The new routine

So.

I guess there's no way to sugar coat it. I have become one of those moms the Super Nanny would raise her eyebrows at. I'm one of those moms even I've silently judged on TV.

But. Ha ha. Jokes on me.

Marina, who once had the title of best sleeper in all babyland, refuses to go to bed without someone in the room. And stop saying to let her cry it out. Because when we do, we find her naked on her bare mattress covered in pee and tears and snot.

So now she lays down in her crib, while I get settled on her "big girl bed."
She falls asleep to the glow of my reading light. Oh, how I wish I had saved the Twilight series for now because I probably would have looked forward to my hour of quiet time.
But instead, I started out reading Sense and Sensibility, a book that was way too proper and stifling for a toddler room. So I switched to Anna Karenina, which gets kind of awkward when she asks me about the train tracks on the cover.

As great as an hour of reading may sound, it doesn't always have a happy ending.
Not that I'm not caught up in the lives of Kitty and Anna, but I often end up falling asleep in Marina's room and that means I am missing the entire season of Housewives of NYC.