The Littlest Vampire

I am not giving up.  Just like when I fought my battle with cancer, failure is still not, nor will it ever be, an option.

This is what I continue to tell my 11-month-old grandbaby Claudia.  I tell her this because Baby CJ is clearly determined to kill me.  My daughter thinks I am exaggerating but if I continue to go without sleep, death by exhaustion seems like a pretty darn real possibility to me. 

Claudia persists in being wide awake, chirpy and relentlessly cheerful at all hours of the day and night.  To say she is a night owl is hardly doing her baby person justice.  I have decided that her parents need a sharp shove out into the broad sunlight because I am seriously worried that they are actually vampires and have somehow begot a real live tiny baby vampire in the form of otherwise darling, precious Claudia.  Meanwhile, I am certainly avoiding all reruns of The Omen and Rosemary’s Baby, crosses and garlic are not far behind.

This past weekend it took me two entire hours to put Claudia down for her afternoon nap and this when she was falling asleep on her tiny feet two hours prior.  Precocious to the end, Claudia managed to fight nap time for an entire additional two hours.

“Don’t talk to me,” I whispered wearily into my cell phone when my daughter called to check on us.  “The baby is still trying to kill me.”

Later that evening Claudia rewarded us all for our extreme patience and vigilance by deciding she did not need to go to bed for the night.  This was well after 11 p.m.  My daughter and her husband, dead on their collective feet, resorted to the only weapon they had left in their young parental arsenal; they took her for a drive around scenic Milpitas, California.  It worked, it always works, but for some reason that I cannot fathom, I was not invited on the drive.  An oversight, I am sure.  Thus, I was laying awake back at home, eyes wide open, wondering what vampire-like things Baby Claudia and her so-not-in-the-coffin vampire parents were up to.

I just know that baby is a vampire.  Nothing else explains our family’s tiny tyke’s complete and utter aversion to everything remotely related to sleeping.  I have tried singing, I have tried rocking, I have tried every expensive lullaby toy that money can buy.  I even tried a highly recommended Baby Einstein DVD that is all about helping lull baby to sleep.  Claudia watches it alright, wide awake and alert.  All that darn DVD does is lull ME to sleep.  The baby, armed with secret, infant vampiric powers, is clearly immune.  I half expect her to flap her baby wings and come flying out of her playpen.  This would totally freak the dogs out.  And this when her dog Max already requires serious sedation. And did I mention that Baby CJ just loves scary, dark movies? Since we don’t let her watch such cinema, she makes do with the most scary moments of the movies she is allowed to watch.  Her absolute favorite character is the Shadow Man from The Princess and The Frog and that guy is into voodoo.  You can see what I am getting at here, I’m sure.

I ran all this past my daughter who seemed highly amused, especially for someone who has not slept herself in more than a year.  “Lack of sleep,” my daughter declared.  “Has made mom totally paranoid.”

And this from somebody who actually named her child after her favorite character in a book and movie, Interview With A Vampire.  The child vampire character, as readers may recall, in Interview With a Vampire was named Claudia.

I rest my case.  Or would, if there was any rest to be had.