Unreasonable

Today I am unreasonable.

Today began at 4:30am. A.M. [It's 5 o'clock somewhere is playing in the back of my mind on a vicious, taunting loop] At 4:30am when I realized that my husband was not in bed with me, and his absence was indicative of a baby giving him grief downstairs. When the baby and my husband reach a point of consensus, they usually end up grabbing hubby's pillow and retreating to the couch to get what parents of young children refer to as 'sleep' (but the respite we're referring to would never have passed even for 'dozing', 'napping', or 'staring off into space' in our life before children). Since his pillow was still present, I decided to take it to him.

I got knocked up this summer. Gloriously pregnant. I'm thrilled about it, but it has severely limited my capacity to function at night. I stand, dumbfounded, staring at the crying baby at 1am trying to figure out A. what the problem is, B. what (if anything) I should do about it, and C. where I am. Turns out, usually the kiddo needs a new diaper and a few minutes of rocking (or hours, or nothing, or everything, etc.). Anyway, in light of my present condition, the hubster has taken over pretty much all nighttime parenting duties. I am in charge of checking/emptying the pantry and making sure the toilet still works (might have broken in the 15 minutes since my last visit) and husband handles the child.

Moving on: I go downstairs to take him his pillow and the baby is awake, fussing in a quiet but insistent sort of way, and I (stupidly) volunteer to take a shift. This was at (again) 4:30am. By 5:50 I have snot running down my face, I can't stand the idea of wiping my nose on my shoulder sleeve even one more time, and I MUST PEE. So the baby is laid ever so gently, ever so softly, ever so tenderly in her crib (which produces screaming, begging, crying, and unmeasurable sadness) while I blow my nose and use the facilities.

After that I tried a series of desperate but doomed to fail sleep inducing tactics until husband came in around 7 and offered to make breakfast. Genius idea.

After some food, I am now vacuuming the crumbled muffin off the couch to keep it from sticking to my butt and thighs, and the babe (now quite happy with her lot in life) is looking at a calendar filled with family pictures for images of her favorite aunts and uncles.

And I feel entitled to be unreasonable.