Routines

To get home from work, I take one of the major Houston freeways out of downtown. When I exit the freeway, I turn left to get to my house. Since I've been back to work, I've had to turn right after exiting the freeway to go pick up Jayla. Every afternoon when I leave work, I think of nothing but her until I get to her. Well, yesterday was slightly different. For the first time since I've been back, I exited the freeway and turned left to go straight home. Of course, as I was actually making the turn through a yellow light, it dawned on me that I had forgotten by baby for the first time. I immediately turned around to go get her. I think that must mean that I am finally comfortable back at work and getting back into the groove. So much so that for that brief moment while I was turning left, I had forgotten how drastically my life has changed in the past 4.5 months. I don't feel bad about it, rather excited that I do have the ability to have a life that is separate from my child. As a special treat, when I walked into the room to pick up Jayla, she looked up and made eye contact with me and broke into the absolutely biggest grin I've ever seen:



Speaking of routines, Ms. Jayla woke up last night at 3:19am. That made about the 5th night in a row that she has woken betwen 3:00am and 3:30am. The routine goes something like this:

1. Jayla screams
2. Mommy kicks Daddy to wake him up
3. Daddy goes to Jayla's room, shoves a pacifier in her mouth, holds her head down (because otherwise she flings the pacifier out so that she can continue to scream), and she immediately falls asleep within 30 seconds.
4. Daddy comes back to bed
5. Jayla awakes at 6:00am (as she is supposed to) for breakfast

Well, last night I decided to help Daddy out because he is noticably more tired than I am this week. So, I did the routine this morning. She woke up at 3:19am and I was back in bed with her fully asleep by 3:25am.

But, I'm thinking that we are going to have to break her of this. I don't know why she feels the need to do that. I'm wondering if we should let her cry through it a little bit to see if she can put herself back to sleep. We haven't done it on a weekday just because it's easier to go to her room for 6 minutes then go back to sleep. But, maybe tonight. We haven't had to make her cry for anything yet in her life but, this is obviously an issue because she does it like clockwork...hmmm...