Up and Down

Inspirational song: Only a Lad (Oingo Boingo)

Not every day is rainbows and unicorns. Some days Professor Crankypants takes it out of us. Granted, hard days make the good times all the better, but it's guaranteed to make you question your self-worth as a grandparent when a howling near-toddler is twisting and kicking in your arms, inconsolable.

It started well enough this morning. She showed up in her crab jammies, needing breakfast and conversation. For the first couple hours she was chill. But she wasn't interested in a morning nap until we finally got her to conk out at one in the afternoon. She only slept a half an hour, and she was back at it. She had stuff to do. She had good and bad moments, and one shrieking hangry fit. After a while, we pulled the activity chair in to watch movies. We started with the original Muppet Movie, and she managed to pay attention for a good 40-45% of it, spread out over the whole thing. Her mommy came over for two hours before she had to go to work again, and she selected Tarzan as the second feature. That resulted in a short nap, that ended right before her mother left for work.

And that's when the fun ended. We never learned whether it was a tummy ache, teething, hunger, or lack of sleep. She just writhed and cried and refused to be soothed for more than a few minutes at a time. We have months yet before she has complex language skills to tell us what she needs. There has to be a way to communicate better with her until she can use at least partial sentences. I don't like feeling like I'm making things worse when she's like this.