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After my desperation wallow of the weekend, things have leveled off. I’ve actually tried to get into bed at a reasonable hour, plus Miss M has been convinced to stay horizontal until 7 or later, even if some of the middle of the night time is snuggled up with Taxman. (Victory!)
Also helpful was a nice dinner out–an early birthday treat from Taxman–where we actually had a conversation. And multiple courses. A rare thing.
Now I can get back to my regularly scheduled worrying, which is how I am going to give birth to a kid who is already big. (Whereas I am not.) My OB is still willing to try a VBAC…it’s just up to my cervix now, and it is questionable as to whether or not it realizes that the b2b is measuring a week ahead plus has a big head just like Miss M. Ack!
In the midst of some extremely difficult parenting early this morning, I admit to having the urge to throw on some shoes and a coat and jog to the nearest highway to sport a handmade cardboard sign reading: “Anywhere but here.”
The official stats for the night:
Time I spent asleep: 90 minutes (insomnia, potty breaks, and the activites of our intrepid toddler)
Amount of time between 4:30 am and 5:30 am that Miss M was throwing a tantrum: about 40 minutes
Amount of time it felt like: at least 4 hours
Number of houseguests (from a synagogue youth group) awakened: I have to assume 5/5
Number of calls made to 911/the police/CPS: Zero, as far as we know, but it’s still before 9.
Number of our parents we have to deal with today: Three (my dad and Taxman’s parents)
The good news is that after everyone’s respective nervous breakdowns, Miss M slept until 7:30. The bad news is that upon awakening and discovering that I was in the shower and not immediately next to her, there was yet another round of extreme crying.
I really don’t think I am physcially capable (never mind mentally) of handling my life.
I really don’t think Miss M is trying to stick it to us. But it sure feels that way. Her new wakeup time (pretty consistently, for a week now) is about 6:00.
This morning, in fact, it was 5:53. I nursed for close to ONE HOUR in a feeble attempt to reintroduce sleep. Didn’t work, and I knew it was all over at this point: I started rubbing her back, in the hope of resettling her. She latched off, exclaimed “Back!”, and returned to her post with a big smile.
But she needs the sleep. Don’t we all? Ha ha! She’s now taking a two-and-a-half to three hour nap smack in the middle of the day. So, effectively, my day is completely ruined because, unfortunately, it’s difficult to run errands at 7:30 am. Not much opens before 8. The library never opens before 10. The nap & lunch combo isn’t finished until 3 or later, which throws off the dinner/bath/bed schedule. I really might lose my mind over this. (No loss, sadly.)
How desperate am I? Well, I dusted off my second-hand copy of Ferber’s Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems. We are clearly not a Ferber family, seeing as how Miss M has yet to spend a night in her own room, never mind in a crib. We’ve had a total of one night spent entirely in her own bed. But Ferber was able to offer me some reassurance several months ago when she started hysterically sobbing in her sleep. (Theory: night terrors.) Once again, I think I can agree with his premise: because most of her sleep is completed at that hour, and there is more light in the room at 6 than there was a few weeks ago, and because Taxman gets up between 6 and 6:30 six days a week, well, no wonder she thinks it’s time to get up and isn’t particularly motivated to go back to sleep. Unfortunately, Ferber offers no solutions other than leaving your children to cry in their cribs (maybe with the addition of room darkening shades) and hopefully they’ll figure it out and give you another 60 to 90 minutes of peace within a couple of weeks.
Oops. We’ll have to pass.
I think we might start with being less lazy and making sure to get her back to her own bed after she gets her required middle-of-the-night snuggles. And Taxman will start getting dressed in another room. As for me, I will feel even less guilt about napping with her in the middle of the day. You’d think I’d commit to going to bed at a decent hour, but that’s like saying no to a donut.
Today Miss M and the b2b had the hiccups at the same time.
It kind of freaked me out, but I’m not sure why.
Favorite Winter Olympics sport: Curling. Concentric circles. Very exciting when circles are the pretty much the only shape for which you have a word. Even more exciting when one of the circles is “boo” and the other is “reh,” the two colors you happen to know best.
Potential (Summer) Olympic material: Weightlifting. Not kidding. We went to Costco yesterday and bought a lot of juice. The Powers That Be in their ordering department have recognized that Passover is coming, and so the store was hugely stocked with enormous 3-liter bottles of Kedem grape juice. Not that we will be home for Passover (we move in with Taxman’s parents for the week), but we use the grape juice as our Shabbat kiddush beverage of choice. Every week.
But I digress. Anyway, as Taxman was clearing out room in our closet/pantry for the wealth of juice, Miss M took it upon herself to move the bottles, one by one, to the living room rug. A distance of maybe 7 or 8 feet, but there were many bottles. And they are heavy. She was struggling to the point where I thought that she was going to give herself a hernia, but she was having a kick-ass time, so we left her alone.
Backup potential Olympic material: High jump. About 10 days ago, Miss M actually began leaving the floor when she jumped. This was new. Now she’s gotten rather good at jumping. Unfortunately this means she does it whenever the mood strikes, including when she is standing in her bed–we had previously ignored the bed-standing because it just egged her on–and in the shower. When the tile is wet. My runaway imagination is not enjoying this.
OCD tendency: Nighttime sippy cup. Since (mostly) nightweaning Miss M, we offer her water when she wakes up crying. We slowly figured out that it is easier to stash the cup in the same place every night than wander around the apartment at 2 in the morning saying, “Where’s her cup?” So we leave it in the corner of her bed, between the pillow and the headboard. Taxman was hoping that she would be able to help herself to it without crying and making us get out of bed, but that has yet to happen.
Two nights ago she awoke around 11 pm. The cup was still with me in the living room, so I took it with me to offer to her. She took the cup from me and then placed it in its corner…without drinking from it. And then proceeded to flop over onto her Winnie-the-Pooh pillowcase and go back to sleep.
Oh, dear.
Or seven. (I honestly can’t remember.)
That would be the number of times I visited the bathroom between 9:30 pm and 7:30 am. I have reached the funnest stage of pregnancy, in which just a well-directed twitch (to say nothing of a kick or flipping around entirely) causes Ema to lurch immediately out of bed. Imagine a whale breaching, and that would sum up things nicely.
My pregnancies are a piece of cake compared to what others have to deal with, but sometimes I just feel mired in my own little puddle of misery. I just…want…three (THREE!) straight hours of sleep. Just to see what it would feel like. I might decide it’s not for me after all. I would like to be able to compare and contrast, though.
The Miss M Mystery is how she got into the crook of Taxman’s arm last night. She padded over to me last night at 1, and (cranky and tired from the bathroom runs) I picked her up. But she was restless, and Taxman put her back into her own bed at 1:30. The next thing anyone knows, it’s 2:30; he’s mumbling into his radio and about to get dressed to go drive the ambulance. Where’s Miss M? Not in her bed. Um, she’s right next to him. Neither one of us knows how she got there. I guess if she didn’t make any noise but somehow he knew she was at his bedside…of course, she woke up from the commotion. And the trauma of my disappearing for 45 seconds to go to the bathroom. Of course.
“Share” is a New Big Word around the Tired house. It is usually accompanied by the ASL sign for share. For some reason, it is rarely applied to toys, although I did manage to get Miss M to leave the TV alone long enough to catch the weather forecast this morning by saying, “Please share the television with Ema.” (Her usual response when we try to watch something that is of General Interest, instead of something specifically for her, is to run to the TV, turn it off, and run away with an “All done!”)
But sharing food has become a source of entertainment. It is amusing, to an extreme, to share an orange slice or a bite of cheese with Abba or Ema. Because we want to encourage the whole sharing idea, we usually go along with the food as it is presented to us–with a grubby paw and a schoolmarm-like demand: “Shure!” Today I reached my breaking point, however, when commanded to partake in a half-chewed crust of bread by my little couch companion.
“Shure!”
“Oh, thank you, Miss M! It’s nice to share.”
“Shure!”
“Ema already ate lunch.”
“Shure!”
“No, thank you. Ema is FULL!”
The prior conversation was followed up with enthusiastic noises about the avocado (“Cahdoh!”) waiting on her highchair tray, and thankfully the bread sharing was forgotten. For now.
Ok, it’s not quite the classic image of yours truly being completely outsized by the drifts in Boston after the Blizzard of ‘78, but it’s still a touch of winter wonderland.
(Here’s our backyard playground.)
Said wonderland is melting. If we’d only had a foot of snow we could probably go to the park tomorrow, but I’m sure things will still be pretty muddy and wet. That’s what 26 inches of snow will get you.
Insomnia + nighttime needy toddler + fetus earning karate black belt = 3 hours of sleep last night. Divided into two parts.
I actually do have things to blog about, but if I don’t attempt to nap when Miss M does Taxman may find me in a hysterically sobbing heap when he gets home. And he has a meeting tonight, so he’ll only be home for five minutes. So it’s my quarterly attempt at being proactive.
“Snowing” seems so inadequate for what is currently happening outside our house. There is a lot of snow falling, combined with a lot of wind. Just white. And now they are saying on the radio that the worst part of the storm, which was supposed to be overnight, is yet to come.
Taxman put on his clunky Timberland boots and made his way to shul this morning–we’re less than a block away–just in case they needed a warm body to make 10. And now he’s off with several of his EMS buddies in an attempt to clean off an ambulance. (If only the storm were over. Or lighter.) At least they don’t have to try to dig out the entire parking lot because the ambulance has chains. Taxman has already announced that he is going to work from home tomorrow, even if his office is open (unlikely). This is a Big. Deal. Early February is not crazy tax season yet–that’s late February–but it’s certainly a time of year when You Show Up. No vacation, no doctor’s appointments, you stay home sick only if you are really sick. So it must be pretty awful out.
The good news is that the forecasters are predicting 50 degrees for Thursday. We should definitely be able to have the car out by then.
