Life is so much nicer when you sleep.

Sweet, sweet baby slept so well last night. It was like a reward from above. This week, she's been getting up in the middle of the night and not going back to sleep right away after eating. I've been getting up and heading to the couch with her. She was awake for three hours one night, two hours the next. Yesterday, she turned high-maintenance in the afternoon and really just insisted on being held. (This happened on the day when I decided it was time to get some stuff done, and updated my to-do list and started cleaning my house, of course. I had just gotten the laundry folded when she decided it was time that I stop with all that work stuff.) She was so sleepy but refused to stay asleep until about five. I put her down at 5:30, and ran around like a crazy person trying to get some of the stuff done. It's kind of hard to sit around all day thinking about what all needs done but yet be unable to actually do it. I fixed dinner and worked on laundry and cleaned up the kitchen (minus the dishes) and put a bunch of stuff away and spent forever working on pictures. (I updated Evelyn's gallery so I could send the link to M's family, both May and June folders.) I also uploaded 120 pictures for printing. We rarely print photos, but I want to have actual paper albums for the baby. Some of those were duplicates, though, so I can give to my parents. After being so afraid she was going to wake up any minute, she finally got up at about ten. I went to bed just after eleven, and she went back to sleep at 12:45. (M gets the first shift, because staying up late is his thing.) I was up to feed her once, but she was asleep again in no time, and so I slept until almost eight. Three days a week, I try to get up before M leaves for work so I can have an unworried shower. I feel SO much better after I shower that sacrifices can be made to achieve it. I've put her in her bouncy chair in the bathroom a few times, and she actually seems to like it. I think she enjoys how warm it gets (have I mentioned how much she hates being cold?!) and the noise of the shower. It helps that I take pretty quick showers.

Also, Evelyn received her Social Security card in the mail yesterday! I was extremely excited. It's like she's a real person now! It's also good because a) I need it for something and b) checking on her SSN was on my to-do list. I was sure that I filled out all the right forms to get that done in the hospital, but then I started thinking about it and was not so sure anymore. I need it to put her on my insurance. Our HR department is very with it. They mailed the insurance application to me after they received word that she had been born, and I think I had it before I got home from the hospital, or at least within the first day or two. I was stressing out about getting it done until I realized I couldn't fill it out until I got the card in the mail.

When we registered her for daycare, they gave us this packet of papers to fill out. We promptly lost them. We had paid them for her slot, and since she wasn't born, we kind of suggested that we would fill the papers out when she had been born and she had a name. Anyway, I found them and tried to fill them out the same day I tried to fill out the insurance app and realized I needed her SSN. They want to know things like.. what my child's favorite and least favorite foods are (milk, and not milk) her favorite activities (see favorite food), her fears, her personality, whether I would like to work with the children in the classroom and a full page about how I would like to help them with their daycare programs. HELLO. I am sending my child to daycare because I have to work, therefore, by definition, I don't really have time to be volunteering, now do I? Some of these are essay questions, and I am hopelessly unable to come up with BS answers for some of them. They are obviously aimed at older children, but it's just so weird to come up with infant answers. Plus, the thought of putting her in daycare is already like ripping my heart out and stomping it into the ground with a nice pair of stilettos.

I keep thinking of little things I want to mention about what she's like, but I keep forgetting, so I'll just make a list of what I can remember right now.

• She laughed at me this week! I suppose she's really too little to laugh, but she made a laughing noise while grinning at me when I squeezed her up to my chest and talked to her, several times in a row. She did it later in the day, too, but not when M was around, of course.
• She's too little to smile, too, but she really does seem to sometimes. Usually, her smiles are random and obviously not because she's happy, but sometimes she looks so pleased that it's hard to imagine it being gas. Either way, it's cute, so I don't worry about it too much.
• She likes her belly rubbed (two fingers only, please) sometimes, and she considers mylicon drops a tasty snack.
• Her nails are sharp and I am terrified of cutting them, so she basically just sharpens them on M and me. She doesn't go after her own face so far, so I haven't forced myself to do it much.
• She's entered the teenage phase of babyhood, apparently, and her face and neck is all broken out, and I think she got bitten by her first insect last night. We certainly didn't see it happening, but she has a tiny little dot on her face that looked like a bite and let me tell you, if I could find that son of a bitch that bit my baby, I would make sure he regretted it for the remainder of his short life.
• She doesn't cry all that often, and when she does, it's rarely for long. It's also kind of cute because when she does cry, she tends to stop as soon as we pick her up or talk to her or pet on her. It's like she thinks, "oh! they're here! they will fix me!"
• If she fusses in her sleep, she will often go back to sleep if M pets on her head or holds her hands while talking to her. She occasionally will fall back asleep if I do it, but not that often. I think she smells me and thinks FOOD! I shall wake up right away!