prattle on, my precious

Most weekday mornings are a blur. I barely drag myself from bed, get baby ready, get myself ready, feed baby some breakfast, grab some coffee and perhaps something to munch on the ride to work...

However, what I savor most in the wee hours of those mornings, even before the alarm goes off, is the melodious prattling wafting in through the Baby Monitor. Sometimes, there is a discernible Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, or Baa Baa Black Sheep, but, mostly, it is just some genial bantering Ana carries on with her Lion and Mouse and Bunny and Bear and Paapaa.

Ana is my alarm clock most days, especially when she goes to bed the previous night without much of a fight.

The Baby monitor sits right next to me on my night stand, and far enough away from the slumbering Dad. D barely hears anything through the monitor and that's just the way he likes it.

I, on the other hand, am a slave to the Baby Monitor. Have been since the minute it was hooked up and good to go when Baby was a few weeks old. Even though Baby was sleeping right next to my bed, in her little bassinet until she turned one.

We just couldn't settle on getting her room ready, and I might have subconsciously put it off. No pink. No baby blue either. Maybe sunny yellow. No stupid themes. No wall paper. Maybe some nice border somewhere, if I find a good one. No, you can't just pick a color, you have to make sure it is right for the baby...

So, until baby was almost one, she slept right next to me, in her crib, when she outgrew her bassinet.

Which meant that every little fidgeting, coughing, throat-clearing, tossing and turning by the oh-so-insensitive Dad was met with serious censure in the form of whispered "Shhhhh"!

When we moved Ana to her own room, she seemed to like it. At least, she would shut the door and sit there with her books and toys for long hours (30 minutes, to be closer to the truth, which is probably equivalent of a couple of hours in Baby clock) ...

Anyway, since she started sleeping in her own room, I had to turn up the volume on my Baby monitor receiver. And every once in a while, I worry that she is not breathing right. Does her breath sound labored? Is she OK? Is her breath being stifled by her quilt and blanket? Is it just the congestion or is she being smothered by her 4" tall stuffed toy that I allow her to hold on to?

Weekdays may pass in a blur, but the 5 or 10 minutes each morning, in my half-asleep state, when a gentle "Woe, Woe yay a buck..." streams into my consciousness and I visualize the little baby arms interlocked with some toy's arms swaying forward and backward in a rowing motion to the song, I feel an indescribable bliss...