jumping back on the planet

Yeah, yeah - I know ... I never call, I never write. YOU try to come up with non-whiny-sounding blog topics when your child insists on waking up at 2 in the morning, as wired as if she had just chugged a couple espressos and done a few lines of coke. You can't, trust me.

So yes, the travel stress/preschool stress/separation anxiety stress/blankie2.0 stress-induced sleep issues continued past the first night, including the ever popular blankie throwing and refusing to go back to sleep for at least two hours in the middle of the night. Teeth were gnashed, Baby Einstein videos were watched, and I even resorted to co-sleeping one night ... um, two nights, if you count the first one when she fell asleep on my arm on the couch and I was afraid to move her for more than an hour. I got helpful advice from friends and family members, such as, "What did you think was going to happen when you cut her blanket in half?" (unspoken subtext: dumbass) and "She's got a raging ear infection, get her to the doctor as soon as you can" (despite the total lack of symptoms other than sleep issues) and perhaps my favorite, "Buy some earplugs and just let her cry ... she'll get over it."

That last was from Ellen, who went through this whole separation anxiety thing with her 17-month-old daughter earlier this summer. Since her daughter is a handful of months older than mine, and seems to be of a similar intensity, I think I need to go back and read more about how she handled some of this stuff ... because she was right, the night waking did go away as quickly as it started (although we never did the full-on cry-it-out, what with the blankie-throwing and all), and I've had a full night's sleep for three days in a row. Bliss!

Today Liza and I ran errands up in town, things like dropping off a package at the post office, returning some extra yarn at Michael's, and, oh yeah, returning the ABSOLUTELY DROP DEAD CUTE BOOTS THAT WERE AN INTEGRAL PART OF HER HALLOWEEN COSTUME THAT SHE REFUSED TO LET WITHIN TWO FEET OF HER BODY. I mean, how can she be a biker baby if she doesn't have biker boots? And these were perfect, cute enough that she could wear them all fall, and studly enough that when she had the leather pants covering the top part, she'd look VERY butch. I'd post a photo of them, but blogger is being recalcitrant this evening. Anyway, if anyone heard a high-pitched keening yesterday morning, that was my daughter shrieking as if the insides of the boots were lined with glass shards and hypodermic needles ... and she wasn't even standing up yet. Ever see a kid try to walk without letting either of her feet touch the floor? Not a pretty sight. She started screeching anytime she saw the boots, it was that bad. Yes, I checked the boots to make sure there wasn't anything funky going on inside, and yes, I checked her feet for blisters. I think she just has a thing against boots.

In other shoe news, I managed to find the gecko Robeez for a slightly lower price on eBay, so that's what my daughter will be stylin' in this fall. Those, and a couple pairs of Stride Rite shoes we invested in today. One pair was an older style that looks sort of like this, and it's in the mail and should be here next week. The others are a pair of hot pink velcro sneakers that look like these, only hot pink. Can I just say that trying to wrangle a toddler by myself in a shoe store is like herding cats? Good lord, the child wanted to be anywhere but sitting down, putting on shoes. She did a little better after the first pair, when she realized that these were more like her comfy sandals and less like the Instruments of Torture we returned, but there was still a lot of tackling involved in the process. Trust me, it's not a coincidence that the two pairs of shoes we bought can be fastened with one piece of velcro.

Well, I've got to go so we can watch Disc 7 of the second season of Lost, so that we can watch the first episode of the third season that we taped this week. I can't believe we finally got caught up - it took us two weeks of watching nothing but Lost every single night, but we're finally there. Sopranos, season two - here we come!