Imagination?

Bean's been on a kick BEGGING me to tell her scary stories.  She usually requests a monster or a "bad man."  She seems to get totally excited about being able to be scared to bits and I like that I can gauge when she's had enough and take the story in a more pleasant direction.

Well, apparently, due to a lovely combination of not wanting to go to sleep at night and an overactive imagination fueled by yours truly, she's come up with some ridiculous excuses for not wanting to go to sleep.

1.  "Mom!  I need something!" 
"OK, like what, kiddo?"
"Like another stuffed animal friend!"
(Because the 47 animals in her bed are not enough)

2.  "MOM!  I see a scary hand!  It's here!"
"Where?"
"Here!  Come in here!"
"Where?"
"Oh, it went home."

and my personal favorite:

3.  "Mommy?  My basket said something weird."
"Erm, what um, did your basket say?"

"Hummenah Hummenah!"

Alrighty then.

(For that last one, I told her to tell the basket to hush because she was trying to sleep.  She did, but asked me to relocate it to the hallway.  Done.  Then?  She went right to sleep).

Must Be Dreaming, Right?

Last night I put the kids down early to bed and they were both out within minutes. I smiled to myself and though, "Hmmm, tonight might actually grant me a good night's rest."

My peaceful dreaming was uninterrupted at 1:15am when a pair of little eyes peered at me in the dark, "Mama? Mama? I'm COLD!" And bleary eyed, I pulled her between Shaun and I and tucked covers all around her. (Her room is by far the coldest in the house at night). She rolled to her side and nestled her back against me. But apparently that wasn't close enough, so she rolled back over and nestled into the crook of my arm.

That lasted for about 11 seconds. Each successive position was deemed unsatisfactory and she thrashed around for what felt like an hour before I sat up and said, "BEAN!" Apparently, she was thrashing in her sleep because she was utterly confused as to why I was shouting her name. Resettled, she actually stayed still for more than 5 minutes. Success.

I drifted off to sleep only to be awakened a mere hour later by Miss C and a cough that signaled the arrival of the dreaded croup. I rushed in her room and picked her up to see if she'd relax enough to stop coughing. No dice. So we trotted into the bathroom and turned the hot water on high. The heat lamp cast a soft red glow through the room and her cough immediately settled with the steam got thick. She was the calmest, cutest croupy baby I'd ever seen. She'd lay her head on my shoulder and coo and when something would catch her attention, she'd pop back up then pat my face and grin. Super sweet.

A quick bottle to hydrate her and she was back to sleep within 45 minutes.

I crawled back under the covers and tried to turn my brain off enough to sleep.

Dozed off.

Back to thrashy-ville.

Then back to croup-land.

And back to thrashy-ville.

On the surface, it was a horrible night of sleep. Actually, it was a horrible night of sleep no matter what way you look at it.

But.

Motherhood is most certainly not all spring and roses. The only thing that keeps me sane after nights like those are realizing that there are those moments within the madness that make it all worth bearing.

Like Bean's sweet scented head nestled under my chin. Or C's hands reaching for me when I walked into the room to get her. Bean telling me, "Mama, you're WARM!" and nuzzling closer. And C's sweet smile every time she would look up to check that I was still looking at her. (She likes the attention... just a smidge).

I can take care of munchkins, no matter when it happens to be. And if I look at it the right way, I can do it with a smile and a feeling of contentment, knowing I'm right where I'm supposed to be.

Besides, all this nighttime care should earn me a killer retirement home sponsored by the kids, right?

Baby, C, and Sleep!

What do they all have in common? 

Um, I don't really know.  But I figure I owe an update on them!

Visited the OB yesterday and everything checked out fine!  I had been a tad stressed out because I haven't yet started to feel this little one moving around.  With Bean and C, it was by 15 weeks.  The OB said this could be for a number of reasons, but so long as the heartbeat was strong, baby's fine.  And so it was. 

I'm 17 weeks and a few days or so and I've gained 2 pounds.  If you add on the weight from the cheesecake I ate yesterday, it might be 11.  Heh.

On March 16th, we have a sonogram.  Any bets on the sex of this munchkin?  And no, I'll preempt the probable question, we are not hoping for a boy because we already have two girls.  Girls are great too!  We're hoping for a healthy baby.  Don't even get me started. 

C is doing quite well despite teething in FOUR places, (two have popped through), and has unofficially chunked up to be close to 18 pounds.  Making up for lost time, it seems.

She's related to sleep since she suddenly started actually sleeping.  I think her body is FINALLY satisfied with the amount of foodage she's getting.  Thank goodness.  For several nights, she's crashed and not woken until 10 or 11 hours later.  If I could coordinate my bladder to her waking, it'd be gold.  All the same, I'm so unbelievably happy that she's starting to sleep I could dance a jig.

Ok, I did. 

That shouldn't surprise anyone. 

What's going on with you?

Bean In The Morning, Bean at Night

Sleep has been weird around here the last few days.


4:30 am two days ago
 

Bean:  "Mommy!  Mom!  MOOOM!  Let's go to Chick-a-lay!"

Me: "Mmmmmph.  What?! Go back to bed!  It's still night time!"

Bean: "I'm not tired!  I'm hungry!  Where's Chick-A-lay!"


Sometime in the dead of night about a week ago

Bean:  "Veggie Tales, Veggie Tales!  VEGGIE TALES! VEGGIE TALES!"

Me (Woken from a dead sleep and totally confused as to what is using my hair and pj's to climb onto the bed and weirded out by the fact that my 3 year old's face is mere centimeters from mine as she chants "veggie tales!" at me) "What?  Bean?  What's going on?  What do you want?

Bean:  (Climbs over me, lays down and promptly falls back to sleep without another word).


Me:  (Wide awake and staring now, totally freaked out).

5am this morning

Bean:  "Hi Mommy!  I had a wonderful sleep!  Let's have breakfast!"

Me:  "You're going back to sleep.  I don't care how or where, but you are not allowed to talk until the sun comes up.  NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO TALK UNTIL THE SUN COMES UP."  (Burrows head in pillow).

Bean:  "But MooooOOOOM!  It's wake-up time!  Rise and shine!"

This afternoon, post-rest time.  (Should have been nap time).
 
Bean:  "Mommy!  You are a super hero mommy!  Thank you for coming to get me!"

Heck yeah, I'll take the super hero comment at any time of day.

Now?  Now for a nap.  Maybe.

Sleep

Last night, C went to bed at 7, woke at 2:30am to nurse, and slept until 6:30am.  (And then nursed and went back to sleep AGAIN)**

It was like a miracle. 

We've been on an upward swing for awhile, which has been lovely.  Last night was the culmination of several weeks of progress. 

But the irony?  At 1am, my oldest little love comes a knocking.  And woke me up. 

And then became our little space heater.

A space heater that smacks us between the eyes in her sleep.

But it was ok.  I actually feel more rested than I've felt in a LONG time.  Blessings!

(**Our routine was formed after MUCH tweaking.  7pm worked for Bean when she was a baby and works for C just as well.  Cry-it-out, for many, many reasons, some of which I will talk about soon, doesn't work for my little second born.  What happened last night works for us, and that's what matters. :)

Sleep? Sleep!

I need advice. 

(And before I go any further, if you read this and feel compelled to criticize, please just stay silent...  my psyche can't handle that on no sleep).

Here's the deal.  C is not the world's best sleeper.  She's not the world's worst, but as it stands now, she's not all that great. 

Her daily sleep generally looks like this:

Up at 7:00am. 
Nap at 9:00am (usually for an hour or a bit more)
Nap at 1:00pm  (This nap is generally two hours or more)
Bed at 7:00pm

Once she's in bed, I can generally expect that she'll be up at 11:00, 2:00, 5:00 and then 7 for the day. 

I can go in there and feed her for five minutes and she's usually back out again. 

Lately, she's been waking up and wanting to stay up for hours in the middle of the night.

Other things:

We have a nighttime routine and she knows what to expect. 

She has a security blanket that she sleeps with and it calms her.  She also sucks her two first fingers, so it's not as if I have to worry about replacing a pacifier. 

She can fall asleep in a variety of ways:  rocking, nursing, driving in a car, and lying down on her own.  Her favorite method is generally nursing when it's me putting her down, and I don't mind.  She will go down for other people easily though, so it's not really a problem.  And there are plenty of times when she's still awake after nursing and I'll lay her down and she'll fuss for a second and go to sleep.

We are not opposed to letting her cry, though I draw the line at letting her get hysterical.  Fussing and on and off crying is ok.  Screaming is not.  It's just not how we roll.

She's a happy kid and generally has a good disposition. 

Some days she will wake up and go right back to sleep on her own, and some days she doesn't.

There's not a whit that's consistant with the kid.

Except that she is nursed 100% of the time and oh man, she doesn't take a bottle.  (We're trying).  

Oh and she sleeps in her own bed as co-sleeping didn't/doesn't work for ANY of us.  Well, C might eventually fall asleep, but I never will and that's half the goal.  So that's not really an option at this point. 

Anyway, I'm very keen on figuring out a way that we all can get a little more sleep in a row. 

Suggestions?    I'm game to hear most anything, (though again, if you want to be preachy or judgy, this isn't the forum for your comments, sorry). 

I'm just a wee bit tired. 

Depends on How You Look at It.

 

A rare Mama-Baby pic... please pay no attention to how much I look like a doofus.   

Hello from Fogville, where normal thoughts and postings can not be guaranteed because the author of this blog is walking around in a slight sleep deprivation fog. 

Yeah, C's not the best sleeper.  I think I've finally resigned myself to that. 

However, I've been doing the best that I can to try to keep perspective on the whole thing.

For instance,

Situation:  This morning, in the wee hours that shouldn't really be called morning, C was up and squelching for someone to come see her.  After the previous 3 wakings, I decided to poke Shaun and see if he'd go.  After 15 minute trying to get her to settle down and go to sleep, I hear him come back into our room and before I knew what was going on, he handed the little purple fuzzy package to me so he could go to the bathroom.  I put her beside me where she popped her right hand in her mouth and started patting me on the face with her left hand.  Then she stuck a finger up my nose.  And grinned. 

Cons:  She was awake.  Again.  Enough said.

Pros:  She was possibly the cutest thing in the world next to me, grinning like a little imp.  I also received an impromptu nose cleaning.  And of course, it always makes my heart a little happier knowing that no matter what, I can be exactly what my little one needs to smile.  

See?  So long as I maintain perspective, I think I'll come out of this alright.

I just keep repeating that she won't be doing this when she gets to college, she won't be doing this when she gets to college. 

And that?  That's a happy thought and a sad one all at once. 

Sleep...

Oh man, if there's one single thing that's perpetually insane in parenthood, it's sleep.  Either my sleep, my two-year-old's sleep, or the baby's sleep.

We've yet to experience a night where the three of us sleep soundly for the entire evening.  On the other hand, Shaun sleeps all night most nights. Hey, at least one of us does.

Update from the other night:  C did wonderfully in falling asleep at Michelle's house and slept until I got there to pick her up.  She stayed asleep getting into her car seat, and then into the house but woke up when she got into her bed.  So I fed her and put her back to sleep, thinking that perhaps we would at least have enough of a repeat of the previous night (where she slept twelve hours), for me to get a good night's rest.

Yeah.

Um, no such luck.  She woke about 3 times besides that.  The following night she woke twice.  Last night, she woke 4 times.  I just don't understand why some nights she sleeps through, and others, not so much.  Anyone?

No correlation with daytime sleep.  In fact, let's not even talk about daytime sleep.  That's all over the place.

Which makes napping rather difficult for me.  I'll snuggle down on the couch when both girls are asleep and inevitably, one will wake up OR I won't be able to shut my brain off to fall asleep, fearing that one of the will wake up.  Vicious cycle.

However, there are perks.  C is putting herself to sleep fairly regularly, with minimal fussing.  Every day she gets more coordinated and thus, more easily able to soothe herself back to sleep.

Today, both girls fell asleep in the car on the way home from church and I managed to get them both into their beds where they each took a 2.5 hour nap.

More delightful?  So did I.

Bean is completely potty trained, including at night.  For awhile, it was making her wake up a bit earlier in the morning, but lately, she's been sleeping her regular amount at night and still somehow procrastinating in the morning from going potty.  I swear, I don't know where the kid gets her bladder control.

Her naps have been sporadic for a week or so due to random circumstance (and fun outings).  Her behavior became atrocious as a result.  I had thought that she had reached a point where she could go napless and be OK.  Maybe once and awhile, but in actuality, she needs naps as much as she ever did.   The tough part is getting her enough exercise and activity for her to take a nap early enough in the day so that she wakes early enough in the afternoon to go to bed easily at night.

(Now there's a delicate operation).

Anyway, as much as it ever was, sleep is important to me.  It's important that I sleep.  It's insanely important that my kids sleep.  And when it works?  We're all a lot happier.

When it doesn't?

Ooooo boy.  It makes for some of the most frustrating days.

But I know it won't last forever.  I try to remember that it's not so much the single days as it is the culmination of what the girls are learning about sleep through all of the days.  One day, they'll all fall asleep easily, stay asleep all night, and sleep late, late in the morning. 

And that's when I'll know I have teenagers.