Dear Reagan

I know you have a little bit of a cold right now, but I have the perfect medicine for you. I just need you to take it. Its called sleep. It should not be taken in small doses. Rather, one dose should last for 10 - 12 hours. I would even settle for 8. But honey, one hour, sometimes only 30 minutes, at a time, is not good for your health. Or mine.

It started a week ago. You began waking up. Often. We were perplexed by this new, unfortunate behavior you exhibited. The first night, we thought it was a fluke. The second night, we figured you were just unsettled from the previous night's lack of rest. The third night, our legs quivered to think that this may be a new habit. And now, many nights later, we are at a loss.

You are not hungry, as far as we can tell. You scream at us in anger when we try to get you ready for bed after your last bottle. We have tried rocking you, feeding you less, feeding you more, making the room darker, making the room lighter, putting you in your crib, swaddling you tightly, running vaporizers, singing songs, and holding you in every imaginable position. And while we are glad you eventually calm down, we do not understand this phenomenon either.

In summary, we may seem like a couple of bumbling idiots. We see you stare back at us while we peer over you with quizzical looks on our faces and must admit, most of the time, we have no idea what we are doing. For some odd reason, your instruction manual got lost in the mail or the hospital staff neglected to give us our copy. At any rate, we are flying blind and doing our best. So please, have patience with us. We love you very much and are hoping that is enough to get us through to the day when you start talking and telling us what you need.

~Mom and Dad