Naps and rashes.... the totally unglamorous part of motherhood (wait - there's a glamorous part?)

Despite a weekend, I'm still desperately behind on life. My plan was to take two hours to myself on Saturday, go get a massage, then go to Starbucks and catch up on a whole bunch of things. I ended up upgrading the massage to 90 minutes (not sorry) and then throwing a fit in holiday mall traffic ("I'M NOT EVEN GOING TO THE MALL MY HOUSE IS JUST THAT WAY IHATEYOUALLLLL") and coming home instead. With the best of intentions to catch up later, of course, but then we got to working on our garage and basement and suddenly it was Monday morning.

And of course this isn't helped by the fact that Julia's sleep is still in major flux. She's definitely down to one nap only, but I'm struggling to work out a schedule that works for both of us. She wants to nap earlier in the day, which leads to a too-long stretch of awake time before bed. But my efforts to stretch her out seem to just leave her overtired, meaning she's sleeping poorly overall and not getting enough hours of sleep in a day. Which means I'm on edge too because I need to sleep at night, and I really need her to give me a little more time off during the day.

And - the part that makes me cry - her diaper rash is back. I'm at my wit's end. It was better, almost great, and then Saturday morning it was back. I don't know if this means it's been misdiagnosed this whole time (but why would it have gotten better so clearly in response to the anti-fungals?). Maybe this is normal; these types of rashes are notoriously hard to clear - but going on five months of this? Not normal. Maybe she's managed to breed a super-resistant strain of yeast down there. But - she's a BABY. We can't just hit her with crazy-strong anti-fungals, nor can we keep trying different medicines ad infinitum. I'm so desperate that I'm honestly considering trying to potty train a 14-month-old because I don't know what else could fix this (I know - crazy, but I'm about there).

Anyways, I have an appointment with our pediatrician tomorrow morning. I'm not even going to hope for a resolution, but maybe we'll come up with another approach to try. Fortunately, my crazy-mom tendencies mean I have a photo slideshow of her rash, day-by-day since before we started the latest treatment, on my cell phone, and you'd better believe I'm going to make the pediatrician watch it.

In happier news - we did Christmas with R's family this past weekend. Julia didn't really get the concept but she was adorably excited about her new sled and her new stuffed animals, in particular. Now I actually maybe want it to snow so we can go sledding! She got a horned frog pillow stuffed animal, which she loves, and a giant stuffed lion. She walked into the room with the lion this morning and immediately went, "Raaaar!" Of course the lion has scared the bajeepers out of me several times so far but it's a cool addition to our menagerie.

I also scored a soft and beautiful camera/tablet bag - I'm sure I'll brag about it soon - and R and I got a new tv for our living room. Which is awesome. It's 3D. We are watching 3D television in our home. Let that sink in. Whoa. Awesome. Yes.

And... the whole reason I bothered to post anything at all - photos of the babe:

We had a relatively warm day this past week so we ventured out to the park. She still loves the swings.

She still loves steering wheels and going "brrm brrm."

And turns out she hates mittens.

Last Friday night. Kicking back with Julietta (the doll) after a long week, and not in the mood for a photo.

But she'd rather have her daddy in the chair with her. (Awwww)

Cutie.
(And isn't R's hair so shiny?! It's like long eyelashes on guys - totally wasted. He actually got a haircut today because he didn't want his hair to be shiny for Christmas.)

And her latest thing this past week/weekend - sitting in baskets. I have a bunch of phone photos that I'll have to gather together for a comprehensive post on the subject. Here's a teaser.