I am officially one of “those” moms who enters her kid into beautiful baby contests. I’m also in it for my own pleasure since I enjoy taking cute pictures of Gianna that are somewhat artistic looking. Unfortunately, she usually vetoes my attempts at such gorgeous portraits by looking tired, or angry or about to throw a temper tantrum. So I’ve waited 14 months to finally have a photo worthy of entering and I just couldn’t let the chance escape us. The super young cover girl cutoff is at age 2! Now there’s a brief window of cuteness if I ever saw one. It’s not a contest where votes from the public decide the winner but you can view her album and rate the photo if you like it and I hope you do!

optical channel

You may remember that Gianna was sick a couple weeks after her birthday in February and that disrupted her sleep routine naturally but the dismaying news is that here we are two months later and still not back on track. For whatever reason–and there have been many between teething, stomach issues, night terrors and separation anxiety–Gianna hasn’t had more than 10 days of sleeping straight through the night since February.

Usually she is crying in fits off and on and trying very hard to stay asleep after we put her down at night. It begins an hour or so after she first falls asleep and we end up needing to go in and comfort her about 4 or 5 hours into the night. This is painful because it usually means we are awake with her screaming just as soon as our heads hit the pillows and we have called it a night. Then, we’re up with her at least once more in the early morning. Tylenol hasn’t seemed to make much difference so if it’s purely teething pain, we can cross that off our list of possibilities. But it’s pretty hard to nail down any other theory of what ails her.

She falls asleep fine on her own so I know it has nothing to do with the old adage that babies who can’t put themselves to sleep in the first place will wake up at night and not be able to do it for themselves either. And, when we are consoling her at night she seems to really want to be asleep but is finding it very difficult to get comfortable. She seems agitated and frustrated that she’s not sleeping. Above all, she seems very tired. I am very tired. Benoit is very tired. Neither one of us could have imagined that at 14, almost 15 months, we’d still be talking and blogging about sleepless nights. We go to her pediatrician for her 15-month appointment in a week and a half so I’ll be asking for some major advice at that point if things aren’t better.

You may remember that Gianna was sick a couple weeks after her birthday in February and that disrupted her sleep routine naturally but the dismaying news is that here we are two months later and still not back on track. For whatever reason–and there have been many between teething, stomach issues, night terrors and separation anxiety–Gianna hasn’t had more than 10 days of sleeping straight through the night since February.

Usually she is crying in fits off and on and trying very hard to stay asleep after we put her down at night. It begins an hour or so after she first falls asleep and we end up needing to go in and comfort her about 4 or 5 hours into the night. This is painful because it usually means we are awake with her screaming just as soon as our heads hit the pillows and we have called it a night. Then, we’re up with her at least once more in the early morning. Tylenol hasn’t seemed to make much difference so if it’s purely teething pain, we can cross that off our list of possibilities. But it’s pretty hard to nail down any other theory of what ails her.

She falls asleep fine on her own so I know it has nothing to do with the old adage that babies who can’t put themselves to sleep in the first place will wake up at night and not be able to do it for themselves either. And, when we are consoling her at night she seems to really want to be asleep but is finding it very difficult to get comfortable. She seems agitated and frustrated that she’s not sleeping. Above all, she seems very tired. I am very tired. Benoit is very tired. Neither one of us could have imagined that at 14, almost 15 months, we’d still be talking and blogging about sleepless nights. We go to her pediatrician for her 15-month appointment in a week and a half so I’ll be asking for some major advice at that point if things aren’t better.

She finally knows my name! Well, she still gets it confused with Papa and we both end up answering to each other’s monikers but it was a very happy day indeed when I first saw her point to me and say, “Mama!” Finally a name to put with the face.

Also, I’m woefully behind in my posts so I’m going to inundate you all with photos of our Easter extravaganza. Gianna met the Easter Bunny out of the corner of her eye and still he managed to make her cry. She searched for plastic eggs at the mini golf park along with hundreds of other baby revelers and she donned her Sunday best to hunt for the eggs we dyed to together at Chrissie and Eric’s house. She did great and had a blast! It was so much fun to watch her scan the garden for her colored eggs and drop them in her basket. No doubt the loud CRUNCH sound of the egg shells breaking was much of the allure.

“OOOOOOHHHH!”, she says as she points to a full basket of eggs, the first she’s ever seen.

What? You want me to smile AT the camera? Not a chance!

Big men dressed in even bigger suits with furry parts are scary. Get it now Mom?

The first egg of the day wasn’t too hard to find.

“Dedans!” (French for inside) as she puts all her eggs in her basket.

Okay, next time you can hide these a little better.

Too easy!

But oh so pretty! “Waaaoooohhh!”, she says.

And a perfect family photo to end the day.