So, here we are. I look at this now four-month-old kid and marvel. Any available body part that comes close to her mouth will suddenly be hoovered into her toothless maw and gummed to death. Little legs now pump and flail and fly upwards to almost kick herself in the noggin when she’s lying on her back. When she’s being held up in a standing position those little legs become bars of tiny steel, supporting her own weight for seconds at a time before she wobbles and collapses with a squeal. And then immediately scours the area for an available knuckle to gnaw.
Not so marvelous? Everything that I got used to has been blown clean out of the water. Routines are set up for babies to knock down. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep (IT’S TOTALLY THE LACK OF SLEEP), but I find myself stressing over the details. Mind you, it’s nothing intrinsically important, nothing life or death. It’s just an early glimpse of how much worrying I can store up for the years when she’s dating or driving or playing in those colourful ball pits, aka festering holes of germs and certain suffocation. So, I have been swiping on Saje’s Stress Release Nature’s Remedy Roll On, under my chin like a bike strap, and all along my hairline and pulse points. Great inhales of the Essential Oils along with some well-timed deep breaths have very successfully gotten me through the moments where she’s breaking the sound barrier in the backseat while I’m driving and can only sing louder than she’s screaming, or the nights I have 40 loads of laundry to fight my way through and she decides to see what 11 pm, 3 am and 6 am look like.
Yes, even at this age she’s still not learning to love sleep. Oh, how I could recite to her a thousand soliloquies on the raptures of a good nights sleep. And how I will want to douse her with a giant jug of Gatorade, like she’s a winning NFL coach, when she’s 16 and not cracking an eyelid before noon. And the kicker is that the more caffeine the Mama inhales, the more caffeine courses through her tiny little veins, making her not want to sleep ever again. So, aside from the afternoons when Grandma tags in and lets me take delicious naps, I have to stay awake all by myself, all naturally. Cue Saje’s Refresh Mist spray. Eyes tightly shut, a few quick squirts of this Lavender and Peppermint infused spray is my equivalent of a Red Bull IV.
An integral part of my survival with this tiny Tasmanian devil has been the small pockets of time I snare for myself. I get the Pops to tag in for bedtime duties so that I can barricade myself in the bathroom, run a too-hot bath, and trickle in a fistful of Saje’s Unwind Bath Salts. The hints of Orange, Cinnamon and Geranium gently wafting up from the steaming water take me back to the days before I had this crazy responsibility on my hands and could loll around a steamy bathroom for hours. With a magazine. And a scotch. (Man, those days now seem like a hazy dream.) There is just no better way to marinade yourself for a good sleep than a good soak. And the knowledge that one day she will sleep through the night. You have to just take it one day at a time, because if you start thinking about the whole big picture of being a parent, it will make you simultaneously laugh, cry and poop yourself. Kind of like a certain four-month-old kid that I know…
