I'm working on it.

This moment, the smallest person in our family is lying flat on her face in her crib screaming the way I'd imagine I myself might scream if someone was trying to cut off my leg. She has been screaming like this for the last twenty-two minutes, save a brief respite during which I stupidly entered her room to make sure she wasn't stuck in the crib bars or that the ceiling hadn't fallen in on her or or that a giant sheepdog hadn't broken in through her window or that some other catastrophic even hadn't taken place while I was making the afternoon coffee that I need to stay awake for the rest of the day. It's a need, by the way, driven by last night's {this morning's} "feed-me-mama-I-need-you-party" that began sometime around 3 a.m. and lasted through until roughly seven-thirty. And what time did that sweet little bundle go to sleep you might ask? Just about eleven o'clock.

Right. She went to sleep at eleven, and slept until three. I think. Her Daddy might have walked her somewhere in the three hours between midnight (which is when we crawled in bed) and her waking, but I really don't have any memory of what happened then. I'd say I slept, but I think it was more of a passing out from sheer exhaustion kind of thing.

Today, she's had an hour long scream-fest in her crib - that's the time that's supposed to be her morning nap - and now, she's been in that bed for nearly an hour screaming again. I can't begin to calculate her sleep deficit, and she's only ten months old.

I know she's tired. And I know that she needs sleep to be a happy baby. And I - we- have tried everything we know how to try to help her go to sleep and stay asleep. This letting her cry thing is excruciating, and yet I fear that if we relent, we will end up with a baby who will only sleep if she's comfortably ensconced in our arms or leisurely suckling and snuggling in our bed.

As I finish this post, it is 4:40 p.m. EST. I put her in her bed exactly one hour and one minute ago. She just now stopped crying.

I think now it's my turn to start. Because I hear the sound of a Chinook. And it's gonna fly right over the top of our house.