Making Lemonade

These past two days have been bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S for my fellow Gwen fans. I think the good Man upstairs thought I was complaining in my last blog post and so He decided to show me what tough really feels like.



Alexa started to get sick Wednesday night. By bedtime she was wailing at the top of her lungs and refused to sleep. Someday we should count how many times I've said this on my blog, but Alexa is not a crier. When a snuggle from Momma doesn't immediately stop the crying something is seriously wrong. On top of that, this kid loves her sleep. She usually sleeps 12 hours a night and takes 4 hours of naps during the day. I barely knew what to do when Alexa was crying AND refused to sleep. I spent most of the night just rocking and holding her.


I had too many meetings at work on Thursday to call in sick, so I sucked it up and drug my sleep deprived butt to my desk. It's been my second hardest day to leave Alexa so far. Once she actually cried when I left. This time, there were no tears but the sadness in her eyes said it all. I was happy to hear from the Nanny that Alexa perked up during the day and ate well. So, I made the silly assumption that Alexa must be getting better.


Thursday night was the toughest night I've had in my entire motherhood experience. Alexa cried like the world was ending. Not only wouldn't she stop crying, she refused to even go in her room. When we put her to bed she started to choke on the drainage from her cold and decided her entire room must be against her and was to be avoided at all costs. Thankfully, my Momma intuition wasn't dampened by lack of sleep so I took her in her playroom, strapped her in her bouncy seat, sang almost all of the Mamas and the Papas Greatest Hits cd to her and she finally fell asleep. I knew she wouldn't sleep too soundly (and it wasn't safe to leave her in her bouncy by herself) so I pulled up a pillow and a blanket and slept next to her on the playroom floor. I lost count of how many times she woke up and checked to see if I was still there. We held hands off and on throughout the night.


I can work without one night of sleep. Two was out of the question so I stayed home today to nurse Alexa back to health. We had a bright spot of fun in the afternoon when we decided to play dress up and take pictures. I hope when I look back 20 years from now I'll remember a night of holding hands with Alexa and her sweet giggles as she stared at herself in the mirror with an array of fun costumes - not the maddening scream from the past two nights that is currently ringing in my ears. See God, I'm looking at the good. No more lessons needed.