You--28 Weeks

We did it, Luxie!
We survived moving you and really, it went so smoothly I don't know what I was all worked up about in the first place.

I think it really just boils down to me tripping down Memory Lane, remembering how we started...bringing you home from the hospital (grrrr...am weirdly struggling with this topic, now after six months) and curling up into each other.
We may have technically separated at your birth but it sure didn't seem so, especially at night.
I remember you sleeping on my belly, with my hands placed on your back to stay you, both of us breathing in-time together, warm, safe, so loved.

Or...

I would curve my body around yours and you'd sleep inside that curve, with your little feet standing on my drawn up legs.
We'd stay like this together all night long.
And I'd never slept better.

SO, to spend time in those memories and then realize that it's time to move you out and on your own (I am so dramatic.  I mean, even I am realizing this at this point.  You're like a foot away from me in your little crib.)...it just STINKS that you are getting so big so fast.
And yet, I love every single minute.

You are pure sunlight and joy.
Rainbows and butterflies.
Big dopey toothless grins and pudgy rolls of baby dough.

I can't be in your presence and not be all over you.
(And you can't be in mine either.  You are SO DAMN CUTE when you see me and want me.  You start whimpering and leaning away from whoever is holding you and making desperate, desperate eye contact with me.  You elbowed your father in the neck tonight as he walked past me with you in his arms, in your attempt to drop magically into my lap.)

Back to the whole sleep thing:

You're really moving fast, little lady, so we had to scrap the she-goes-in-her-new-room! program and just get you somewhere safe. 
On Saturday, I had left you sleeping in bed in the morning and boxed you in with big pillows but when you woke (I heard you on the monitor), my heart went wild and I sprinted up the stairs in a panic.
You were fine, but I knew then that way down deep, I'd passed my comfort zone with keeping you in bed alone and needed to listen to those feelings because I didn't last time with Creux and I already told you how I almost, like, broke his FACE doing that.

So I came down with you that morning and declared that you were moving into the crib thing that very afternoon and by golly, that's precisely what happened.

I wasn't sure how you'd take to it--honestly, I expected the worst.
But I waited until you were really very sleepy, when you'd been fed and changed and needed nothing...and then I laid you down with Greer's old crib blanket (so swanky cute!) and a few toys...and I left.

You were happy to play there for a bit but I knew that you'd soon tire of that and realize that you were stuck there indefinitely.
Because I'm not good about letting you cry for a bit to just get settled (and sometimes you babies DO just need to vent for a few minutes and wail and wind down), I made myself busy.

I scurried off to the basement for some laundry and by the time I came up to fold it, you were wailing on the monitor.
My initial instinct was to say, "Tsk, I knew she'd hate that.  She just needs me to nurse her and she'll be fine."
That's ALWAYS my instinct because I don't like to hear my babies fussing ever and I know that I can fix just about anything for you.

But I promised myself that I wouldn't go to you until I finished folding the load and I stuck to it.
As I neared the bottom, you were still crying but stopped almost immediately.
I snuck upstairs to peek at you and there you were, face-down and passed out, dreaming hard in your new crib.

I was so happy for you and yet so sad for us.
Really (oh the DRAMA of your mama!) it's not even that bad because we are still snuggling at night when I'm in bed with you.
It's just all the day-time sleeping that you are doing, now it's all in the crib.
It had mostly been in the swing still, which I have always hated but was a place where you simply wanted to sleep, but I'd started trying to encourage you to do some alone-in-the-bed sleeping too.
I was successful at that only sometimes but then my anxiety would spike, thinking of you hurtling off the bed in a freak fast-break.

Anyway, this is for the best and now, I'm totally good with it.

Five freaking kids in and I am the world's biggest WUSS apparently!  Sheeze...

I love you so much, my big sleeper girl.