The Eyes Have It.

To say that life has been stressful the past few weeks would be an understatement. The past three days in particular, have been incredibly rough on me mentally. While I have a little bit before finding a job becomes crucial, I am ready to get back in the work force and know that the longer I'm without work, the harder it will be to find work.

Needing a short escape from my hermit ways, Audrey and I went over to my mom's house this evening to hang out. I watched Project Runway and Audrey....well....Audrey ate and fussed and finally fell asleep. Since she's been doing so great on her sleeping schedule, I thought she would fall back asleep easily when we got home (the car seat ride usually wakes her). Wrong. 

Although I've tried not to let it become a habit, Audrey has become accustomed to falling asleep with a bottle in her mouth. A pacifier is not a valid substitute either; she wants a bottle. So, the past few days/nights I've taken to propping a bottle up beside her on a rolled up blanket and she usually falls asleep shortly thereafter. Well, since I've been resting a lot lately, I decided tonight would be a good night to try and break that habit by getting her to fall asleep with either a pacifier or nothing at all. Wrong. 

She flared and flipped and flopped. Fussed and fidgeted. Twisted and squiggled and squirmed. We walked and rocked and soothed and spit up (her, not me). Finally, mommy gave in and made her a bottle.

While I was feeding her, holding her and the bottle with one arm and scrolling through my phone with the other, I came across an article that a friend had shared on Facebook. It was titled "Coping with Intensity in Children" and was talking about gifted children and how they are crazy intense about things. How they have more ups and downs with emotions and ask a lot of questions 24x7.  

As I'm scrolling and reading, I glance over at Audrey to see how the "feed to sleep" method is working. I look over to find her staring at me and I mean STARING at me....intensely. I guess it was the combo of my exhaustion + the look + the article.  I busted out laughing. So much so that I jostled her and the bottle right out of her mouth. She paused, frowned and then started to cry. For whatever reason (I guess it was the look on her face), this only caused me to laugh harder (mean mommy).  Now I'm crying from laughing so hard and she's crying from being startled. I finally start to calm down somewhat (still laughing though), put the bottle back in her mouth and tell her "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry." She's now looking at me intensely again, but she's smiling.....then she starts laughing. Then I start laughing. Then she's starts crying........HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Eventually we both stopped laughing and crying, she went to sleep without her bottle in her mouth, and I feel at least ten times better than I have in a long time. Laughter truly is the best medicine; good for what ails ya.

Happy Friday, peeps!

The eyes.