Mother Nature is awfully cruel. I’m so used to my daughter waking up several times a night, that of course she’s only woken up once so far since I put her down for bed last night, and I’ve been up for two hours (since 4:30am) because I can’t sleep. Go figure.

We hit thirteen months yesterday! It’s crazy how fast time is flying. I always thought I’d be really sad and miss the baby stage, but every week seems to bring something new, and it’s really exciting and fun. I’m enjoying being the mom of a toddler, who’s learning to walk and talk and really is the joy of my life.

I enjoy it even on the worst of days. (She’s lucky she’s so damn cute!)

I just wish I could sleep. A new study estimates that new parents lose out on about forty-four days of sleep in their baby’s first year. (If your family is anything like mine, though, replace the word “parents” with “moms.” I’m pretty certain that my boyfriend could sleep through anything, but since he works full-time, I usually let him.) That’s over a thousand hours of lost time! That’s just in the first year, too, and I can tell you that there’s no magical age when kids start sleeping through the night on their own. We’ve hit thirteen months and we’re still waking up during the night.

It’s days like this, when I am exhausted and cranky and could easily make up those forty-four days of lost sleep all at once if I had the chance, that I wonder why people ever have children in the first place. And then I look at my smiling, happy, wonderful daughter and those thoughts all seem to disappear.

I’d give (almost) anything for just a few more hours in the day to sleep, though.