Summer Musings

I'll have to add the cute 4th of July pic of Lauren later once we have the weekend's pictures uploaded onto the desktop. I keep thinking that things will slow down with Lauren, but every weekend there seems to be something going on. This summer, every day has something going on because we're playing Good Samaritan host to a recent UGA Law graduate that Billy knew from law school. She is currently working as a solicitor for the County which means that even though her husband and her house is in Athens, she has to work in Cumming - all while trying to study for the Bar Exam. We had plenty of space and knew she would not be a burden at all (she's more single-minded than me when it comes to studying and thinking she's going to fail a test) and that has been true so far. It has been great to have her husband visit on the weekends, because he is a awesome cook and has given me some new ideas for cooking meals which is always appreciated.

I think Richard had the right of it when he said that becoming a parent turns you into a cry baby. March of Dimes ads featuring pictures of preemie babies? Tears. Cute kids singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" while holding a nylon chain thingy linking them all together so they don't get lost while walking around the Georgia Pacific lobby? Tears and goofy smiles. Stories about other, older kids hurting little babies Lauren's age? Horror and tears. And now I think all kids are cute as can be, even when they look like Elmer Fudd. And then tonight, I noticed I walked into her room no fewer than five times in the two hours since she fell asleep, just to put my hand on her chest so I could make sure she was still breathing. I thought people who acted like that were silly and dumb, but I get it now. I know that she'll have absolutely no idea that her parents worried over her as an infant when she's mad at us for disciplining her at some point in the future, but I wish that she could know and understand it all her life. Instead, she'll have to wait until she's a mom herself to truly understand. Hopefully we'll be around still to see it and share a secret smile when we see her doing to her child what we did with her. Anyway, I figure all that means that Lauren has turned me into a better, more compassionate human being and that can't be bad at all.

We start serious sleep training this weekend. We've been wrapping her in a Miracle Blanket every night, but this week she has really perfected rolling over on to her stomach...but still can't get back onto her back. That becomes a problem when she routinely gets her arms unwrapped from the MB each morning and can end up on her stomach with the blanket ends getting wrapped around her in all manner of twists, so we're being forced to graduate her to the sleep sack. I'm sure that's going to result in quite a bit of crying, which I hateto have to listen to, but she's got to learn how to soothe herself and put herself to sleep...without a pacifier...sooner rather than later. The sleep training is going to be the first real parenting that we will have had to do so far. That's incredible considering that she's almost five months old, but she's been a ridiculoulsy easy kid so far.