Dear Lili,
Your Dad is a hard working man. Sometimes he has beers. Sometimes the combination of hard working tired Dad plus beers equals tired groggy Dad. And this is what goes down in the middle of the night…
Each night you cry once or twice and sometimes three times. Once often to be fed. The other times because your pacifier fell out and you just need to be plugged back up to go back to snoozing again. The only problem is if we don’t jump on plugging you up you start to cry and cry and eventually wake yourself up. It is then impossible to put you back down to sleep. Ok. Maybe not impossible but it takes a while and this is tiring. So…if you make a peep…we jump.
Um…at least one of us jumps. Here is a recent comical middle of the night conversation with your Dad:
You Lili: Wahhhhh…wahhhhh
Me: Can you go put her pacifier in please?
Dad: Huh?! Wha?!! Sure… no problem… (turns over and goes back to bed)
Me: Can you PLEASE go put her pacifier in – do not turn over (gentle shaking of Dad’s shoulders)
Dad: (Dad sitting up and searching in the dark on bed) Can’t find it…can’t find it…
Me: (increasingly annoyed) WHAT? CAN’T you FIND?! WHAT?! WHAT are you looking for?
Lili: (crying volume increasing) Wahhhhh……wahhhh…..
Dad: (sitting still and upright) Can’t find the pacifier….(opens bedside drawer totally asleep)
Me: (now fully awake) IT’S IN HER CRIB! Your daughter’s crib. Can you please go to her room and put the pacifier in her mouth?!
Dad: Oh (blank). (A word you should not use Lili)
Last night we had a similar incident. Except when I asked Dad to please put the pacifier in your mouth he sat upright and said in total seriousness, “Watch your tone, ok? I didn’t get your voicemail!”
Omigod, I do not miss those middle-of-the-night conversations. I would always be insane and on the verge of tears and Ryan, the next morning, would say things like “Wow, she didn’t wake up last night, did she?”. And then I would stab him in the chest.
perfectly spot on. I have a 9 month old who also needs proper plugging- we’ve started throwing tons of pacifiers in the crib figuring he should be able to find at least one of them in the dark.