Worst night ever!

I wrote the above headline in my head at Midnight. Carey continued to perfect it until about 2 a.m. Young Miss Greta, after a perfectly normal day with cousins Max & Esme, went to bed in the usual way. Dinner, bath, bottle, bed.... zzzzzzz by 7:30 p.m. A wonderful meal of Girard ribeye avec haricot verts, two glasses of a red Pinot for everyone but moi, and cookies & cream ice cream to polish it off. PLUS ... Alex Rodriguez hit a GRAND SLAM to help the Yankees beat the Mets 16-7. It was all shaping up to be a near perfect evening.

Fast forward to 10 p.m. Pick a verb: Whining, moaning, screaming... add an adjective: inconsolable, interminable, desperate. Our first solution was to bring her downstairs so as not to wake the whole house, which meant we were all leaving the comfort of the air conditioning. But thanks to a small turbine fan propped up on a chair, the living room cooled down soon enough. If only Greta cooled as quickly. She was definitely teething and the chief symptom that presented itself was EXTREME WAKEFULNESS. By 10:45, she was wide awake and wondering why all the lights were off. She did laps around the downstairs, reexamined all the toys she had discovered during the day and chatted like Fran Drescher on ritalin. Bah-bah-bah-bah! Da-da-da-da! Fast forward to 12:15 a.m.: We made the parental decision that one of us should sleep, at least a little. So up I went, tail between my legs, to rest in air conditioned splendor. Carey stayed behind, taking the drastic step of removing Greta's backpack from the car, strapping it on, and taking Greta on an expedition of the downstairs. The magic worked about 30 minutes later, and Carey thought Greta was sound asleep. So up the stairs she trudged, Greta in arm. Creak goes the door, pop goes a floorboard, and out snaps Greta's head like a jack-in-the-box! "Hey, I know that guy! That's Da-da-da-da!" she said, pointing at me with a devilish grin. So back DOWNstairs Mommy & Greta go, for an evening of impromptu play until 1:45. At 4 a.m. I woke up and came down to check on them. Both were asleep, as soon was I. We all slept together cross-wise on the pullout couch until 5:15 a.m., at which time selfish me went back upstairs to cool off. We all woke up at 7, and I ordered Carey to go upstairs and skip the breakfast shift. Greta had a great meal of bagels, blueberries and pears... and Mommy slept until 9:30. Greta went down for a nap at 9:15 and is still asleep 75 minutes later. As I told Sara, the great thing about babies is that no matter how difficult or uncooperative they may seem, we always wake up hopeful that today will be perfect.

Oh, Sara implores me to point out that Max & Esme slept about 12 hours, nary a peep.