Girls Night

This week marks the first string of nights that Anil has been working through the evenings (3-11 p.m. shifts), so Maya and I have had girls nights since Monday.

This is the result of tonight's festivities.

Here's what I learned:

a) Baby massage oil makes great baby hair gel.

b) Baby gets mad when playing with hair interferes with her bedtime.

Bedtime, we've learned, isn't so much a parentally imposed time at which we put Maya in her crib to go to sleep, but a time after which she turns from fuzzy and cooing Gizmo into a screamy and scary gremlin. Right now it's at about 8 p.m. So we try to preempt that.

Maya's bedtime routine goes like this: bath, book, bottle, bed. When we follow it and time it right, it's easy, she's happy, and no one cries. And this week I've tried to be on time because no one's here cooking me dinner while I'm putting her to bed, so my Whole Foods oven-ready meals go in at 8 when Maya goes to sleep. I try to start it at 7, and I gauge my timing based on the Seinfeld/Simpsons lineup. Bath and book take place with "Seinfeld" in the background, and she drinks her bottle on the couch with me trying to face her away from the glow of "The Simpsons."

Bailey's decided that he loves bathtime, so while Maya's in her tub, we're both leaning over the edge of the big tub into hers--me and Bailey that is. He wants to lick all the water off of her cheeks and hands, so I'm continually and alternately swatting him away and laughing it off. After bath, we do a little infant massage on the changing table as a way to wind down after all the splashing (she doesn't splash yet but I do). Then we read books, alternating ones from her board book library with the mainstay Goodnight Moon. Then we dim all the lights and head to the couch for the bedtime bottle.

We instituted the bedtime bottle because I was so exhausted by the time Maya used to go to sleep, around 11 p.m., and it was a relief to have Anil be the one to feed her that last time and put her to bed. Even as her bedtime moved earlier though, and I took over the job as Anil cooked, we stuck with the bottle strategy because we know how much milk we can stuff her full of (assuming more full leads to longer sleep) and it's just more straightforward than nursing. Maya literally passes out while drinking the bottle, so it's this wonderfully reliable way of putting her to bed each night with zero fussing when we put her in the crib. [Sidenote: Funny that as I'm typing this I'm watching "The Office" and they're talking about Pam's breastpump.]

Tonight, I pushed the limits with the hair party, so we sped through Goodnight Moon, the final pages being recited by me en route to the couch. She was predictably grumpy as "The Simpsons" were half over by then, so we struggled through some fussing, but inevitably the milk coma ensued, and she's been sleeping peacefully since about 8:30.

Now, I know this is a pretty random segue, but bear with me... I realized tonight that I was watching the series finale of "Ugly Betty"! Literally half way through watching last night's episode on DVR, it dawned on me. I had no idea! No one told me it was ending! And no one's here for me to tell, so I'm telling you, Internet. I'm so sad. It being girls night, I had to watch my favorite show that Anil loves to hate, and as if there hasn't been enough upheaval in my life already, it's over. Probably if I was on full brain capacity I'd have noticed that things were wrapping up awfully nicely lately--Hilda got married, Justin came out, Betty resolved things with Henry, Mark committed, Amanda found her father with the Tweety Bird tattoo. I'm having a kind of self-made montage moment here. What, so I'm a bit emotionally invested; I've been watching since the first episode and TV has long since replaced my pre-pregnant social life--we've talked about this.

I've been relieved that "Lost" is ending this spring, because I've long felt like "Lost" and having a baby are such big commitments in themselves that I don't know how I'd continue to balance them both. Both involve a whole lot of unanswerable questions and really confusing circumstances.

Anyway... our girls nights have been fun, but we're looking forward to having Anil back. Because Maya can only take so much of this: