"Wait, I need closure on that anecdote!"

Abbie is now 1-year-old. She commemorated the occasion by giving me a little reminder of what life was like one year ago: She woke up in the middle of the night screaming. This was her first 3 am screeching session in months. After thinking way too hard about letting her just cry herself back to sleep, I got up to check on her. I was hoping to find an easily remedied cause for her crying, like a radio that needed turned off or a monster that needed punched. Unfortunately, the cause was a poopy diaper, or, more specifically, a poopy diaper that had dried on the skin and caused a rash angry enough to function as a nightlight once the diaper was removed. Changing the diaper required much scrubbing with baby wipes and the application of Butt Paste ™ *, which sent Abbie from being angry about waking up in the middle of the night to being flat-out pissed off about having her nether regions wiped and pasted. A year ago I would have put a bottle in her mouth to soothe her back to sleep. Of course, a year ago I would have also gotten back up 90 minutes later to repeat the process. With Abbie being a 1-year-old, though, she should be past the point of needing a feeding in the middle of the night to soothe her back to sleep. So I sang to her. Now, if anyone reading this wants a good laugh at their human fallibility, try waking up from a deep sleep at 3 am and singing. The ensuing “music” will use only one normally inhuman pitch and have all the warmth of that squeaky voiced teenager from “The Simpsons.” Fortunately, my Darth Vader-ian crooning still worked to soothe Abbie. After several minutes of excruciating song, I set her back in her crib, and she went back to sleep with minimal fussing.

Late night crying sessions are a pain that keeps hurting, though. That morning, I woke her up a few minutes later than usual, and she was in a sleep-deprived state of major crankiness. Normally, this is just my problem, but today was the day of her 12-month physical. That’s a story for tomorrow, though, because I’m also in a sleep-deprived state of major crankiness.

* Yup, that’s really the diaper cream’s name.