All-Nighters

This phrase used to have such a fun meaning back in middle school and high school. It brought to mind thoughts of fun parties with friends consisting of innocent games of truth-or-dare, movies, pizza, and ice cream that lasted into the early mornings hours. In college, an "all-nighter" looked a little bit more grim, generally describing a sleepless night of studying before final exams, or typing and hitting backspace a thousand times before completing a 40 page paper due in the morning and not yet started.

As an adult, the phrase "all-nighter" had all but dropped out of my vocabulary. Sure, there are late nights, long nights, middle-of-the-nights, and endless nights, none of which share the same previously discussed connotations of "all-nighters," at least in my personal dictionary.

The past 2 nights have revived the term. Saturday night, especially, kicked off the resurrection of the more negative "all-nighter" phrase. We've heard about these happening with babies and tried to ignore the stories and avoid working up a traumatic mental image of what this actually might look like. It's been 4 months, and we finally had our first "all-nighter" experience with Amaris.

Somehow, through this cold that she has had, she seems to have forgotten how to suck her thumb to sooth herself to sleep. This was a sensible decision on her part, because every time she sucks her thumb she struggles to breath due to her stuffy nose. Smart kid, learns quickly. However, now she has trouble putting herself to sleep at night, and back to sleep when she wakes up for some weirdo baby reason (they have millions I'm sure).

Saturday night began with her usual bedtime of 8pm . After a trip to her bedroom every 40 minutes, by 12:30 am we ended up in the living room with me sleeping on our usually cozy armchair and Jonathan on the couch, Amaris in my arms and me on duty to lull her back to sleep each time she awoke. Between 8-12:30 these trips involved responding to her crying by trying to sooth her with a pacifier, remind her of her thumb's magic, and finally picking her up, lulling her back to sleep, carefully laying her down and tip-toeing out of the room hoping she would stay put. The feeling of success came to an abrupt end within 35-40 minutes when she started screaming.

I'm sure being sick, her ears don't feel the greatest and she just feels awful overall, so if I was that small and could convince someone to put me to sleep in their arms instead of laying in a lonely bed, I would totally do the same thing. Props to you Amaris for knowing how to get what you want and sleep in ultimate comfort. On the other hand, please remember that you are one of the few mammals that is blessed with opposable thumbs, which in your case, are extremely useful for achieving peaceful sleep.

Anyhow, thankfully, it took us 4 months to experience these, and last night was a little bit better-at least we all slept in our respective beds and only woke up twice, so I think this problem will resolve itself soon. I'd like to put the word "all-nighter" back in my dictionary of retired words.

Keeping up

Our daughter is now 4 months old (well, tomorrow "officially") and we clearly suck at keeping up with the blog. I guess I got bored of posting "baby stats". Some days I have massive amounts of time to think through life and record excerpts of the flow of thoughts that passes through my brain, some days I barely have time to even identify what it is I'm thinking of. So it goes. I'm sure the whole world can relate.

In sticking to the title of this entry, "keeping up", I've been overwhelmed again and again with how much we live to keep up with some strange standard of "good" here in America. I'm sure it's everywhere, it's just that a more simple country's standard seems like vacation for us because it's so easy for us to attain their "standard" here. At any rate, the baby world is insanely excessive and competitive. These little humans could care less how they're dressed, how big they are, how many toys they have-well, as long as they're entertained-and the parents are psycho's about making sure their kid wins the silent competition of who's the biggest, cutest dressed baby on the block. I am entertained by Amaris's clothing of course, but it's just upsetting to me how quickly we get sucked into wanting or buying things that are really completely unnecessary just because it seems like the "norm." Sort of drives me nuts....mentally constantly filtering the needs from the wants-due-to-lack-of-analyzing-the-purpose. That was way too many hyphens.

This clearly isn't anything new, and I'd like to believe that most people have thought about this weird scenario before. Sadly I guess many people haven't, which is why it persists with such shameless force in our society. I'm just curious as to why we constantly choose to continue living the way we do even when we have repeated "revelations" about how silly it all is. It's funny how the pioneering spirit of America, the spirit of Individualism, all these things we patriotically brag about and claim to be the foundations of our country have essentially become sort of old school. The "rugged individuals" are now marginalized, to pursue something radically different than your suburban neighbors is essentially taboo because it might make them uncomfortable, and we don't have the energy to pioneer..it's much easier, and "practical" to take someone else's advice and follow their example.

I guess those people who moved out west before California was a state were considered renegades and idiots at first by their comfy colonial communities, too. It's just interesting that we now hail them as heroic pioneers. Most ironic of all, these "rugged individuals" set up camp in one of the places in our country that has a rather hypocritical claim to "individualism" LA, Hollywood, etc. Come "be yourself" but make sure you fit in. Wear your hair this way, clothes that way, make-up this way, body shape that way. Yikes. I still don't get how that all works out...how a culture founded on the freedom of art has become such a confining, pretentious and relatively shallow community. Analyzing films and books but not their own lives, being super proactive about animal rights and human rights but not trying to figure out if they're actually doing what is right. I guess that sounds harsh...and is. And obviously it's a very generalized statement that in no way applies to every person in California or the west, or New York or whatever. I just don't understand how a community that supposedly appreciates diversity inadvertently puts pressure on the rest of society to maintain a very specific-albeit unrealistic and unnatural-appearance and presence. People live to "keep up" with the fashion, the real estate, and the youthful mask of celebrities without giving a second thought to the sense behind it. Weird. In the suburbs, it also translates into keeping your kids up to speed with those things, even if they don't care.

Again, nothing new...it's just been bothering me lately as I consider how we raise Amaris-especially as a female in a country where you're encouraged to be "yourself" but make sure you're beautiful, thin, and "successful" while doing so. I can't stand the fact that I feel sort of weird and worried about how we will explain to people that we don't plan on celebrating Christmas by buying her gifts, and aren't going to throw her a princess birthday party at Sweet 'n' Sassy-geez I don't even think I'd want her to attend a party there. Somehow we are stuck trying to explain why we don't think it's necessary to follow everyone else's lead, and parents will look at us strangely, even get angry with us, for challenging their way of life, no matter how quietly we try to explain it.

Ok that is all. This is long and likely boring. Hopefully it doesn't come across all prideful and judging. It really is just a mess of what's on my mind as I consider the impressionable mold of Amaris's mind, and how I am overwhelmingly responsible for shaping it.