The holy grail...

... has once again become more than two or three hours of sleep in a row. Last night was truly miserable. Ess was wide awake and un-frickin-happy from 11 pm to 1 am. Every time I got her back to sleep, I'd wait 10 or 15 more minutes and put her in her crib, whereupon her eyes would open, she'd toss and turn and whimper, then cry. Eventually she ended up in bed with us, where she nursed and tossed and whined and, every once in a while, slept. I got very little sleep; D got marginally more. We had a nasty little argument in the dark that was just a product of stress and exhaustion. It's all fine this morning, but we are both dragging.

I don't know what's going on with Ess. She's rubbing her eyes a lot (day and night), but we think that's just tiredness since she naps so briefly and then has slept so poorly the last several nights. She's too old for the 4-month sleep regression and not old enough for the 8-month regression.

I know that the solution is likely to just wait until she grows out of it. But I gotta say, with multiple freelance assignments hanging over my head and the desire to, like, have fun every now and then, this particular period is just killing me.

But. I have two of my three freelance thingies done for the weekend, and the third is a mere 400 words. I have promised myself to be done with it by 1 pm, which means I'd better take advantage of D and Ess' absence and get to it. And then D will go to the gym, and one of us will go grocery shopping. And, I hope, somewhere in there will be time for a nap.