Dear Emily, You sweet HARD child.

Dear Emily,

Sweetheart, I love you more than words can express, however I have to tell you that you have now taken the cake for the absolute hardest baby and toddler that I have had.  You have had snags from the get-go on top of being a very sensitive and attached little peanut.  At this point in time, you have been cutting molars and then eye teeth for the last five months.  FIVE months of HARD teeth.  I understand that teething is a hard hard process on you and you cut molar after molar with only a 2 week break before we saw swollen eye teeth.  To be blunt, that sucks.  I'm sure at this point you feel like your life is supposed to be spent in pain.  I'm sorry for that and promise that it's not.  You have about 1/2 of one eye tooth to cut and the last has yet to cut.  After this bout of time you will be fully equity with all but your 2 year molars, 16 teeth in all.  You are 16 months.  Your teeth have come in at warp speed.. well.. seemingly warp speed although these last 4 teeth are taking their GOOD SWEET TIME coming in.

Regardless, I understand that teething hurts and it make normal life hard.  Can I tell you though that from the time you get up in the morning, until you go to nap, and then again from post-nap to bedtime... you tend to go in and out of crying at me.  You don't happily go and play.  You yell at your siblings if they try to engage you.  You are a grump and opinionated and very unhappy.  On top of that, you only ever nap 2 hours, like clockwork.  I don't know if you know this, but Conrads are sleepers.  We take very long morning naps and decent afternoon naps and when the morning nap is dropped, we sleep at least 3, preferably four hours at nap.  Child, YOU need that rest time.  The time awake is not pleasant.  Granted, you go to bed at 7pm and sleep until 8am... 13 hours isn't bad, but again, that's typically Conrad standard. Why you aren't falling into the Conrad nap pattern, I just don't know.

Also, while you started sleeping 13 hours straight in December, right on cue with the Conrad pattern, these teeth have interrupted that and through the worst of the teething you are getting up once again at night and screaming for 1-2 hours before settling back to sleep.

Dear sweet Emily.  Mommy cannot function, mentally, under these conditions.  I thrive on structure and predictability and not on a clingy, crying baby who only naps a bit.  The poor neighbors do not want to hear you scream from 3-5am, like you did last night.

I love and support you through everything, but this is my personal plea to you to please cut those teeth, start seeing the sunny side of things and goodness gracious, drop the night scream fests and add to those naps! Please?!  I have your 3 siblings to care for, your sister to grow, and our house to maintain.  I have daddy to think about too... how is there enough of me for all of that, when you require so very much right now.  Please take this under careful consideration.  I would greatly appreciate it.

Much love and care,

Mommy.