Jessica is normally a good baby.

And I'm not just saying that because I'm her mom...

Jess is normally a very calm, easy-going sort of baby. She's easily entertained, not given to large amounts of fussing, is quiet even when she is fussing, goes to sleep without too much trouble, sleeps through the night 12 hours, has only been sick once since she was born and is generally polite in public. A happy, smiley, easy to live with, low-maintenance baby.

Wait, wait, before you kill me...

There are some hard parts in my life as a parent, too. For one thing, I rarely have any time to myself when I'm not being the mom. Originally - some 2 months ago or so - Kevin and I agreed that I could have one day off a week to do something. (Usually this actually meant a few HOURS off while I went to a movie or something.) But recently we've had too many things to do and very little spare cash. And there's really no way that I want to go to the Mall for a few hours and do nothing for a few hours just to get away from the baby. At least at home I have my computer.

Secondly, I have to deal with myself all the time. I know that sounds weird, but honestly... there's something just difficult about being a stay-at-home mom, particularly in these days of two-income households. Obviously we have a significant shortage of disposable income. I also have a serious guilt issues to deal without about not working and generally feeling like I'm "lazy" and "slack" even though I know for a fact that I'm NOT. But man, I feel like it. And some of the casual comments I get from time to time don't really help. I know people are not trying to make my feel guilty or pathetic or stupid or whatever, but... I do anyway.

Third, because Jess is rarely sick - she's had one cold in her entire life and she was miserable and screamy through the whole thing, and I was sick at the same time, so we were both miserable together - she has no immunity. I don't mean immunity to illnesses, although she's probably not got much of that either. I mean, she's got no tolerance to not feeling well. Falling down, even if she doesn't bump her head, is the Absolute Worst Thing that's ever happened to her, ever ever as long as she can remember and she's just sooooooooooooooo sad.

Kevin and I also don't have much immunity. Since Jess is rarely cranky or fussy, we don't have much tolerance for the occassional bout of childhood grumps. Our nerves get frayed a lot more easily, I think, because we're not innoculated to crabby-babiness. We didn't get all this crank back when she was a new baby and we were still 100% overwhelmed by babiness. We're getting it now. Now that we're pretty sure the baby won't break if she bonks her head or starve to death if she's not fed the second she gets hungry or any of 15 thousand other things. Which means we have got almost no patience.

Jess is teething.

Yesterday, she didn't want to go to sleep. As soon as we'd put her down, she'd start crying. Kevin ended up letting her stay up an extra 2 hours or so and crawl around before she finally went to bed. This morning, she was just whiney. She didn't want to be held, she wasn't hungry, she didn't want to play, she just wanted to crank a little.

And she didn't want to take her nap this afternoon either. We finally had to put her to bed and let her cry for almost twenty minutes before she went to sleep. After her nap, she was even More Sad than before she'd gone to sleep. She sat in my lap and wailed for almost forty minutes. She didn't quite throw up, although we had a few scary coughs where I thought she might throw up.

It took us a while to figure out that teething was her problem. My shoulder was soaked from baby tears. I have a severe headache. Kevin's nerves were quite frayed. And I was on the verge of tears myself before we finally clued in and dosed her with the baby motrin and the ora-gel. (I know, I know, the pediatricians don't recommend it. they can bite me.)

At least, finally, the motrin has kicked in and she's back to being mostly normal.

Mostly.