tears

Sadie is changing in lots of ways. She's walking. She's talking more than ever. She's also starting to shift into being more aware of her surroundings, and her repertoire of moods and feelings is growing. For example, she cries or at least looks very concerned when she hears a baby cry. She laughs when we laugh. She gets frustrated when she can't do certain tasks. She has even started to whine a little. (ugh)
She also seems to have dropped her afternoon nap. She'll sleep almost 3 hours in the morning/early afternoon, so she's not tired for a second one until 5 or 6, which is way too late. I just can't have her awake until 10 PM with us, especially when Andrew doesn't get home from work until 8 PM sometimes. I need my down time with him. The sad part is that it's beyond clear that she wants to A)spend time with him when he gets home and B) spend time with both of us at once.
This was illustrated last night when I put her down at 7:30, she cried hard until Andrew got home and got her up at 7:45. She was delighted until we put her back down at 8:30. She cried hard again, so I went in and rocked her and sang to her for 5 minutes. She totally relaxed in my arms but when I put her back down, she started crying again. Since we've been uber-spoiled with this angelic, perfect sleeper, it's really hard to just "let her cry it out". (this is where all of my friends with normal bedtime/nighttime crying babies will want to slap me. Sorry, guys - I'm just telling it like it is)
So, we know she wants to play with us. We also know she's teething (molars). But most importantly, we know that she's tired. We got her up one more time for a bit and put her back down for good at 9:15. She cried for almost a full half hour before finally giving up.

Not until the apartment was quiet did it occur to me that she might also just be very in-tune with me. I just learned of a good friend's mother being killed and I also had a root canal yesterday.
Maybe the tears were intuitive and empathetic.

(I can almost hear the sarcastic remarks already...but hey, it's possible.)