.The late shift.

After weeks of Cheyenne and I going to bed with Alice at 10:00pm then staying up with the lights on while she fussed and ate...and ate...and ate {and then grunted for ages whilst digesting} only to end up finally turning the lights off and trying for some sleep at 12:00am just for her to wake up to eat at 1:30am I gave up on the charade of going to bed at 10:00pm.
It was just frustrating me to be in bed but not able to relax and slip into sleep. So I pulled the plug on that a couple of weeks back and decided that Cheyenne should go to bed at 10:00pm on work nights while Hazelnut and I stay up in the family room until she's good and ready to go to sleep when we go to bed {usually between 12:00-1:00am}. It may sound rough, and I suppose it kind of is considering that the "alarm" {Amelia} goes off at 7:30am. But it's SO much easier to just stay up, we play music and dance when she gets fussy {I suggest Pandora.com with a playlist based off The Lumineers} or I cath up on my favorite Youtube subsciptions while she takes her between meal snoozes {both Pandora and Youtube via the television to make things easy on me when i'm feeding her}. Honestly it's my favorite couple of hours a day, just the two of us with the rest of the house sleepy and quiet. I get to have that sweet cuddly one on one lovey time with her that Amelia as a first born naturally got more of, it helps me as a mama feel less guilty of Alice getting a bit cheated on the one-on-one attention front.
I suspect that once she's bigger and sleeps through the night and we're all back to our usual schedules instead of "survival mode"; when time has softened the sleep deprivation and she no longer wants to be constantly held these few hours each night are the only things that I will clearly remember....I hope so at least.