Not the brightest bulb on the block

That would me, not Baby M, although he did spend the better part of the afternoon playing with a slotted spoon. However, I think that is just because he's a baby, not due to any dimness on his part. I'm the one who seems to have a short circuit these days.

I admit that I have had my share of forgetfulness and inattention brought on my months of sleep deprivation, but up until now I felt that my reasoning skills remained generally in tact. Well, no more. Today I had a serious case of Mommy Brain (and not the good kind that helps with empathy and multi-tasking).

Baby M loves to splash around in the sink, but he is getting too big to hold over the sink comfortably so today I had the inspired idea to let him splash around with a bowl of water on the kitchen floor. I sat him down with a big Tupperware bowl containing a few inches of water. I expected the floor to get a bit wet from his splashing, but I did not foresee what would have been obvious to my former self-- Baby M immediately picked up the bowl and dumped the contents all over himself and the floor. I felt like a complete moron, but on the up side, the floor got mopped this week.

Shhh... He's Not Sleeping

So just about every new parent has a story that starts, "I was so sleep deprived I...[fill in the blank] ." Maybe Mom put the diaper on over the onesie or Dad drove to work in a pressed shirt and pajama bottoms. This week I made spaghetti for dinner and instead of opening up a jar of spaghetti sauce I cooked up a nice batch of spaghetti and meatballs with Garlic Lover's Salsa. What's even more telling is that my husband and I diligently ate this concoction without noticing anything was amiss until I threw the jar into the recycling bin after dinner.

Baby M is nearly 6 months old now and not anywhere close to sleeping through the night. He is still up 2 or 3 times a night. We have had the occasional night with only one waking-- to be precise we've had exactly 3 of them. I recall those nights fondly and wish for their quick return. As Oz pointed out her blog Knocked Up, people always want to know if your baby is sleeping through the night yet and judge your baby (or you) based on the answer. The older Baby M gets, the more inadequate I feel when I have to admit that, no, he is not sleeping through the night. And aside from feeling inadequate I am also feeling dead tired. So I am going to stop telling people exactly how often Baby M wakes up and stop explaining all of the strategies we've tried to get him to sleep longer. I am going to follow Oz's lead, answer that he sleeps like a baby and leave it at that.