bruises, bad men, and babies

Last night Lilli took a spill, as she tends to do now that she is walking. She fell and smacked the side of her head on a small piece of plastic sticking up on the play yard. As always, she rebounded quickly (except when Dad is more upset than anyone else in the room). We're reading up on the next few months in our What to Expect the First Year and we remembered that side head bumps are worse than front ones. As I was reading about different kinds of baby bashes, I started to remember the first time I was really scared after a major baby bump.

She has had a few serious bruises since starting to move. The first time she drew blood, she was cruising with a board book in hand, lost her balance and fell eye socket first into the side of the book. This could have been WAY more serious than it turned out to be. Needless to say board books are now no longer allowed in the play area.

She crawled off of the bed head first, twice... Once for me and once for Dave. Dave wasn't home when it happened to me and I never told him until... One weekend afternoon, she decided to crawl faster than he could react. When he felt so guilty and badly about it, I broke down and told him what happened to me.

There have been a number of scary sounding falls. Luckily, she's never had a concussion as far as I can tell. I know there will be many more serious bumps to come, at least it's just bumps and bashes not broken hearts. That one is going to be much harder to kiss all better. She's fine, by the way, barely a bruise.

With another sleepless night behind us, Dave and I discussed how to remedy the situation once again. This is probably the 10th or 500th time we've discussed/tried/researched this problem. We have two things on our side. One, it seems that she's not really that bad when you look at the "problem" sleepers. And two, almost every real-life parent I've talked to seems to agree with how we feel about our options.

Since there are a few philosophies on how to sleep train your baby, we've become pretty lost. First of all, "sleep train" sounds like boot camp. Second, Ferber must have a heart made of steal if he could ever listen to his child scream for his attention for over an hour and not want to break down the walls with his bare fists. No child, ever, in the history of time, has ever, ever cried so hard and so loud for a simple comforting hug. There is no way in hell a 9 month old should ever cry like that and not be consoled. Ever. Ever. I'll settle for the occasional sleepless night and the knowledge that my baby is being loved to sleep over heart wrenching screams that literally bring me to the brink of insanity.

And Finally... Breaking News! Last night, Baby Henrik Jax was born into our family to my cousin Britt and her main dude Matt. Congratulations to everyone!