kiwords

Last night Clay and I settled in to watch a movie - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - while Sophia played on the floor in front of us. The boys were asleep (or at least in bed, which is all we really can ask for), and we figured at some point in the next hour or two the girl would go to sleep too.

Well, we watched the movie (and watched and watched and watched - how did I miss the fact that that movie is seventeen and a half hours long?), and Sophia busied herself with the task of not going to sleep. As she got more tired, she got more active, until she was a squirming, squinching bundle of cranky perpetual motion. She actually outlasted Benjamin Button, whom I was starting to think was not only curious but also immortal. I held her, Clay held her, we set her down, we picked her up. She would. not. sleep.

Eventually she worked herself into such a state that she debuted a whole new cry for us. I have never heard Sophia make such a sound, and she is the baby who burst into tears once because her father burped too loud for her liking. But last night she was screech/wailing this noise that didn't seem quite human.

She was so upset and so awake that by about one in the morning I was starting to wonder if there wasn't something seriously wrong with her. I started playing nightmare scenarios in my head. I'd had that headache a few days before, did I somehow drop one of the Excedrin I took and not notice? Had she eaten one and now she was going into liver failure and her heart was about to burst from caffeine poisoning? (How, exactly, I would drop a pill and not notice it was Not The Point. Jeez.)

I was seriously starting to consider taking her to the emergency room, when she finally fell asleep a little after 2 AM. I fussed over her for a while, finally deciding that she would probably not be breathing normally and that her heart rate would probably be a little fast if she were dying from an Excedrin overdose. Clay and I stumbled to our bed and passed out cold.

This morning we shuffled into church, looking a little like zombies, and sat down. As I sat there, trying to blink away the gritty feeling in my eyes, Sophia grabbed my finger and stuck it in her mouth and BIT.

And there it was, the tiny scalloped edge of a brand-new tooth.

She was TEETHING. I had nearly taken my fourth child to the emergency room because she was TEETHING.

Why did I think I was capable of this motherhood thing, again?

Well, although it may not seem like it, I am an experienced mother. And now, at 12:54 in the morning, as Sophia sits on my lap and swats at the keyboard and grouses, I am able to look at this with the perspective that comes from having been there. And my experienced, objective assessment of the situation is simple.

This new tooth totally broke my baby and now I will never sleep again as long as I live. Which won't be long.

Wait...I think...YES. She just dozed off. THE BABY IS ASLEEP. Aaaand now, instead of a point, you get an end.

Good night!