You Talkin' To Me?

Annie has found a way to force herself into every conversation around her. Usually she adds in thoughtful "Mmhmm" sounds or "Yeah, I know" or "That's right" as people around her are busy conversing. Sometimes she latches onto one word from the conversation and repeats it or comments on it. Today she was driving with my parents and her Uncle Cody as my Dad and Cody were talking about golf. My Dad is thinking of getting new clubs and was talking about handing down his old set to Cody.
Cody commented, "That'd be great, I like your putter."
"I love putter!" Annie enthusiastically chimed in. "Especially on toast!"

Sleep, sleep, sleep

I never worried too much about sleep before I had kids. When I saw still single, my roommates and I would have friends over four or five nights a week 'til two or three in the morning, leaving me only a handful of hours of sleep before going into work . . . until one of my coworkers told me one morning I looked like a haggard drunk. Then I started kicking people out earlier and getting at least six hours of beauty sleep. But, all in all, I just didn't think too much about sleep.

Then I had kids.

It's funny how quickly my entire life suddenly revolved around sleep. My sleep, my kids' sleep, was my husband getting enough sleep? How does our schedule for the day match up with nap times? Bed time? Teaching your kids to fall asleep on their own. Sleep, sleep, sleep. There's times when nothing feels more important than the sleep issue. With Annie I literally became a barely functioning human being due to extreme exhaustion during that first little while. I used to sing the "ABCs" to Annie when she was a baby, because after the first week of never getting more than an hour of sleep at any one time, I could not remember the words to another song. Not a single nursery rhyme, lullaby, primary hymn or childhood ditty. I remember the complete horror I felt when I was singing to Annie one day, "A B C D E F G . . ." and I could not remember what came next. I started to cry. Of course, I pretty quickly was able to come up with the letter 'H', but for that briefest of time I couldn't get more than 7 letters into the alphabet due to my sleep deprivation. People would tell me, "You just need to sleep when she sleeps." This sounds like it would work . . . but if your colicky baby takes 20 minute naps on average, this usually left me falling asleep minutes, sometimes mere moments, before my baby woke with a screech that caused me to shoot up in bed like someone had used a bullhorn inches from my head. Babies, apparently Bush-leaning in their politics, have no qualms with using such sleep deprivation torture techniques.

With Ellie I was determined to do whatever it took to get the sleep I needed . . . I was prepared to co-sleep, nurse around the clock, learn to sleep in a rocking chair, earplugs, whatever it took to never feel that tired again. Fortunately, Ellie has always been a better sleeper than Annie, and although we do sleep her fully swaddled in a swing on its highest setting with a white noise machine going, she sleeps. And, I feel really pretty rested. It's been a huge relief.

Then she got sick this week. With her stuffy little nose we have to fight her to get her down for a nap, then she only sleeps 20 minutes tops. Last night it took us hours to get her down for bed, much later than normal, than after her initial stretch of sleep she was up every hour. I woke up four times last night with her. I forgot just how incredibly taxing that is . . . and when I was doing that with Annie I didn't have a two year old waking up and wanting breakfast at seven in the morning.

I feel guilty asking for Greg's help during the night, since he has to wake up at 6AM to go to work . . . but once I change a diaper she needs to be re-swaddled, and my swaddling is weak and ineffective, where as Greg's swaddling technique could restrain large, angry prisoners, and usually three month olds. Greg assures me it's not a problem, since he only half remembers waking up anyway, and unlike most Moms I talk to, he seems to be able to fall right back asleep after dealing with a squealing infant, whereas I take much, much longer to lull myself back to sleep. It all adds up for a night that seems like I spent more of it awake than asleep, which equals a day when I have absolutely no desire to play with play doh, run in sprinklers, or make cookies . . . but it's not Annie's fault I'm this tired, so it doesn't seem fair to deny her the simple pleasures of her life just 'cause I'm too tired.

Then I go and waste the twenty minutes when both kids are sleeping simultaneously and write a blog entry.

Stupid sleep.

Here's how we do get our baby to sleep. It doesn't last long though.

Only Benadryl would keep her that way, and drugging kids for sleep is frowned upon.

Sleeping Beauty

Annie isn't known for her good sleeping habits . . . so imagine our shock when she fell fast asleep up to the table the other day in the middle of eating her toast.
This is the first time she's ever 'accidently' fallen asleep.
Hopefully not her last.



Here's the girls right after waking up from their naps.




Here's why Ellie is, wisely, a little nervous around her affectionate big sister.

A Hairy Situation

This morning while getting Annie ready after her bath, I asked what she noticed about my hair. Since there was no other adult to notice and compliment my very different big full curls this morning, might as well seek validation from my two year old, right?

She replied, "Um, it's brown Mom."

"Yeah Annie, but what else do you notice."

"There's white ones too."

Yep, those are your fault kid. Yours, and genetics. I decided I couldn't ground my two year old for her brutal observations, then ran and plucked out the 5 or 6 grey hairs I could find. No more asking my two year old anything about my appearance . . . I don't know how many honest answers I can take!

Don't Drink the Punch

I'd just put Ellie down for her nap and walked back into the kitchen to check on Annie eating her lunch. My perfect little two year old was neatly setting all of her dishes into the sink while standing on her chair she'd dragged to the front of the sink. I beamed with pride as she looked up at me and smiled, then said, "I drank the pink drink Mom!" It was then I noticed her pink mustache.

"Um, what pink drink Annie?"

"In the sink!"

It was then I noticed the empty pint of ice cream container, remembering last night when I'd found the freezer burned raspberry ice cream, over half gone, and chucked it into the sink along with the soaking casserole dish to melt before throwing away the carton. Well, it had melted, and apparently when thinned out with a little sink water, looks like quite the tasty pink drink.

Ewwwww.

Children's Programming

I just heard Ellie start babbling and fussing, letting me know she's no longer asleep this morning. Annie at the same time asked, "Mommy, you come in my room, put in my Elmo movie, it's funny!" I told Annie we'd go get her little sister first, then we'd go to her room. I started walking out of my room, and called out my typical, "It's OK Ellie, Mom's coming," to which Annie responded, "Not Annie, Ellie, I'm not coming, I'm going to my room to watch my 'puter!"

In this age of third graders who have their own cell phones, Annie was just over two years old when we put her first computer in her room. I have mixed feelings about this. It was a hand me down desktop computer that my sister Lacy couldn't quite fit in her carry on when she moved out to Virginia to nanny for a year, and with as quickly as computers become relics, it seemed silly to leave a perfectly good computer waiting in storage in my parent's basement when Lacy would just want to buy a new lap top when she came back next year. So, it was decided that rather than let Annie pound around on my more valuable Mac that I do freelance design and my scrapbooking on, that if she was gonna ruin a computer, it might as well be this one. (Sorry Lacy). Thus, the computer in my two year old's bedroom. She loves to play games on it, or just to bang on the keys and excitedly tell me, "Mom, I email!" But mainly, let's face it, it's an oversized 13" TV. So, mixed feelings. We go to the library and let Annie pick out a couple different videos, usually her choice is all Elmo's World, and I recently went online and bought her favorite one, as well as Zoe's Dance Moves, which has Paula Abdul teaching Elmo and Zoe how to dance. I like this one more than any of the others, and not just 'cause my 12-year old self loved Paula Abdul music more than words, and despite the fact my 29-year old self can't stand Paula Abdul on American Idol. Mainly I love this one 'cause Annie'll get up and dance along for huge portions of the video. And since we got the computer Annie doesn't usually watch any television in my room anymore, if her video that day is basically a kids' aerobic video in disguise, I feel less guilty about her viewing habits.

I kinda miss watching cartoons with Annie now that she has the computer though. Despite her almost unnatural love of Elmo, we would actually only catch Sesame Street occasionally, usually cuddling up for the last 15 minutes right before nap time. I've been surprised at how much of children's shows appeal, or downright speak to, the adults who get sucked into watching them. Usually it's Sesame Street, where the Count watches his favorite show, 24, complete with a Jack Bauer muppet hanging precariously from a cliff's edge for 24 seconds. That one cracked me up. Or when they had Stinky the Weed on Desperate Houseplants, where the plants weren't getting everything they needed at home. That one was actually kinda disturbing. But the part of a children's show that was the most aimed at parents as an 'in-joke', was when Dr. Ruth appeared as a guest host on a segment of Between the Lions. Here she counseled the letters 'un' that they were lacking excitement in their lives and after much innuendo they were partnered with the letter 'f' and when combined were finally able to have real passion, excitement, joy and well, fun, in their lives. It was uncomfortably odd. Annie, of course, didn't get anything from it but the fact that the letter 'f' combined with 'un' spells 'fun', which is a useful thing to learn; but then again, so is the fact that a partnership needs a certain sense of 'oneness' to be healthy and to achieve real passion, I guess. Just maybe not for my two year old. It made me feel like I do when she comes in when I'm watching anything on primetime television, except that all the other characters were puppets. Unless she's on The View or something, Dr. Ruth just doesn't seem right at 10 in the morning.

How to Start a Blog

So, I finally bit the bullet and created a blog. Which has left me wondering for many days, how does one begin a blog? Introduce myself, my kids, my family? Everyone who's gonna read it already knows us. Then, I had this exchange with Annie yesterday:
"Mom, I'm poopy! Change my diaper!"
"Oh, you have a poopy diaper?"
Annie, reaching her hand around, shoving her hand down the back of her diaper, then looking at me, says, "Yep, it's poopy. I checked."
That about sums it up . . . I'm raising a monkey.