So as of Wednesday night I made the decision to cease co-sleeping. My daughter and I have had a good run; she started off in the bassinet pushed so close to my bed she might as well have been in it, and than we moved on to a week or two of falling asleep on the couch together, and finally found our place curled next to each other in bed.

She doesn’t curl anymore though, she moves. She kicks me in my chin and yanks on her fathers nose during the night. She moves from one end of the bed to another, and even though I’ve taken every every safety precaution in the book to ensure she doesn’t fall out and land on one of our animals, I’m still paranoid she’s going to topple off. Weds night my paranoia was so high I put pillows all over the edge of the bed that have straw on them [they're for our patio set my friends..] so if she moved, the straw would crinkle, waking me up. It was like, a baby booby trap.

Last night I was determined to stop co-sleeping. During the day I figured I’d seek out advice on how to go about doing this, because people tell me once the little ones get used to sleeping in a big bed next to mommy and daddy it’s impossible to get them into the crib. When we got home from my mothers house it was late, and so I just plopped her down, threw her favorite blanket on top of her, and after mumbling shh shh little Junebug shh, I crept out. I crept out, ate some cake, and went to sleep wondering when I’d be getting up.

Fast forward to 5am when I wake up on my own. My first thought was “holy shit! she slept!” and my second thought was “holy shit, she’s alive right…” She was. I actually went to check on her and woke her up. And when she woke up we snuggled in bed together for two more hours. But [and pardon my overuse of holy shit..] but really, REALLY? She slept awesome and alone in her baby jail!

I’m pretty proud of her, but I am going to miss her middle of the night assaults, really I am.

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As many of you don’t know, we got a house.

By “got a house” I mean we are renting the home of our dreams with hopes to purchase in a year, or two when the economy may, or may not be sucking so much ass. Before I go off on my rant, I’d like to tell you that our new house has a convervatory for growing pot veggies, and citrus trees [which I already ordered] even in the dead of winter! And it’s got a hell of a backyard for the dogs, and it’s got a pond on the outside of the property and it’s got four bedrooms and fireplaces and it’s in the country. Are you drooling? I am.  It’s also within driving distance to a Borders my book store of choice.

But it has a pool, and we have a baby who’s going to start walking any day, and pretty soon swan diving and practicing her breast stroke.  Everyone’s worried…except us. Pools are dangerous but hell so are puddles if you’re a nine month old.  For the record I *DO* plan on taking safety preclusions so my precious little bean doesn’t drown, so why does everyone ask me what I’m going to “do” about the pool. I’m going to swim in it fuckers what do you think? And so will my daughter because she’s basically a little fish. She loves water, especially splashing mommy in the eyes during bath time.

Am I worried about the pool? Well, I wasn’t until everyone started mentioning that she might drown if I don’t install fences and alarms around it.  One person even gave me the following scenario: My daughter wakes up wondering about her favorite toy [which happens to be dangerously close to our pool], it’s early morning and we are all sleeping so we don’t notice her climb out of bed and out to the backyard where she falls in and dies. Talk about morbid huh? I’m all “oh we co-sleep if she even turns over I wake up to ensure she is alive and well…so the chances of that happening are slim to none…” And what IS it with people and the “no shit” advice?

“Oh, you have a pool, are you sure that’s a good thing…she might die”

We have gotten about four phone calls, seventeen emails and forty nine instant messages concerning our chlorinated mecca and it’s annoying me, can you tell?

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There’s a lot of fun stuff I want to do with my daughter. I’ve got an incredible [if I dare say so] book collection growing for her, and I want to do tons of crafts…in fact I go to Michaels about once a week and buy ribbon and Mod Podge and buttons for projects. Am I lame? Perhaps. And perhaps my daughter will want to play soccer and hate books and ribbon and weird buttons and I will be bummed but I guess I’ll be mommy goalie, or defense, anything her little heart desires.

But right now? Right now her interests include: putting things in her mouth, falling and hitting her head on things, crawling at record speeds around our home, getting stuck under coffee tables, putting the cat in headlocks, dog bones, and giving me heart attacks.  She can get into a good Touch and Feel book for 30 seconds at a time, and sometimes if I do funny voices and act-a-fool she’ll giggle. We went to the zoo and spent a good deal of time in front of the fish tanks We also enjoy shopping. Paige is perfectly content making goo goo eyes with strangers in the mall if it means I’m pushing her around all day and providing her with apple strawberry Gerber Stars and carrot juice.

But I got to let it out folks.

I don’t like playing with my daughter. Touch and Feel’s are cute but I can’t read “Zoo’s Who” over and over again without thinking about my email. I can only feign enthusiasm for the fish in the tank a few times before I realize I’d rather be reading the new novel I have sitting on my desk. I like to go to the park and feed the ducks but I don’t like watching my daughter like a hawk so she doesn’t put branches and bugs into her mouth. I feel horrible about this, really and truly. I want to be super mom and get psyched about everything. I want to crawl around the floor all day enthralled to be picking up dust bunnies before my daughter can get to them. In fact, I want to be the kind of mom that gets rid if dust bunnies before they even happen even with a dog, cat, and shag rug.

But I can’t.

And for the record, I’m really glad she’s sleeping, where’s my book?

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