ava is sick again. coughing. again. 2nd time in 2 weeks. first time coincided with my exams. this time coincides with some deadlines that are causing a lot of stress. my baseline is not sleeping a lot -- in the absence of her cold. now with her cold, i am sleeping very very little. and then, to top it off, when she is not coughing, she is just awake. wide awake. for no reason. well, i am sure there are plenty of reasons. but none that she articulates. and then of course, during the day, she is hmmm....tired! and guess what? so am i! we are not at our best, to put it mildly.

ava is a very interesting person. she was incredibly high needs as a baby (easy needs to meet: hold her and nurse her and never ever let her go, let alone insult her with a bottle, because she WOULD scream for 2 hours straight, refusing to give in to her hunger, because it was not mom...the only real thing that was hard was giving up things that she could not attend, like hot yoga and long bike rides, but otherwise, i happily plunked myself in the glider and read like crazy for a year. of note: there are lots of yoga poses that you can do with a baby in a bjorn.) those needs meant a very rapid and thorough reevaluation of my expectations of parenthood, probably something all parents go through (duh), but this was particularly intense. i know this, because then i had another child. who actually liked to sit in his baby seats, and would be entertained for nearly an hour by the stained-glass lamp. so pretty!

anyway, i kept anticipating the day when my efforts would not be required so intensely.

here is the reality: that is not really happening.

ava is an amazing person, but she still requires a level of effort that most 5-year-olds don't seem to need. not the sort of baby-ing effort that she needed when she was a ... baby... (can you tell it is very late at night?) but rather a sort of constant engagement--my mental engagement. i don't know how to explain it, other than to note that she is so very intense, and so very sensitive, and she does a whole lot better when i am not completely stressed. i know what i am saying is making zero sense. it sounds so idiotic, sort of like, well, yeah, erin. all i can say is she is so smart, but so complicated.

basically, she needs more patience, more time, more guidance, more engagement than the average kid. she does play, but the best outlet for her is a project--a structured activity--and while that could be a sand castle on the beach, she needs something. when i am tired and stressed and cranky, i have no reserves to come up with that sort of thing constantly (not to mention the prep work and clean up that goes into those sorts of projects). but of course, it is more than that. in a nutshell, she needs my mental attention. she needs to know that i am engaged with her. she needs my emotional/intellectual support/engagement/effort to feel secure. i know this, have known it for a while. and since i am not 100%, she is struggling.

so, i am now awake, at 1 am, trying to reconcile the fact that i am not meeting this need, with the fact that i have obligations to others, not just my daughter.

basically, the standard process of parenting does not apply here. it figures. i managed to be a pretty intense kid, no giant surprise that i birthed one.

so now, what to do?