Midnight Musings

I thought this 7 quick takes up in the middle of the night last night. Most of my better instincts are telling me not to actually post it, but I think I will just go with it and see where it takes me.

I am a terrible sleeper. How old am I, 2? No I am 27 and I just suck at sleeping, I always have. I will wake at the tiniest noise and then be awake in bed, unable to fall back asleep for hours. I also stink at napping, but we'll save that for another day, or never, whatev. So needless to say that an already bad sleeper and pregnancy, the mother of all sleep disruptions do. not. mix.

Here are some things I thouight up last night that would make my life a whole lot easier both now, while pregnant, and during non-pregnant times as well.

1.

A bed side toilet.  I think this would be splendid, only I don't think Mike would really appreciate it. A new topic for discussion for us.

2.

I will one-up number one and say that an at-home catheter would be even better, no need to move at all. I googled this, but I will leave out pictures for you squeamish ones. I don't know if this is even possible. Grace, can you ask Simon?

3.

An at-home incubator. Or really, just a Relaxman. After Jen's post on scorpions and the need to be totally confined during sleep, I think I am convinced. Only I don't know how comfortable these things are or if Mike would fork out the thousands of dollars for it. But I figure we could put this down in our basement, then I would never be awoken by any child/snoring husband/air conditioner noises/etc... ever again, what else could be worth thousands of dollars I ask you? Yeah, that's what I thought. 

4.

Middle of the night dinner buffet. It really needs to be a buffet because you never know what I want at 4 a.m., but I am almost always STARVING in the middle of the night and having to spread peanut butter on bread at that hour is just inconvenient, you know? This way the food is all ready, it's set out for me, and there are options. That is the key people, I need options. This one looks good:

I'll take it.

5.

Some sort of contraption that flips you from side to side when you need to move would be great. Sort of like a hammock in your bed, and you press a button and it flips you to whatever side you need to go to. Yeah, I don't really know how this would ever work, it's a real stretch.

6.

Some sort of over the bed, button activated, misting system with chloroform. Mike may be a little uncomfortable about this, but we could hang a tarp between us in case he is worried.

It would be quick and not leave me feeling droggy in the morning. Perfect!

7.

Or I could just offer it up like any really holy person and so many great saints who voluntarily gave up sleep in the spirit of mortification... to easy. 

So,  this is just some food for thought. 

Any other ideas would be most welcome. 

Go visit Jen and others for quick takes that will undoubtedly be a much better use of your time.

Happy Friday!

Why mornings sometimes suck

We've been blessed with a wonderfully spirited first born who, for the better part of her life, has awoken no later than 6 and probably for half of her life, has greeted us and her day even earlier.

I almost called this post "Sometimes I want to say the "F" word"but I thought it could cause scandal. But for real, there is little in the world that makes me want to yell expletives more than waking before the clock starts with a 6. I HATE waking up before 6. Strike that, I hate waking up before 8, but I will take 6 and hug and kiss it and give it flowers if I could get it.

Here is what my mental dialogue looks like when I have to wake up during the 5 o'clock hour, like I did this morning (mind you this is only in my head, and I do not condone the usage if this vulgar word):

Naomi is standing next to my bed, in my face, it is still dark out, I look at the clock, 5:10: "F"

She explains she is soaked and needs a new pullup, pants, and a new sheet: "F"

I fulfill all her needs, put her back in bed explaining that it is still "the middle of the night and she needs to go back to bed (lies), I lay back in my bed, the clock now says 5:23: "F"

I roll over at 5:40, I still haven't fallen back asleep. I even toy with the idea of getting up and cleaning and starting my day before the girls, I look at the clock again: "F it, I am just going to lay here"

I start to fall back asleep when I am awoken again by noises, I look at the door and there is light streaming in, there were no lights on before: "F, she's up again"

By this point it is past 6, I go out to find her under the dining room table, I tell her that she needs to lay back in bed until 7, that she hasn't gotten enough sleep so she complies. I go back to bed seriously hoping now that my intense fatigue resulting not only from the stupid early wake time and the fact that I did not go to sleep early enough to make this a good night sleep, but also from the fact that even even if I had gotten 8 hours of sleep and woken up at 7, I would be completely exhausted because I'm pregnant- please don't tell me all the energy will come back w a few weeks. It will not. It never does. I will be exhausted for the next 5 months and then many more after, that is the way this goes. I am not complaining, wait yes I am, but mostly I am just showcasing why many of my mornings are a prescription for bad words in my head. Also, I am not very pious. I mean, if I were, I would offer up these mornings much more readily for people who have real difficulties. I usually try to remember to do that, after I have shouted 27 expletives in my head.

While getting breakfast together and after getting yogurt on my hand "F", and spilling flour all over myself "F", I thought maybe I should put on some rap music in order to get myself motivated to get some stuff done in preparation for our trip, but then I figured that the only reason I even wanted to do that is because of the vocabulary already filling my head and that just maybe Ludacris and Jay-Z would most likely just exacerbate it.

So unless I can find some G rated Kanye, I will likely be listening to my rosary and chaplet on repeat for the rest of the day in reparation for being a terrible person.



*A note to the scandalized reader: the "F" words going through my head have never actually left my head and the letter "F" is often used internally in place of the actual foul word. My children have never heard this word, at least not from me.

Children at play

Mike finished his last paper of his last year of course work for the rest of his life last night, or this morning, at around 3:30. YEEEHAW. This happened after a bed time of 4:30 the previous night working on the same said paper. His wifey (me), on the other hand, has been sporting wake times all too close to my husband's bed times due to a certain scary 3-year-old who, now that she can open her door, runs into my room at the ripe hour of 5:30 a.m. ready to start her day. Every. Single. Morning. Almost.

I am supposed to be napping right now while Mike gallivants all over town with both girls, but I couldn't sleep and my mother always said "when you can't sleep, blog". Lies, she probably still doesn't know quite what a blog is.

So as a result of the insanely early mornings, our morning play time often consist of something like this:

In case you can can't tell from at least a couple of these pictures, Bernadette is not actually tired since she sleeps until a reasonable hour of 7:30-ish as opposed to her wannabe nocturnal sister who is really completely exhausted:

I could write many tales of this difficult sleeper, but I will instead give you a little sneak peek at our babe in utero who was engaging in her/his own play time during an afternoon ultrasound (I don't know how much one can "play" inside a uterus)

The ultrasound tech put "yoga baby" on the top picture since the baby's foot is on top of the head (I love this tech, she is awesome)- so the baby was actually playing, sort of.

Also, we may or may not (MAY) have found out the gender of this baby today, but since this was only a 16 week ultrasound, I will hold off until the next one confirms what we pretty much know and then I will bust it out into the blogosphere.

I know you are all dying, literally dying to know, but I think you'll make it.

Sometimes your kids scare you

I have been living in a temporary dream world for the last 6 or so months.
Soon after Naomi was put into, and then figured out how to get out of, her normal bed, attempts were made and made successfully to keep her bound to her toddler cage of a room. I am not one of those sweet mothers who willingly invites my children into my room (let alone my bed) in the night time/wee morning hours. Once their allotted time spent there for the first few months of life is up I am all too eager to get the little out and into her own room, since by this time she is generally beginning to disrupt the peace and harmony that is sleep time for myself and Mike.

So as soon as Naomi decided that staying in her room after bed time or during nap time was not an option for her, a battle of wills began and was won (only temporarily) by myself (and Mike, but really I credit myself for the strategy). After some serious prodding, I finally got Mike to give in and let me put a child proof door knob cover over the knob on the inside of her room and BAM, I won, just like that.

She only cried a little and fell asleep on the floor next to the door every night for only a few months. But we slept, and she slept. And nobody (nobody being ME) was awakened with every noise in the middle of the night waiting for a creeping 2-year-old to be standing in the door way, or at your feet, or in your face looking something like this:

Seriously, it freaks me out when a kid is standing in my room and I didn't know they were there. I indulged in the gratuitous watching of one too many horror films during my high school and college days and the remnants of these videos still made themselves known during these night time appearances of the Nomes.

So the dreaded moment came last night when, after she was put in her room for the night, it happened. The door opened. I asked Mike immediately if he took the cover off of the door since he had done that one night to see what would happen, of course that night Naomi was found under the dining room table shortly after bed time. The cover was promptly put back on. But he answered "no" and the reality set in that she had figured it out. The contraption is not complicated, you just have to squeeze the door knob in the 2 holes on the sides of the thing and turn, but I had hoped against hope that she would never figure this out.

So this morning when my bladder woke me up at the ripe hour of 5:40, I laid back down to try to finagle another hour of sleep before the awakening, and unsuccessful was I. At every single little noise I was convinced that she was opening the door, so I would hop up to try get to her room before she got into our room (to avoid appearances like the above image, of course!) And because of my irrational fears, an hour of sleep was lost and little angel Naomi did not open the door until her reasonable 7 a.m. wake time.

You win, Naomi, you always do.

Weekend madness:

I think when I was in college Saturdays were a real favorite, but since getting married and bearing children they always seem to be filled with more stress and disappointment than I can handle- it is the same amount of stress that is usually present but I still go into the weekend thinking that there will be some rest or break from the weekly routine and then I get there and it is the same exact stuff. Let's blame it on getting married so quickly out of college or something, although even the working world women generally gets some sort of rest from the weekly grind on her Saturday, either way there is some weird expectation for Saturdays that I am pretty sure will never be met (until one day far far away when Mike gets a normal job and does not have to slave away all Saturday... does that exist?). Am I being too negative? always.
Sundays are spectacular, it is the one day of the week that Mike takes off and I can count on working out AND napping, plus there is lots of sitting, o glorious glorious sitting, while Mike "plays with" or watches football with the girls. I don't care what he is doing as long as I can sit.

So our Saturday looked a little bit like this:

My first attempt at making them happy...

sleep deprived gingerbread house construction

resulting in this

And also resulting in nothing but anger since the whole idea of a house made of ginger bread and candy that you're not supposed to eat is completely backwards and torture for children. Also the only emotion conjured as a rusult of giving Bernadette candy is anger at the fact that at some point the candy is gone. Many tears shed.

So my next attempt at keeping them (and especially myself by this point) sane and happy was a trip to Hobby Lobby to pick up materials to make these little puppies: swatch portraits for our "school room" which is basically our basement play area but it feels so much more important if I call it a school room. If it actually ever lives up to that name without me being sent to an asylum we will call life a huge success.

I will post pictures of the finished hanging  product when we have the basement all decorated- I plan on posting before and after pictures to highlight the awesomeness that is my husband and my dad for finishing what was once a dank hole and making it into what is now the party basement- sit on the edge of your seats for those pictures.

Now I must attend to the screaming child who resfuses to sleep. Can I just say that sick babies are the worst? Nothing is more sad or pathetic or altogether difficult to deal with.

Once she is sleeping I will be making these to eat with our sausage & cheese quiche (cue Homer Simpson deep throat gargle) I am trying to fatten the family up for the winter- fewer layers to wear.

Happy Sunday eating!!!

Ana

Sleep is for the weak: progressively regressing

I refuse to nap today. I hate spending the one chunk that I get during the day where I can sit and listen to *nothing* laying in bed hoping that I will actually fall asleep for the whopping 15 minutes that my body will occasion nap for. I am such a sucker though, and I always try.

So today instead of dealing with the sleep loss, I will type my fingers off about it. I have been trying to come to terms with the fact that I will not feel rested again until I am somewhere in my 40's and by then I will not need as much sleep and will probably have a better life perspective and prefer to lose sleep if it means getting time with my little ones, but for now I choose mostly to complain about it, or at least to vent. I have spent the better part of Naomi's life complaining about how she is a terrible sleeper, so today I will pick on the littler Beezie, affectionately called.

Yesterday, better late than never, the little 13-month-old decided to start prancing about the room on her feet instead of her knees. It was a monumental occasion and there was much delight and clapping and perhaps a joyful tear shed by all, or just me. You would think that with the onset of this new skill, which moves her much closer to the toddler category from the baby one, that she might get a clue and let her sleep skills follow suit, but no. Her wailing and grinding of teeth woke me at both 12 and 4:30 and the almost toddler who cut herself off from all nursing just a week ago would only be soothed back to sleep with just that. I wanted to sarcastically asked her in the middle of the night what the heck she thinks she is? A 2-day-old? (baby humor, she would have gotten it). But in all honesty, and especially since my actual toddler slept til the late hour of 7 (which is genuinely sleeping in for her and me) I did not mind getting up with her because I really did feel sad to see my little Bernadette be not so much a baby anymore while he was taking those steps yesterday. I am such a sap. However, if she keeps this night waking thing up, I am sure my emotions will turn quickly enough and she'll be cut off. But for now, who the heck needs sleep, anyways?