It's amazing our species endures when you consider how delicate the human baby is, and how little time that baby spends considering its own vulnerability as it pushes its sleep deprived parents to the brink of madness with its non-stop crying at bed time. Particularly about three hours after said parent has started rocking it to sleep - which is about the time that you start dancing the fine line between "rocking the baby" and "shaking the baby". And "spinning the baby by the ankle into the ceiling fan."
Edie's not as bad as her brother. At least she's kind of quiet when she's refusing to sleep, unlike Finn who screamed as it you were stabbing him with a thousands little knives for hours at a time, unless he was being bounced on a yoga ball. Edie only cries as she pitches that last futile battle against her eyes closing - squirming and screaming in a little personal game of "screw sleep" before passing out. For ten seconds. At which point, we begin again.
We've had to learn the whole "transfer sleeping baby from arms to sleeper" move all over again. You need some Kung Fu Panda 2 inner peace delicacy to pull that move off. Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. Everyone's seen Kung Fu Panda 2 five hundred times, right? It's some delicate work, yo.
Finn was like that too. I tiptoed out of our room last night after putting Edie down and peeked in on the boy, just in time to watch him roll over on top of a quacking duck stuffed animal that quacked loudly at least 10 times before I could pull it out from under him. He didn't even change his breathing. Finn's not like that any more.
Everything changes - this too shall pass. Which is what we repeat in our heads over and over and over again during those three hour rocking/shaking/spinning sessions. When we're not mentally stabbing our children with thousands of little knives.
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