short amount of time! She will certainly sleep later tomorrow." Good old coping mechanisms.
By the way, that thing where Lula says everything is a "time"? She does that now whenever she says "no" (which is quite frequently). For example, if you're singing a song that she doesn't want to hear at that moment from you, she might shake her head vigorously and reach out to shush your mouth or push your face away from her, while repeating, "No, no time. No time." Though she really clips that word "time," as if she's aware that it doesn't make sense in this context but she has a compulsion to say it anyway, so it's more like "no tym. no tym." If you can imagine that.
At night, part of Lula's bedtime ritual involves me listing some of the animals that are sleeping, in order to lull her into thinking that all the fun is over for the day, because, hello! all the animals are sleeping now, and so you should be, too. But she has recently started to suggest animals to me, breaking away from nursing (yes, I'm still nursing her before sleep, and the thought of weaning right now makes me fear for my life and sanity) to say things like "hurs!" or "cats!" or "bunny wabbis!" or "chichens!" or "punnies!" (um, horse, cats, bunny rabbits, chickens, and ponies.) I understand most of what she says these days, though I have to translate in my head sometimes (she says W instead of R, and D instead of G or J, for example) and even then I am often flummoxed. For instance, why has "flauwas" become "flauwies" instead of "flowers"? And what does "tiboe" or "dubay" mean, and why does she repeat them so often?
We have reached the age where Scott and I can understand her when no one else can, if only because we know the things she's referencing. "Pony time" means it's time to brush her teeth, because her toothbrush has My Little Pony on it. "Mahtching, mahtching!" refers to the song "We Are The Dinosaurs" by Laurie Berkner ("We are the dinosaurs, marching, marching"). "Munning" means "good morning," as in, stop pretending to sleep, you a-hole, and play with me. "Uppadown," as I've said before, means "pick me up," and "ee tu" means "take this," though I believe a literal translation is "thank you." As in, what you say when someone takes something that you're handing to them. These last two, along with the word "Mommy," probably make up almost half of all the words she speaks during a day. Uppadown, mommy? Uppadown? Ee tu, mommy. Ee tu.
New York City is starting to piss me off. I used to take the difficulty of living here as a kind of challenge, or even, dare I admit it, a coolness test. But now, instead of worrying that I might fail at "making it" here, I'm just feeling very angry at the city in general. Most of this has to do with the absurd housing bubble. My apartment's value has doubled in the past four years, and though that sounds great, I can't afford to move anywhere because everyone else's apartments have gotten more expensive too. Even the ones in "edgy" neighborhoods are ridiculously expensive. I'm sorry, but if I have to worry about walking home safely after dark, I shouldn't have to pay $600,000 for an apartment in your neighborhood. And I don't even want to think about the schooling situation, because I might actually vomit from anxiety, and this is a new keyboard. Needless to say that if we live in an area where we can afford more than one bedroom we'll have to send Lula to private school ($23k/year), because all the places in good school districts are astronomically expensive. And the "good" schools are overcrowded with a lottery to get in, even if you're in the right district.
I don't know what the solution is. The suburbs that are close to the city are also crazy expensive, and have the added expense of high real estate taxes, a car or two, and the inevitable therapy for me and my fellow suburb-hating husband. Scott and I are weighing our options, while hoping we can wait out the housing bubble. We'll keep you posted.
- Sarah.
