The Nudge

I'm sitting here researching new diets. And eating nachos. It's 2:55 in the morning and Amelia's having a dance party in the living room. I polish off the nachos and raid the pantry, but it's barren from my last new diet.  Damn.

Since I'm sitting out this Mickey tango, I'm binge-reading mommy blogs and trying to understand the mindset of these women:

These first few years go so fast...Blink your eyes and they're grown (I can't blink my eyes right now because they are too swollen from lack of sleep)....Put down your cell phone and read your child 327 books...Remove all television sets from your home and replace them with craft tables... 

Blah, blah, blah, blah. 

I get it ladies. The years fly by. But those twelve hours on a plane with a toddler? They don't.

You'll miss these days, their Dawn baby-soft hands gently type on the keyboard while their organically fed babies nap away the afternoon.

It's been less than 24 hours since we landed back in Switzerland, and already I'm forced to readjust to not only the time zone, but the culture.  Amelia went from eating a two-dollar hot dog at O'Hare Airport in Chicago to chanting, "salmon, salmon, salmon" at an overpriced Swiss restaurant all in the same day.  Forty-five dollars and a "hold the bearnaise sauce" later, my three-year-old was ready for two hours of sleep.

Correct.  You read that correctly.  She slept for two hours. Total.  And now here we are at three in the morning and I keep on reading that I should be savoring every minute of this.  Yeah, okay.  The only thing I'm savoring is this nacho.

I had every intention of sleeping through the night.  My feet swollen from the cramped airplane and a bruised forehead from where I walked into a wall, I hit my pillow and call it a night.  Until the dreaded nudge.

Now most of you moms know this nudge---it's the middle of the night, semi-gentle elbow to the ribs from your husband.  It's the "honey, I expect you to not only bear, incubate, deliver, and feed our child, but also to participate in her three a.m. circus. Oh, and could you please shut the door behind you?"

Ironically, it's also this same nudge that got me into this predicament in the first place.

So I'm stuffing my face and trying to figure out how this tiny human can manage on absolutely no sleep.  She's singing, she's dancing, she's talking a mile a minute about what she wants for next Christmas, and I'm watching the clock since you blogging mommies tell me that time flies.  I'm pretty sure it's in slow motion right now.

I finally get her back to sleep at five a.m., and just as I'm drifting off, I'm awakened to what sounds like a Clydesdale horse trotting around the house.  Turns out it's not a heavy footed stallion, but actually my well-rested husband, and he whistles his way out the door.

Amelia sleeps another three hours, and I get by on two pots of coffee and a whole lot of unconditional love for my husband's mini-me.  I love my life, my husband, my child, but I also feel no guilt in saying that I don't necessarily love these days.  In fact, I hope some of them do fly by.  My eyes can't handle the exhaustion, my brain can't handle the monotony, and my thighs sure as hell can't handle the nachos.