so right now i am definitely wearing a floor length plaid nightgown and melby is making that sneaky face. it's no longer 4 am, but this is real life, people.

last night girlfriend woke up no less than 6 times. 7? more? i lost count as i dragged around my glamorously- clad night bod, dreary with such interrupted rest.

for a few weeks, she's been consistently going to bed at 6, sleeping for 4ish hours, and then is up every 2.5ish hours for a quick nurse and a snuggle. it's not my dream world of sleep, but i'm pretty sure most people aren't getting or expecting that with a ten week old baby, and i was feeling pretty good about it.

but then in the last few days, she's started waking up nearly every hour.

and i find myself saying, but this isn't what we planned. this isn't what you did yesterday.

at which point, i remember: the hilarious thing about babies is they do. not. give. a. shit.

they're not keeping some schedule or promise. they're not trying to please anyone. they are living the present, immersive, responsive, fully integrated experience of my overwrought dreams.

i remember before i had a baby, i told some of my friends to get comfortable with change. i had the wisdom of someone, who had never experienced it for myself. ah such wisdom! but i did have some insight, having worked with preschoolers for close to eternity. i recognized that, whenever you thought you had something figured out, some other new, possibly even more complicated element popped up. that children, especially, are dynamic, and our biggest work is to stop trying to rigidly button things down, but rather to be receptive to the new challenges and demands as they unfold.

how easy it was to say from the comfort of my restful, childless bed! it's an idea, of course, that makes lots of logical sense, but when you are however many minutes or days or weeks into wrangling some totally foreign and reckless human into comfort on the daily, you are desperate for a pattern, a routine, some consistency.

this is how long she rests at these times, i tell myself, fully aware that that's only actually happened for a handful of days, maybe a few weeks, at most.

once upon a time, i took dance classes for a few weeks too, but i'm no dancer.

i've got to give my girl space to figure it out, just like i'm figuring it out.

and it's hard. it's hard not to concretely decide how it is or isn't, who she is or isn't. but the truth is: i have no idea.

we're doing this day by day, if not second by second.

i won't tell you who you are, sweet girl. i'll try to help guide you into blissfully long stretches of sleep, for both of our sakes, but in the meantime, i will pick you up and hold you again and again. i'll understand that we're dynamic. i will try to accept chaos as the norm, so that it doesn't feel quite so stormy. i'll love whatever you are in this moment, this actual moment and not some vision i have of what it should be, because you are mine. you are my girl, and i'm just getting to know you.