Angelica hits another milestone

We'll start this story yesterday.

While we were at the hospital getting tests done yesterday, I got a good look inside Angelica's mouth (since she was screaming her head off). She's been teething for awhile, and I've been wanting to get in there to see if I saw any sign of teeth coming through. No teeth yet...I saw a tiny "crack" in her gums on the bottom but no tooth. I suspect her teething has been causing her increase in sleep trouble lately so I was kind of hoping for a sign that the tooth was about to come through.

As an aside from this, last night I was packing up some of her old clothes, which I am eventually going to bring in for my boss to look through (she's having a girl) and looking at her newborn stuff...I got a little sentimental. She was SO TINY...and comparatively speaking she is SO BIG now. When did that happen? Can I go back? And started thinking about our first few days home...the newness of her, the new baby smell, the lack of sleep, the overwhelming emotions...It kind of gave me another wave of "I want another" (and then I snapped back to reality). Then my thinking shifted to...well at least so far we don't have walking, and we don't have teeth. She's still a baby.

So last night, I'm rocking her to sleep and letting her chew on my finger (it soothes her) and I was thinking...another perk of her not having teeth yet, and we should take advantage of this time, since she can still chew on our fingers and it doesn't hurt, and we don't have to worry about getting her teeth knocked out or anything.

She's having trouble falling asleep, and I have a massive headache, so after about 20 or 25 minutes I put her in her crib (awake) with a blanket, lovey, and pacifier (which she normally doesn't take, but since she had been chewing the crap out of my fingers I thought it'd make a good substitute) and head out for some Tylenol. She lays down, but I keep hearing her make angry grunts. After about 5 minutes, I check on her, and she's awake, a little annoyed, but not crying. So I start patting her back and she goes to sleep.

We repeat this cycle about three more times. She never actually cried during the whole thing, but you could tell she was having trouble falling asleep on her own, and I had a BAD headache and hadn't eaten in about 8 hours so I needed dinner. Since she wasn't crying and I could tell she was on the verge of sleep, I left her.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I sat down to eat dinner and about ten minutes later realized...oh my gosh! She hadn't made a peep! I went in to check on her and sure enough she had put herself to sleep after being put down awake for the first time (and thrown the pacifier out of the crib into the middle of her bedroom).

And here I was thinking we'd need to try Ferberizing!

She didn't wake up until 6:30 this morning either. She'd been waking up so often during the night lately and it was draining both of us.

So this morning I get up with her, change her, dress her, give her a bottle (which she prompty grabbed from my hands and decided she would feed herself...something she's been trying to do lately but hasn't fully grasped the idea that you have to hold the bottle upright to get the milk) and then Scott took over while I was showering. About five minutes later, I hear him bust in the door and yell:

"Mommy, Mommy! Gellie has a tooth!"

Sure enough, when I checked, the spot where her gums were "cracked" yesterday, there's a sharp little nubbin of a tooth.

And then come the unexpected feelings. My heart sank. She has a tooth. No more toothless smiles. No more letting her chomp away on my fingers. As if the sitting and crawling or standing and cruising weren't enough to do it already, the tooth did me in. My baby is growing up.

When she starts walking I am probably going to self destruct.

But, I've moved on from that and now I'm excited. She has a tooth! And she's sure to get more! That vastly increases the variety of food she can eat. And now, until the next tooth starts coming through, maybe Scott and I will be able to get some sleep! Oh boy!