Trapped in Our Own Bedroom

When Fiona was first sleeping in her crib we got in the habit of sleeping with her door and our door open; the rooms are positioned so that it's a straight shot for me to sit up and bed and see her sleeping in her crib. It was a good way to check up on her without having to get out of bed (I don't know what we thought would happen; a six-week old baby isn't going to climb out of her crib and start rerouting electrical wiring at 4am or anything).

Somewhere along the way Fiona realized that she was in a perfect position to check up on us. She knows that Mom & Dad aren't going to pick her up the moment she wakes up in the morning--she's been good at occupying herself during the night in her crib from an early age--but she also knows that when she sees one of us get out of bed it means it's time for the day to begin.

And so we wound up prisoners in our bed. If one of us woke up at 5:45 needing to use the facilities, we had to hope that Fiona was still asleep (and by 5:45 she's usually awake), because the moment she saw one of us move she'd start working her lungs to let us know the morning was ready to begin. One morning Andrea woke up and started to move when she saw Fiona lying in her crib, head raised, staring straight at my sleeping figure just waiting.

[Cue horror movie music]

New parents can be stupid. It took us several weeks before we remembered the power we had as people more or less in fully coordinated. And then we closed Fiona's door just enough so that we can hear her, but she can't see us.

How many graduate degrees do we have between us?