Stop Me If I've Told You This Before

I'm tired.

"How tired are you?!!" you ask?

Not just sleepy, not just fatigued: bone tired, but in all the right ways. As you know, I just got back from China with a very dolce bambina. She's a happy chappy all the way around, smiling, laughing, yabbling, loving meeting everyone. But when it comes to bedtime, she is firmly still on China Time. That means that 7pm Eastern Time is 8am China Time. That means that she has zero interest in going to sleep. That means that not even well-timed naps during the day have made a difference. That means that she wakes up pretty much every hour on the hour throughout the whole night to see if I want to play and/or feed her yet. That means that the following has occurred in this house:

1) Falling asleep standing up--and subsequently falling over--luckily onto a soft surface
2) Looking at all of the horrifying political stuff going on here in the US (can you say "Wolfowitz?!") that I can't even begin to get a chance to read, much less comprehend and blog about
3) Wondering whether I should preface everything I say with "stop me if I've told you this before" because I can't remember what I've said to whom, when or why--even within the same 5-hour period
4) Actually having this conversation (a la Jerry Maguire) with a nine-month old child at 4:45am, after 11pm, midnight, 1am, 2am and 3am wakeups: "Help ME help YOU! Help ME help YOU! Just tell me what you need and I'll do/get/make it! Can you tell mama what you need?" To which she replied, "mamamblablablama" with a big smile. Mystery solved.
5) Looking at all the photos of us being taken and thinking, "She is gorgeous! What beautiful eyes! And looking at myself and thinking, "What beautiful eyebags!"

I swear I will get back to the serious bloggage as soon as the jet lag passes and I can get more than 40 minutes of sleep at a stretch, not to mention the strength to discuss social security, guns and Wolfowitz.