And the times, they are a-changin'

So Lilah has been getting up 2-3 times in the night. She doesn't wail, fuss, or play. She just cries softly and heartbreakingly for me. Either Dano or I go in, re-tuck her, and leave. She goes instantly back to sleep. I have concluded that she is either disoriented after having dreams that wake her up or just going through more separation anxiety. It's not just for me. Although her cries are more frequently for me, every morning when I get her out of her crib, she sits on Dano's pillow and pats it. "Dada?" And I tell her every morning, "Daddy's at school. He'll be back later."  "Dada?"  She accepts this, drools all over his pillow for good measure, and gets down off the bed (and by "gets down", I mean slithers haphazardly and headfirst over the edge and I lower her down gently by her ankle or whatever body part I happen to grab quickly enough to keep her from hitting the floor. I'm usually fast enough. Usually). The strangest part is that she actually notices when one of us is missing from the equation. At about 9 months, babies begin to realize there is only one "Mama". That's amusing to me. Apparently before that point, she just assumed there was an entire clone army of identical mamas poised and ready to meet her every need. No wonder babies have no patience or concept of waiting. I'd be pissed too if my "army of mamas" was seemingly lazing about instead of attending to me. Now, however, Lilah realizes that Mama and Daddy are singular beings with no replacement, duplicate, or substitute. This could be the reason for separation anxiety. Why be anxious when a parent walks out of the room when there are hundreds of other parents probably right around the corner? This might also explain why Lilah now follows me out of the room, trucking along as fast as her fat little arms and legs can propel her.

Other than making it rather difficult to go to the bathroom, this attachment is a wonderful phase. Yes, it occasionally gets old, but Lilah isn't physically clinging to me. She just wants me present. I only work two days a week. What else should I be doing besides spending time with my daughter? Sure, there's messing around on facebook or blogging or doing yoga or showering, but she takes 2 two-hour naps a day. 4 hours is plenty of time for those things. When I'm cooking or cleaning, she's happily playing with her toys or destroying my cupboards. For the past two days, Lilah has added a new behavior to our morning routine that I hope continues until she's 16. We get up at 8:30 in the morning, wrestle in my bed, play peek-a-boo with covers and pillows, make stuffed animal forts, read stories, sing songs, and eventually get dressed. She has her cereal and fruit while I have my coffee, usually listening to some grand music, singing, and being silly. After that, she plays with her toys while I check my email. I know better than to get my own breakfast until she's down for her nap. If I do, I don't get a bite of it. For the past two days, at exactly 10 o'clock, she starts peeping on the floor. Just a fuss here and a complaint there. After a few minutes, she chooses a stuffed animal friend to accompany her, and crawls up into my lap. I pull up something for her to watch on Netflix or Youtube - something along the lines of Baby Einstein. Anything with soothing classical music played by an assortment of music box-like instruments, with colors, animals, stars, crashing waves. She holds her animal, I hold her, she puts her head on my chest, I rest my cheek on her head and stroke her downy hair, and she drifts off to sleep in my arms at 10:30. I sit, holding her in disbelief. She hasn't slept in my lap since she was a newborn. It's been absolute magic, and I took a picture this morning, just to prove that it actually happened. My baby is back! I hope this phase never ends.

An update

Lilah has improved tenfold since the last time I wrote. Even though there wasn't a pattern we noticed, we did see that her shriek was mostly one of impatience. Instead of "peeping" (as we call her small noises to alert us she's becoming upset) for a few minutes and escalating to screams if her needs went unmet, she went straight for the screams. I was confused by this, since we always bend over backwards to meet her needs as soon as we're aware of them. Larry had a good explanation for us. He said that now she knows the end result - a clean diaper, being nursed, getting cuddles - and she doesn't want to have to wait to get there. She wants it instantly. The only way to prevent that is to either meet her needs before she knows she needs them (fairly difficult), or to go about business as usual and let her learn that screams don't accomplish anything any faster. We went with the latter, and it has worked well. Not to say she doesn't dissolve instantly into screams sometimes. She's just getting a little better at waiting for a parent to come to her, communicating with complaints or her trademark teeth-clenching and yelling "nein!" (don't ask how she learned it. We have no idea).

Moving on, I had frequently grown nostalgic lately, missing my tiny little infant Lilah who couldn't sleep unless she felt her mama's skin on her skin. At times, I would nab her and hold her tightly to my chest. She'd flail her little limbs and push away from me and scream. I'd say, "I'm your mama. I gave birth to you. I'll cuddle you if I want, and you will like it!" Usually Dano would rescue her and turn her loose again. Lately though, she has crawled to me, fussing, and put her arms up for me. I pick her up, and she puts her head down on my chest and snuggles me, putting her first and middle fingers in her mouth and sucking on them, making sweet little cooing noises. She twirls the fingers of her other hand in my hair and makes tiny, contented peeps every now and then. Every time she does it, my heart about breaks from the sweetness of it and loving her so much. She is so big and independent, but I hope part of her will always be the little baby who needs her mama.

We have a problem

Lilah is now at a very interesting stage. She's independent and headstrong, constantly discovering new things and exploring. She is standing with ease and scooting along the furniture hesitantly. She has learned several new tricks. She can wave her hand, scrunch up her nose into a grimace, and has several words in her repertoire - "cat", "mama", "daddy", "num-num" (for food), and "no". Her top two teeth finally popped through the gums and are about half-way in.

All these changes have come with their own set of challenges, but Dano and I are at a loss for what to do with her now. The past week or so (getting progressively worse each day), Lilah has entered into a screaming phase. During meals, during a diaper change, mid-playtime, on parents' laps, while busy doing other things, in the car, whenever it strikes her fancy, Lilah Rose shrieks like a banshee. Sometimes there are tears, sometimes not. Sometimes it ceases when we pick her up and cuddle her. Sometimes she just beats her fists against our chests and screams all the more. There is no rhyme or reason to the behavior, no pattern we can see. No one thing soothes her, and I feel like it's out of frustration or for attention more often than not. She knows if we hear that high-pitched wail, we do whatever it takes to make it stop. I feel like the harder we work to make her quiet, the more often she does it! We've stopped feeding into it and started putting her in her crib for a cool-down instead. That has worked most consistently. Usually, she stops screaming her face off in under 5 minutes, and we retrieve her with praises and kisses. Sometimes, she wears herself out and falls asleep. We go by our doctor's recommended "20 minute" limit of how long to let a baby cry it out. Never let them from 0-6 months, and 20 minutes from 6-12. If she's still crying after 20 minutes, she often stops when we go get her.

I just don't understand. What turned our easy-going, never colicky baby into a devil child? Why is she doing it? She isn't hurt, all her needs are met, she isn't teething, so why the screams? What else can we do to make her stop? Why don't babies come with mute buttons?