Maya Papaya

As she is sometimes know as...

is crawling all over the place. No book, ball of lint, TV remote, cord, cup of water, dog dish, shoe, rock, marble, small animal (no joke) is safe. As with most babies she went from the tenuous one knee in front then a hand then the other knee to the crawling races we have entered her in for next week.

This is a major milestone and one we are delighted for her to have reached, despite the need to monitor the house in a way we had forgotten existed (except maybe when baby Reed comes to visit). The problem is that Ms. Fancy Pants Carver (the other name she has- not sure why) is so damn proud of herself that she can't sleep at night. I think she lies awake planning and strategizing how best to get to Mochy's water bowl before it gets elevated to counter level.

I met a lady in U.S. Cellular the other day while Sandi was getting some technical support (which kind of looked like she was going to have to resort to threats if someone didn't replace her blue-tooth.) Not at all unlike me, I struck up a conversation with this mother of three, as she was also waiting. She had a nine month old too and when I told her that Maya still gets up at night for a bottle, she shared a secret with me. Well, not such a secret anymore because I am publishing it on our highly read (yeah right) blog. Get ready for this. It's called...

The Dream Feed.

Yup, it's just like what is sounds like. Except, no you don't play subliminal messages to your baby so that they dream of eating but don't actually eat. You wake them before you go to bed and give them a bottle. They don't really wake up. They just drink. The ingenious idea of this, of course, is that then they won't need the middle of the night feeding and you can get some SLEEP. Will someone please tell Maya this? She seems to think of this more as a bonus feed.

It's quite comical really. She literally doesn't open her eyes. She just sucks and sucks like she is in the best dream of her life and then she is asleep and back in her crib before you can say 100 meter butterfly. It was kind of like she thought, "There is a nipple in my mouth- guess I'll drink." Eight ounces last night- her biggest bottle ever. (Yes, I am aware of the thread of competition that is showing up in this entry-I've been watching A LOT of Olympics). And then, thank you very much, up at 3 a.m. for more.

But, rest assured dear readers, because I wasn't born yesterday. (No, almost 32 years ago, in fact, come Wednesday.) When she woke the second time, I gave her a very watered down 3 oz. See where I'm going with this???

Okay, I'm starting to feel like my nightly exploits of mixing bottles like a bartender on a hopping Saturday night is starting to sound a little strange even to me, so I will sign off with this.

We went to a birthday party late yesterday afternoon and stayed until past the girls bedtime. Despite our late departure, we still left before cake. On the way home, Ella said, "What a great party. I had so much fun." Pause. "Except there wasn't any cake."

Girl after my own heart.