The Thinks I Think {At 2:00 AM}

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I have a moderate to severe addiction to the following: Diet Coke, chocolate, Honey Nut Cheerios. In fact, I'm thinking of getting together with my dietitian sister to construct a diet comprised solely of those three things.

I've previously alluded to my interest in sewing. I think it's time to take a real sewing class. I have a delusional concept of my own abilities. Every time I see cute quilts/curtains/pillows/chair covers I am totally convinced I could whip out something similar without breaking a sweat or, more accurately, swearing at my sewing machine. I'm often wrong. I'm mostly self-taught. My skill set isn't too limited but what I can do is fine. I can do things. But man, they could definitely look better. If you have any recommendations for places/sources of sewing lessons, please share.

The other day I misplaced a pancake. In my bedroom. 

Aside from the actually birthing of a child, coming in at a close second for the most physically difficult aspect of parenting is putting on a fitted crib sheet. I know babies are dropping left and right from loose crib sheets or whatever, but come on. Can we loosen it just a little? Just when I think I've got it under control, one corner pops back up and I end up yelling at the crib and Sydney is waiting patiently with her blankey thinking, "Dude, what's your deal? Haven't you gotten this down yet?" It would probably help if I took the mattress out of the crib but there are crib bumpers and they all tie on and there are six and they each have four ties that are double-knotted and you can see how this is just way harder than it needs to be... 

We have Netflix streaming to our TV. I love it. The Walking Dead and Jericho are among my recently watched TV shows. This might help explain my recent Pinterest board titled "Apocalypse Now". My sister thought I had a new calling at church. Nope, inspiration via zombies and nuclear bombs. I am now convinced I need to have random certifications in my back pocket like knot-tying, Morse code, marksmanship, helicopter pilot, and M.D.

A little while ago, I managed to painted all ten of Sydney's toenails. I consider this my highest parenting achievement to date.  

Oh. And the dude's crawling. It's sheer madness over here. 

Photo Dump Courtesy of the SLR

Now that I have a Smartphone and can take, edit, and post pictures without having to leave the couch, the idea that I have to hard-wire my SLR to my desktop in a whole different room seems excessively laborious. I took some pictures the other day and saw that I only have 17 pictures left on my card and realized there must be a boatload of pictures hanging out in there that need to go on the computer. Many of them had too much cuteness to be contained solely on my computer so I decided to dump them on here. This is only a piece of the bunch. Jericho says one of my jobs is to clean out the excess pictures of the babies on the computer. I don't know what he's on about.

Who Needs Sleep?

Well, you're never gonna get it

Who needs sleep?

Tell me what's that for

Who needs sleep?

Well, you're never gonna get it



Holden will be 6 months old on Sunday. He is not sleeping through the night. He did for a few nights when he was not even 3 months old and much jubilation was to be had. He then got a cold and was congested every night all night for about a week and ever since has only slept through the night once and that was on Christmas Eve due to what I can only imagine was Christmas magic.

Sydney slept through the night like a rock star starting at 10 weeks old. Every night. Twelve hours. With Holden, I'm in new territory. Sydney slept perfectly at this age. I secretly loved it when people would ask how she was sleeping and I could tell them how wonderfully it was going; like I was solely responsible for getting her to sleep so well with my amazing mothering skills.

It is not so with Holden. He wakes up a lot at night. Sometimes once. Sometimes every 3 hours. Jericho and I take turns for the most part. There have been a handful of nights when he's taken Holden downstairs and I'll get a good 5-6 hour sleep in. But we're both pretty spent.

Every morning my contacts feel like masking tape and I have bags under my eyes that need additional postage. I'm hungry all the time. My sister explained to me why this was a cause of my sleep deprivation. I don't get proper rest so I'm depleted of energy so my body compensates by wanting food. Or something. I don't have the focus or drive or mental capacity to handle any real responsibilities. I often can't even fathom preparing dinner every day or when I'm going to shower or unload the dishwasher. When you look at my responsibilities, they aren't that overwhelming, but when you haven't slept a solid night of sleep in more than 8 months, folding laundry feels like solving cold fusion. I can't read. I mean, yes I can read but I've forgotten how to read and comprehend. I belong to 2 book clubs and haven't read the books for either in months. I've tried and failed. It hurts my brain.

We've gone over several reasons why he could still be waking up so much - Eczema, gassy, ear infection, too cold, too hot, not enough food during the day, humidifier, more prayers. We've more or less addressed them all. Once, I even wrapped him up in one of my t-shirts in case my magical mommy smell would make him sleep longer. [Do you operate with the assumption that you have this aura of magical mommy-ness? That you should be able to hug or cuddle or kiss your baby and all the problems in the world should be solved? I do. So the fact that I can't get him to sleep better at night with snuggles and lullabies is a blow to my mommy-ego.]

We now put Holden in the bed with us. Partly because it makes him happier than being in the pack-n-play and he sleeps more soundly [even if it's still short spurts]. Partly because we got tired of getting out of bed to give him his pacifier or rub his back or put lotion on his head every hour. [Lotion on his head because he still scratches at his head all night. Lotions and potions are gooped on him but he still keeps scratching. My 2 o'clock in the morning logic is convinced that he has a brain tumor and is trying to get at it with his tiny fingers.]

I've pulled out all the books in my library that may help with getting Holden to sleep better at night. We haven't read anything yet. When you want to get your baby to sleep through the night, you wanted this knowledge yesterday. I want a tag-line or article or short paragraph. A three hundred page book on the matter? You gotta be joking.

One thing that has helped [a little] is learning he's a very determined stomach sleeper. Won't have it any other way unless he's in your arms. And because he's a stomach sleeper and he's a boy with boy parts and only utilizes the front 1/16 of his diaper, we get frequent pee-outs. And because he's in our bed, the pee-outs sometimes happen where we sleep. When it's the middle of the night and it's the second or third time he's woken up, very little of me actually cares.

What am I missing. What haven't we done? What could possibly help?

I hope this sheds some light on why I haven't replied to your emails very quickly [or at all] or texts or why I stink at blogging right now or why I'm lagging in my church calling or why I haven't lost any baby weight or why I spontaneously start crying or why you don't see me at church as often or why I keep sending my husband to Wendy's for our cheap dinner.

This weekend I'm going on a Girls' Weekend with some friends to the mountains. I of course love these girls and know it will be a blast but the selling point that convinced me I should definitely go was the realization that I would have two consecutive nights of sleeping more than 4 hours at a time. I may even sleep in. I'm so excited I could do a little dance. In fact, I think I will..... Dance over.

These exhausting times are part of the reason why God made our babies so insanely adorable. Sleep is one of those things you don't fully appreciate until you don't have it. Count your blessings my well-rested friends.

The Thinks I Think

The other day I tried to buy jeans. I wanted blue jeans. Normal denim blue. I wanted flare leg because skinny jeans make me look like the orphanage lady from Despicable Me. I thought this was a simple quest. One that I have had no trouble with in the past. When I saw all of my options having various degrees of skinniness in colors previously reserved only for Skittles, I realized I was old. Looks like we're sticking with yoga pants for a little longer.

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Have you ever gotten a spray tan? Like a professional one? I got one for the first time a few weeks before my sister's wedding. It was a surprisingly hilarious experience. I stood in this big booth and had an automated woman giving me directions on the specific "positions" in which I was to stand. Position 2 and 3 resemble a Bangles song. You also have to put this goopy lotion on your hands and feet so they don't end up orange. You have to put it on so thick that it looks like you've been covered in mayonnaise. I was actually laughing. I was LITerally spray-painting my body. You stand there in your desired level of nakedness, wearing a shower cap, hands and feet covered with mayonnaise, and taking instructions from the giant spray-painting machine. And it's COLD! At least normal tanning beds are warm while they give you cancer.

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I'm cool with being a stay at home mom for the most part. I'm not really a feminist but I occasionally get the urge to yell, "Who do you think I am!?! June frikkin Cleaver!!??!" Not at anyone in particular. Just in my house by myself; usually when I need to come up with something for dinner. Again. Or dishes need to be done at 9:00 at night. Or basically anything that means I need to come out from underneath the covers of my bed.

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I am highly addicted to fabric stores. I'm not even that big of a sewer. But I aspire to be and I do enough sewing that going into fabric stores is like creative crack. When I return from my trips, I tell Jericho the same thing. Yell the same thing, actually - Two years ago I was making Sydney's nursery bedding. I wanted yellow and grey. I couldn't buy yellow and grey bedding because I couldn't find any. Hence the decision to make stuff. I went to every fabric store in a 50 mile radius of my house. I shopped online. And I ended up finding some decent yellow and grey fabrics. I like the finished product. I don't love it. Now when I go to any place that sells fabric, I see beautiful yellow and grey patterns that I LOVE. Stripes! Chevrons! Dot! Tiles! Paisleys! I yell to Jericho every time - "MORE YELLOWS AND GREYS!!!" At least there is one area of my life where I'm slightly ahead of the trends.

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I bought a Sudoku book. No, I'm not going on a plane soon. I bought it to exercise my brain. The other day I couldn't remember the name of a car that I knew I knew and it was making me crazy that I couldn't remember it. I went through the alphabet numerous times trying to figure it out. It finally came to me a couple of hours later. Now I'm doing Sudoku. Next I will be playing memory card games with Sydney and hoping she doesn't beat me.

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Ever since seeing a beautiful brown color of nail polish on a friend more than three years ago, I've been on a mad search for the perfect brown nail polish. True story. Three years. I think I finally found it. I didn't want taupe or espresso or dark brown or brownish red or brownish-something else. Just brown. It's called Toasted Almond by Covergirl and it's glorious. 

Survival Mode

With two babies under eighteen months, one acquires tailor-made resources to get through the minutes, the hours, and the days of taking care of two little babes.

The following are but a few of the resources that have made my life livable.

Jericho

There's too much to list for why Jericho is essential to my survival. I shall be brief. One morning Jericho left super early to travel out of town for the week. I came downstairs hours after he left, groggy and grumpy and grumbling. I discovered that before he left, he'd unloaded the clean dishwasher. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I actually teared up.

Grandparents

As with Jericho, wayyyy too much to list in a blog post of the never ending service the GPs render. They babysit so Jericho and I can have nights out with friends or even just a quick bite across the street before making the one-hour drive back home. The GPs Smith asked if they could come over for dinner one Sunday. I told them I didn't have much to supply us all for dinner. They brought it all from their house. I decided to take a nap before they got here and I woke to my mother telling me dinner was ready. They'd come over, made dinner and helped take care of the babies. Why did I ever move out of their house?

Friends

I have visiting teachers/friends/neighbors that comes to my need at the drop of the hat. They steal my babies from me at church. No arguments here. I have this one friend that had a baby about the same time as me. We share many things. We have adorably crazy little babies. We have the same post-pregnancy physical ailments. We run into each other at Wal-Mart at the same odd hours at night in our sweats. We both cry for legitimate and humorously illegitimate reasons. We don't fold clean laundry. And we both hold very dear the remedial powers of a greasy cheeseburger.

McDonalds

[Speaking of greasy cheeseburgers]

I received two words from a cashier at McDonalds I never knew I'd hear and never knew would make me so sad. Two words that made me want to exclaimed, "That don't mean you know me!!!". She said to me, "Back again?" Two simple words that made me want to cry. In my defense, my McD's runs are not that frequent. I didn't recognize her so I'm making myself feel better by thinking this cashier just happened to be there both times I went within those couple of weeks. Or maybe it was within one week. It's all a big Diet Coke blur.

Does this gross you out to hear that I frequent McDonalds? Why do I even go to McDonald's? I shall explain. I generally have the attitude discussed by Jim Gaffigan. It represents all that is wrong with the stereotypical fat American. In my world, I go for survival. I go because it's practically in my backyard. I go on a morning when sleep was fleeting the night before and the babies are on the same fussy/noisy/need-to-go-to-sleep schedule. I call them our Family Drives. We listen to Harry Potter. I get an impressively large Diet Coke. Sometimes a biscuit, depending on the hour. Sometimes two cookies [for a dollar], depending on the level of emotional turmoil. And then I drive through my wonderful little town until the Diet Coke is gone. Everyone always chills out. The babies always go to sleep. I get to see their sweet faces while they sleep and while I listen to a book and wind down from some of my stress.

That is why I go to McDonald's. If there was such a thing as a drive-through Panera, I'd go there. But until they make one in my town, I'm sticking with the McDonald's. Judge as you wish.

It's called survival mode. It's something I heard other moms talk about but never truly understood until I was in it. I have a feeling mine might last a while. Now if only I could figure out how to incorporate the gym as a survival mode resource.