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I have to say that I was a much better mother before I had a child. It used to be that I would see kids acting like lunatics in the grocery store, or I would see parents struggling to set healthy limits and I would say to myself that I knew exactly what was needed to remedy the situation. Jeremy and I would sit and watch those super-nanny shows and nod along with the advice being given as if to say "Yup, any buffoon knows that that is how you do it." I guess you could say that I was a wee bit arrogant.

But now that I am a mother, I fear that I don't know anything about anything. I saw a little girl throwing a whopper of a temper tantrum at Trader Joes today because her mother wasn't letting her get some food item that she wanted and all I could think was that I have no clue as to how to prevent such outrageous behavior. My heart raced as I walked by them with Noa on my chest in the baby carrier. I whispered to her, "That little girl is behaving badly. You are not allowed to do that."

Right now, we are on the verge of sleep training our little one. She has definitely grown in her ability to sleep independently for her morning nap, but she still requires a great deal of parenting and soothing to get her to sleep at night. She is in our bed and I nurse her to sleep and then slink out of the room when she is out cold. If she cries, I go to her and nurse her back to sleep. I need a change. I feel ready to start moving into the co-sleeper, and we are trying to figure out the best way to do that. We still swaddle her, so that will most likely need to change because I feel that if we aren't giving her access to her hands, she really can't do much to self-soothe. It isn't like she can meditate or think her way to a solution. I envy the people that I see who can just lie their child down wherever they are and watch them drift off. That just isn't our girl. We have let her cry it out a few times and she usually falls asleep within half an hour. The problem is that she doesn't stay asleep too long. That, and we are soooo not consistent. The other problem is that I feel that she doesn't sleep that deeply with me, her food source, lying next to her. I would have a hard time falling asleep if I had a chocolate brownie dangling in front of my nose, so I understand where she is coming from. We are so attuned, I notice that when I am downstairs if I even think about her, I can hear her stirring on the monitor. I visualize a bubble around her and I pull myself out of her psychic space and try to let her get back to sleep. Sometimes she does.

Oh poop. I don't know. Here's another picture. Irony of irony--she is reading the Going to Bed Book.