My poor honey bun.

He's very sad about the game. OOH, I'll just use my pregnant lady card to make frequent potty trips and since I have to pass through the BAR, we're golden!! 

However, this is a really, really important dinner and I hate to say this but even a playoff game with the Steelers can't top a dinner to discuss the future of your career. 

BUT, that means I need to shrink my uvula by 50% by TONIGHT. I called my midwife and she said I could gargle with saltwater. Ewwwww. Anyone who's had multiple colonoscopies knows that salt water can really bring back some horrible memories and can make you really sick just by the taste, so that's out. Instead I'm drinking a TON of ice water, not eating ANYTHING that would irritate it and trying not to talk at all. It's going to be a long day. It doesn't hurt at all, but it's really, really annoying and since it's swollen to about 7x it's normal size, the vibration against my gag relfex is killer and makes me very awful. 

Well, Lucy is stealing my granola bars out of the diaper bag and Andrew's happily feeding them to her. I have to go and somehow convey that I don't share my granola bars with my little chicken. She's just so CUTE this morning that I can't resist very easily and I can't protest quickly enough to stop her!

Oh, we decided to start gently modifying her sleep using Dr. Weissbluth's model again. (See "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child) We did it with her when she was about 7 months old and it was AMAZING. The past few mornings she's been waking up at 4:45. Not cool, Chicken. So, last night we started using the "sleep begets sleep" theory and put her down for bed at 6:45 instead of 7. She got to 5:15am without a peep! So, we'll be putting her down at 6:45 for the next few nights and then 6:25 for another four to see if we can trick her body into sleeping a little later in the mornings. I have NO idea how this works, but it really, really makes a huge difference. When she was younger, there were a few nights where she'd head to bed at 5:30pm, but she'd sleep soundly until 7:30 without issue. Kids need SO much more sleep than we adults realize because we mask our exhaustion with caffeine and powering through. At Lucy's age she should be getting about 14 hours in a 24 hour period, and when she doesn't get that, she wakes up early and is cranky in the evenings. So, we start from scratch. At least it's a very, very peaceful way of working with her. Hopefully she'll be back to a 7pm bedtime by the time Phoebe gets here. Just a matter of tweaking and tweaking until we find our magic bedtime!