Heightened

This afternoon I hightailed it out of school and picked up Lyla early, then came home and stuffed her with all sorts of good food (I gave her that pizza in the photo after she finished her cucumber and apple slices and organic chicken nuggets; she only ate three bites of it). Then we played; Lyla brought Julie and me various delectable plastic foods from her kitchen, and we pretended to eat them as she warned us they were too hot.

"Bow on it, Mama."

She blew.

"Bow on it, Dada."

I blew. It was a plastic cookie in a cup with a fork.

Last night Lyla's bedtime was two hours of hell, so tonight every aspect of the evening was planned and arranged like precarious chess pieces, all with the goal of peace and contentment at 7:00. Since we're about to welcome a young man into our house who has no respect for earthling sleep patterns, we felt heightened anxiety when the impostor, alien Lyla suddenly showed up at bedtime.

But tonight went better; she's down. Hopefully she'll stay down and move past whatever phase this is. Julie's 37 weeks along, she's gained an average of 2.5 pounds in each of the past three weeks, and as of this morning she's one centimeter dilated--which never happened when she was pregnant with Lyla.

In other words, we all need all the sleep we can get.