Teeth and Emily the manipulator...

I know what you are thinking..."It can't be! She's exaggerating! That sweet baby face, how could she possibly be ::gasp:: manipulating you." I will tell you how people. She uses that sweet face as a weapon. At 3 am she looks up at you with those sweet eyes and reaches up towards you to pick her up. HOW COULD YOU NOT! And here is where I fail. I pick her up and we rock and rock. She falls into a sweet slumber. All 5 feet of me desperately try to sneak her back into her crib, however since lowering the mattress, I am unsuccessful every.freaking.time. I lean in, half the time my feet are no longer on the floor and I try to lay her down as gently as possible. Sometimes I get her in asleep and sometimes she wakes up instantly, sits up and resumes the staring up at you with those sweet eyes and reaching to be held position. Kills me.

In her defense, she is teething. She is cutting her left lateral incisor (ask yourself how freaking hysterical she is going to look till her central ones or the other lateral cuts through) and she is miserable. Teething has totally thrown off her routine. She has been sleeping through the night for months now, but lately 3 am seems to be her witching hour. At first I thought she was crying because she was in pain, so I HAD to go in there and rock my sweet baby to sleep. Problem is, she instantly falls asleep when I pick her up or when you pat her back. She just wants us to be in there with her. You can pat her back and she will fall asleep, but she makes sure to check every few seconds to make sure you are still there. We did a little test and let her cry (whine really) for a few minutes, went in and rubbed her back to settle her down, and then when she cried again, we waited a bit longer (the Ferber method if you will) and she fell back to sleep in less than 5 minutes. Zig and I were kicking ourselves for not starting it earlier in the night because we alternated for 2 HOURS trying to get her back down before coming to our senses on Tuesday night. Last night she only woke up twice and was easily comforted. We are hoping all her top incisors cut through at once so we can be relieved from our teething hell. My poor little angel, I know she is in pain, but we just can't spend the entire night rocking her in her room. We gave her teething tablets and motrin, we put on a clean diaper if she is really wet, we know she is not hungry, so she just needs to self soothe. She is 8 months old (O.M.G), it is time to wean out those night wakings.

Between you and me, sometimes there is nothing more comforting for this mama than to know that my baby needs me and that I am the only one who can make her feel better. So sometimes, if she reaches up to me at 3 am, I will snuggle her up and rock her for as long as I need for ME to feel comfortable that everything is ok. There is nothing more peaceful that staring down at that soft beautiful sleeping face in my arms and thinking it truly does not get better than this...The world is perfect.

Here are some pictures that I took of her last week for one of Zig's birthday. Let me just tell you, taking a picture of a mobile child is rough!

Pool little girl. She had been grumpy for 3 days before we noticed that she had a tooth cutting through. She literally took my finger and chomped down on it before I realized that there was tooth. I felt around for her central incisors becuase the are the 2 that are "supposed" to come in next and felt nothing so I moved on. She did the same thing to Zig the next day and I pulled up her lip...sure enough her tooth had already broke through. We had lots of these faces over the weekend.