Sleep is a thing people still do, right?

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The Universe is a crotchety little turd sometimes, y’all. See, I thought I had a good baby in Emma. A baby who sleeps. Anyhwere! Anytime! Swaddled! Unswaddled! White noise! No white noise! SLEEP!

And then the 4 month wakeful and this newfound love of go-go-going happened and things just haven’t been right since.

Emma MUST KNOW ALL THE THINGS all the time. And I love her curiosity and how exploratory she is. But she’s incredibly overtired as a result of all this knowing and growing she’s doing and the fact that I can’t get her to sleep regularly is heaping the fail upon my head.

To say it’s causing me a great deal of stress is an understatement. Because it’s causing me a great great great deal of stress and sleeplessness. I am not very pretty when I don’t get sleep. Or nice. Or patient. Or any of the things being a mother requires of me 25 hours a day.

Friday, I was a complete zombie when Dan got home. He kept saying “What’s wrong?” And I kept muttering “So sleepy…” and just sort of flopped around the house all sadsack-like.

Saturday, Emma barely napped despite our best efforts to make that happen. Sunday was more of the same. I tried to drink a glass of wine and have myself a good ol’ cry about my baby and how she won’t sleep and I was too tired to even produce tears. Last night she was up every hour from 11 to 6:30.

We’ve got a host of issues happening right now and I’m not sure what to tackle first.

For starters, she’s getting too strong to swaddle. Then there’s the issue of auto-flipping to her hands and knees and completely losing her mind. Because she can flip over, and does, with gusto, it’s really time to start losing the swaddle. Because she’s up on hands and knees, we’re nearing the point where she needs to be in her crib instead of her cosleeper. (Which means I’m going to lose my lovely side-lying nursing, which blows and is a whole other topic for discussion.)

Here’s where momming two is hard. Just like I’ve said before. I never know whose needs come first. When both of their needs are physical, who gets dibs?

This weekend, and the issue I run into more often than not throughout the week, is that Joshua needs activity. Emma needs sleep. They need these things at the same time.

I can tell him we’ll do whatever it is we’re going to do when Emma wakes up but he has to be quiet while she naps. Either he doesn’t understand the concept of the inside voice and being quiet or he’s a pre-sociopath and just doesn’t care.

And then there’s the issue of her bed time. If I can get her swaddled and start nursing her at 6:30, I have the best luck of having a decent night’s sleep. Except it’s a crapshoot as to whether or not Dan will be home from work by 6:30 and Joshua won’t stay in the living room while I’m nursing her and needs to eat dinner then and there’s the issue of feeding the adults in the house and it’s like everything happens at 6:30.

So, words of wisdom, please? HOW do I DO this?

Or better yet, one of y’all just come do this for me and I’ll check into the HoJo for a rest and a continental breakfast.