Sigh

Life has been super busy. We closed on our old house, which was very exciting, but then the mad dash began to find a new house. Which we did find and we put an offer in on it. I will spare you the details here, but basically the sellers were less than impressed with our first offer and wouldn't budge. We ended up offering and counter offering a couple of times, only to lose the house in the end. It was really a blessing in disguise because if we would have gotten that house for the final amount we offered, I would have been a little embarrassed. The current market almost promises that you should get houses for kick ass deals, and this would not have been a kick ass deal. Whatever, those sellers were jerks.

  So we basically lost a week with that whole mess. We put in an offer on another place that we love (but for reasons different than the first house) and we got it but the previous owners could not close when we needed to because they are scrambling to find a place. SOOOO we moved in with my parents. It's really not that bad--they have plenty of space and have cable and are fun and cook a lot. We have been feasting like kings. So much for trying to lose some of that baby weight. My only complaint, and they know this, is that they seem to still think I'm twelve years old. I guess I will always be their little girl. I'm sure when The Barracuda is 30 I will be constantly hounding her about eating right and getting enough sleep. I'm sure that after decades of worrying about sleeping and eating it's very difficult to just suddenly reprogram your brain a different way.

Speaking of which! The Barracuda is 8 months old today! I cannot believe it! So many fun things have been happening this past month. At the end of June (I think?) she started being able to sit up without being propped up. For over a month now she's been getting up on all fours and rocking around like a crazy person. She also has been getting into a plank position (JC, I can barely do that!) and then the past week she's been able to sort of sit on her hip. She's almost coordinated the movements of crawling and when you hold her in your lap she twists around and scales up your body until she's almost over your shoulder. She's possibly the squirrliest little thing that I've ever seen. And she's finally teething. It looks like both lower incisors have been right under the surface for a week or so, and the left one is about to make a break for it.

I don't really care about the teeth thing too much. It just means that she'll have something sharper in her mouth to bite me with. Because right now she clamps down with those pointy little gums and smiles at me when she's nursing. She gives me this wide-eyed expression, like, "I'm biting you and I know it hurts but I love you so much!" And the physical abuse doesn't stop there. She loves to pinch. She will grab any skin and just pinch. Loose neck skin, back fat, stomach rolls, you name it she'll pinch it. She even gives little tiny snake-bites on your forearm. I think my FAVORITE is when she nurses on my left side she takes her right hand and reaches up to my tricep (or where my tricep should be) and pinches while she eats. She has actually bruised me here. It hurt so bad one night I thought the left side of my face was going to go numb. It was wonderful. 

She's still waking up during the middle of the night. Usually she goes down between 7-8 pm with the occasional 9 pm bedtime. Then she wakes up before midnight once, which I really don't think is that big of a deal. Then sometimes she wakes at 2, then at 5. Other times she'll sleep through until 5 or 6. Sometimes she'll go back down until 7. She never has a problem going back to sleep, which is awesome. It's just a matter of getting up and letting her nurse a little bit. I don't know how I feel about this. I mean, I'm exhausted. And then on the nights I work, The Bear is getting up and he's exhausted. His threshold for sleep deprivation is lower than mine, and I feel bad. But I have to cut her some slack--we've moved back in with my parents and she's sleeping in a pack in play and she's been teething. That's a lot of changes for my little peanut. When she wakes up in the middle of the night, her cry is totally different than before--instead of a whimper, she's full on screaming. And, in the past, she'll stop crying once we pick her up and now it's pretty hard to comfort her unless a boob gets shoved in her mouth. Ugghh, I'm just concerned. We'll be able to get into our new place Sep. 15. I have lofty goals that by her nine month check up that things will be a little less crazy and maybe I can troubleshoot this problem with our pediatrician. She really has no problem going to sleep, it's staying asleep for a prolonged period of time that is the issue. She also naps twice a day, so I feel like I can't complain TOO much.

So that's our life these days. Lots of stress, but good stress, I think. Even the stuff with The Barracuda...I'm just thankful that I have a barracuda to stress about...