These Things Are In No Way Related

Yet another random assortment of thoughts and stories. In an ideal world, this would be a coherently crafted literary masterpiece, I suppose. But at least by numbering my paragraphs, I'm acknowledging that there is no transition possible that will make them the slightest bit cohesive.

1. In a cruel move toward solidifying her "non-baby" status, we forced Lucy to give up the pacifier this weekend. For no other reason than the theory that if we waited longer, it would be harder. And so far, it is going swimmingly. She asked for it once, before nap time on Saturday (she said nothing on Friday night, when we began the venture). I explained that pacifiers are for babies only, and Lucy is a big girl. There was a lot of reiterating "Baby paci" from Lucy, and my affirming response "Yes, paci's are for babies, Lucy is a big girl, no more paci's for Lucy." She seemed to accept it, as she hasn't mentioned it since. She needed to be rocked to sleep the first few times, but last night managed to get herself to sleep. There has been shockingly little angst and zero panicky build-up, and yet again I thank my lucky stars for my go-with-the-flow child. Who, for the record, I still call "Baby" every day.

2. For those interested, a quick update on my progress with Weight Watchers. I've been a member for just over two weeks now, and I've managed to lose 5 pounds. I am cautiously optimistic; if my weight were a monster truck, it would likely be called The Fluctuator (reference best understood by those well-acquainted with small boy children). Regardless, I know that I could be up again next time I step on the scale, but it's a two-week trend in the right direction. We'll see if it holds. I'm finding the program easier to work with now that I'm familiar with it, and the success I've had makes it easier not to go overboard with cheating. In fact, the way the plan works, I haven't actually had to "cheat" once. This includes the bottles of wine M. and I have split on occasion, and the two cannolis the family shared this past Saturday. The plan allows you to splurge - I just try to keep those splurges to the first half of my week, and not near each fateful weigh-in appointment. I think it also helps that I have been extremely busy at work lately - I'm too busy typing or running from meeting to meeting to snack constantly or consider chewing my arm off from hunger. My weakness is eating in front of the computer, and so far I have been able to exert some control over this habit.

3. Friday I was rear-ended on my way in to work. It was sucky in some respects - I was delayed an hour getting in to work, and now I have to deal with the hassle of getting the car repaired and getting reimbursed by someone else's insurance. On the other hand, there is less damage to the car than the last time I was rear-ended - which, by the way, involved the same car (of mine, anyway - thank goodness for my plastic Saturn), and the exact same spot (exiting the highway by work), about three and a half years ago. This time, I didn't have any children with me (the first time, I had an 11-month-old Finn with me), and the car that hit me was able to drive away(not the case the first time). The other bonus was less tangible, but better. I spent much of Thursday evening with the kids screaming my head off. It was like a runaway train that couldn't be stopped. They both did things that aggravated the crap out of me (ran out into the parking lot without me - they are fast!; Finn lied; Lucy threw shit on the ground during dinner; etc). None of it was a new challenge, but I lost my head - once I started yelling, I couldn't stop. And it carried over into Friday morning, where I called Finn a jerk for the way he talked to me, among other things. Not nice, even if it was true. (On a side note: Oh, the whining. When does it fracking stop? Ever?) I felt like a horrible mother, and by 7:45 am on Friday, I was already having a horrible day. Getting into a car accident helped me reset. It was like the day had taken such a turn that I couldn't help but have more patience, especially with my kids. It led us right into a pretty darn good weekend, assisted in great part by my lack of yelling and reserved stores of tolerance for repeating the same instructions over and over again. Which, once Finn began to respond to my improved attitude, I really didn't have to trot out after a while.

4. M. has just informed me that he is still unable to tell which one is Bert, and which one is Ernie. WTF? Everyone knows that Bert is the long thin one with the eyebrows (and the pigeon fixation), while Ernie is the short round one with a duck fetish.

5. Pictures, for the family:
Blue eyes

Winter 2011's Snowman

Some serious Angry Bird-playing going on here.

Lucy has taken to stealing the camera, turning it on, and taking pictures. Here, a self portrait.

M. and Finn work on some literary skills at the chalkboard.

The kids just started swim lessons again (after a 10-month hiatus). This time, they have to wear swim caps. I'm sure the swim school meant that the caps should be worn in the water, but in our house, they're much more of an "everyday accessory."

For both kids.

M. and Finn made wheat bread on Sunday, dragging our breadmaker wedding gift out of hibernation from the top of the refrigerator, where it had been living untouched for several months.

Finn greatly enjoyed monitoring how high the dough rose before cooking.

Lucy mugs for the camera.

Finn eats the fruit of his labor (on the couch, to the dismay of the couch. And me.).

Lucy demonstrates her undying affection for our demon cat Macy.

Searching for a Title

That appropriately conveys the massive failure of last night's sleeping experience. Perhaps:

The Words, They Were Written Too Soon

or

Jinx, Jinx, Jinx!!

or

How Life Likes to Remind You That You Still Have No Idea How to Parent

or simply

Ha Ha Ha (The Sleep Gods Laugh)

All seemed well. Finn went to sleep without any crying after I lay down with him in bed for about 10 minutes. We were anticipating a night even better than the last. We've turned a corner, he doesn't need the paci, doesn't even miss it, hurrah, we are wonderful parents!! Ha.

It's 10:30 pm. I turned off my light a few minutes earlier, way too tired to comprehend the words of the book I am reading. Sooo ready for some sleep. Then, somehow, something woke up the sleeping beast. Who, upon awakening, apparently only remembers that he has a mother and not a father, because the mantra of "mommy, mommy, moooommmmeeeee" is chanted/cried over and over again and aired over the monitor. M. goes down to settle him down. But instead of quiet, I hear lots of crying and "Nooooo" over the monitor, so it's mommy to the rescue. But it's not that simple. Because Finn is tossing and turning, playing with the damn fire truck and Thomas the Tank Engine that he somehow conned us into letting him bring to bed. Asking for water, for a snack, to watch the movie Cars. At one point, he said to me, "Mommy, I need stuff." Hopefully you get the picture here - wide awake toddler doing his best to NOT settle down.

At different points in time, whoever was in Finn's room would get totally frustrated and leave, with the child still awake. We would huddle up in bed, until the next round of cries started over the monitor, and then it was the other parent's turn to enter the fray. I gave up for good at 12:30, turning off the monitor. But M. went back down one last time, and somehow had the patience to sit with Finn until he fell asleep. He believes that he got back to our bed at around 2:00 am.

Then, Finn was awake again at 6:00 am. I raced down to his room as soon as I heard the noise (monitor was back on) just to try and buy us more time and keep him from fully waking up. I managed to comfort him back to sleep for another 45 minutes or so. The bottom line is that no one, not even the cat, got more than 3 or 4 consecutive hours of sleep. It's going to be a fun day, eh?

M. and I are both feeling a bit guilty, because we definitely lost our tempers at different points. I was just so MAD! I had been so tired, so ready to drift off the sleep. And the crappiest part was that, even when I was back in bed and off duty, I COULDN'T fall asleep. All the fuss and frustration had completely erased my sleepiness. And my sleep is precious these days! M., I'm sure, was able to sleep solidly as soon as he got back to bed at 2:00 am, and probably during some of the little jags in between wake up calls. But not me. That is the beauty of pregnancy sleep. I can usually only count, depending on when my first wake up of the night is, on 3-5 hours of solid sleep. After the first pee trip of the night, I toss and turn from then on, stealing little snatches of sleep if I'm lucky. Lots of reasons for this, of course. Increased blood flow and congestion has screwed with my nose. Combine that with the super-dry, hot air in our chimney of a bedroom, and I'm guaranteed to have at least one crusty nostril when I wake up to pee. And then I fixate on it. Even if air flow is only blocked by about 20% in one nostril, it bugs me (usually it's more, of course). I feel like I can't take a deep breath, like I'm whistling. And because it's so dry, no amount of nose blowing really takes care of it. I can't even lie propped on my back to drain anything because lying on my back makes me REALLY uncomfortable unless I'm basically sitting up. The same thing happened with Finn, too - probably something about the way I carry my babies super high, I suppose - the position of my uterus must cut off some kind of vital blood supply while I'm even semi-reclined.

If I do manage to either ignore or fix the nose problem, I spend the rest of the night trying to manage hip pain. I'm getting to the point in pregnancy where, when I flip over to give the hip I'm lying on a break, it still continues to hurt. And no amount of "pillow between the legs" helps. And soon enough, the other hip starts hurting too. So I flip from side to side, trying to get comfortable, until it's time to pee again.

All these symptoms are held at bay until my first wake up, usually some time between 2:30 and 4:30 am, and I can get solid sleep before then. Which means last night, my best hours of sleep were completely interrupted by Finn's shenanigans, and I was left with only the crappy, tossy-turny hours. Which totally pissed me off, and I'm afraid it made me have some not so pleasant feelings toward my child. I wasn't very nice to him at various points, though I did try to maintain some level of patience.

The one silver lining is that Finn, while he asked for many things, never asked for his paci (though it was clear, from how often his fingers touched his teeth/mouth, that he was missing it). And while M. was ready to give Finn the paci at around 11:30 or so, I convinced him not to. So, while the night may have been mostly sleep-free, it was also completely paci free, for better or worse.

I don't really have any tricks or tactics up my sleeve to try to help tonight go more smoothly. I guess we'll just do what we've been doing, and hope that it gets better. And for sure, I'm not writing/talking about any successes - no need to shoot myself in the foot.

The Big Binky Bye-Bye

Ok, we don't call it a binky in this house, we call it a paci, but the aliteration just wasn't there with paci.

M. and I have been talking about getting rid of the paci for a while now. Finn only uses it at night, and for naps on the weekends, but he's still quite dependent on it. He will ask for it when he's upset (though we don't give it to him), and occasionally try to sneak it out of his bedroom. With a new baby on the way that will be encouraged to use a paci at any old time (I'm all for a great nursing relationship, but have no desire to be a human pacifier), we are afraid Finn would start demanding to use it more often, or try to take the baby's paci. We just returned from a vacation (sleeping in a strange environment is not the time to take away a comfort mechanism), and we have about 4 weeks before the next huge upheaval (starting at a new daycare), so we decided to go cold turkey on the pacifier use this past Wednesday. No big lead up to it, no cutting off the tip and having Finn throw away the "broken" paci's, etc. We just told him he couldn't have it when he asked for it, and that was that.

So far, things have been going well (knock on wood). The first night, it took Finn an hour to fall asleep. He cried off and on, but when M. or I were in the room with him (we went in a couple of times to lie down with him), he was fine - just not very sleepy. He didn't have that "trigger" of sucking on the paci to tell him to be tired, so he was a little wired. He woke up early the next morning at 5:30, but M. got him back to sleep until we were ready to get him up for daycare. All in all, not a bad night of sleep for everyone.

Last night, night 2, it took only about 20 minutes to get Finn to fall asleep. M. had to go back in his room after I put him down, but the crying wasn't terrible. He slept all the way through the night, until 6:20 or so.

It's crazy how easy it has been, we have been dreading this for soooo long. Fingers are crossed and double crossed that things continue to go well. I have a feeling naptime this weekend will be a challenge!