Sleep

Deep in conversation yesterday evening with a breastfeeding, co-sleeping, working mother of four and she asks about the fusspot's sleep schedule. The truth is that she's regressed a lot in the past month. We put her down at 8 pm and she's up by midnight for a snack and then usually eats 3-4 more times before I get up at 8 am. Yes, that's something like a snack every 2 hours from midnight on. And rather than gasp in horror, this woman looked at me and said:

"Does it bother you? Are you functioning ok?"

Which is, in my mind at least, the most appropriate question. And the answer at the moment is yes. I'm hoping that her daycare will put her on a more regular nap schedule and that she will get used to the big changes of the month (finger foods, sitting up, moving to Europe, daycare ...) but in the meantime I'm just not that interested/willing to make any drastic changes or even to commit to the little responsible parenting tactics like putting my baby to bed at the same time every night (to clarify, supermom invited me to come over and chat after her children were all in bed - so I didn't show up till 8 pm and the fusspot and I didn't make it home until 10:30 pm).

In other baby news, we talked about about baby lead weaning (which has almost nothing to do with weaning at the moment and everything to do with feeding babies finger and table foods over purees) and I am sold. And I also had a long conversation on the beach with another ex-pat about elimination training, and I'm ready to get started on that.

The funny thing about the woman on the beach, is that we started talking because of ... our ergos (and yes, the fusspot and I were playing hooky from work for the afternoon and went for a walk on the gorgeous, sandy beach about 20 minutes from our little town). There is no distribution/sales of Ergos in Europe at the moment so whenever you see one out and about you know that the mother is an American or Canadian or has a good friend in one of those places. It is a great way to find the ex-pats here (not that I'm avoiding the locals but they are notoriously unfriendly). It's funny because back when JD and I were young and backpacking through Europe we tried to avoid American-brand sneakers and a few other key items so that we could blend in more. Now I proudly wear my American-brand Ergo as a way to meet other American moms and ask them all of my key questions like: what laundry detergent do you use here??? We're still on a quest to find an enzyme and perfume free detergent which also cleans cloth diapers.