The Insane Asylum at 3 AM

In order to make us appreciative of how good she has become on most nights, Cora decided to show us her demonically possessed side last night. She started off acting like she was going to go to sleep like normal, then she spit up and soaked the collar of her pajamas, and when I changed her, all hell broke loose.

Suffice it to say, when Geoff woke up this morning, the pad from the changing table was in the bassinet, and the baby, now dressed in her fourth change of pajamas, was sleeping peacefully on it. I had crawled into bed still wearing my bathrobe, expecting to have to get up again ten minutes after my head hit the pillow, but in fact Cora had finally fallen asleep and stayed that way for four hours.

The scene was the result of an intense game of Simon Says. "Simon said pat my bottom at eight-six pats per minute, not eighty-three. You lose! More crying! Now Simon says . . . actually I'm not going to tell you what Simon says, you have to guess, jerks! Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

Geoff wasn't totally surprised at the state of things, as at one point her crying had become so loud and angry that he had gotten up to make sure no one was injured. He got to run through the litany of Cora-soothing tricks himself (I don't blame him), and see that nothing was working, before retreating back to bed (since he was the only one of the three of us who had to get up in the morning).

I had to tell him about how in the wee hours, being on the changing table inexplicably calmed her. (Really, no reason that should be.) While I was standing there reminding myself that under no circumstances could she sleep on the changing table, and trying to think of a solution, she fell asleep on there. So I picked up the whole thing and carried her like a turkey on a platter to the bassinet.

Fifteen minutes after that she had woken up and cried a little again, and this time the only solution was for her to simultaneously lay on the magic changing pad and suck on my finger (no she does not want to nurse, suck on her own hand, or take a pacifier, and she's very offended that you even suggested any of those things--now return the hostage finger or pay the consequences!). I finally pulled a chair up to the bassinet. I may have fallen asleep leaning on the edge of it.

At 7:45 she made hungry noises like usual, and when I appeared she was all smiles. Geoff emerged from the shower and tentatively asked how she was. I told him she was grinning ear to ear and had apparently decided to pretend nothing had happened. He said, "Well tell her she's fired!" "I'm sorry, Cora, this isn't going to work out. This position really requires someone who isn't insane." More grins. Geoff says, "Tell her her replacement is going to be a good-natured Abyssinian cat!"

The good news is that my recurring thought during the madness was, "This is so unlike you, Cora--I hope nothing is seriously wrong with you." (Though the fact that the changing table "cured" her tipped me off that she was probably not actually ill.) She's mostly not overly difficult.

Wish us luck tonight. She can't have two aberrant nights in a row . . . right?

(P.S. I still wouldn't trade her in, even for a thousand Abyssinian cats. Though now I would like to see a contest between Cora and a thousand Abyssinian cats to see who could make more noise in the middle of the night.)