Winter in April

Here we are on a normal late April day, enjoying the sunshine in our t-shirts..

Not two days later, snow suits were taken out of storage......

I had wrongfully assumed that Avery's first chance to walk through snow for the first time would be delayed until next winter.  You mess with Mother Nature, She messes back!

Whew, mission complete

So the first night of baby torture, or 'sleep training', or 'remembering', was pretty awful.  A lot of screaming and crying and not knowing what the eff was going on and where in the world was mom.  It was painful.  It lasted and hour.  I thought it might never end.

Second night, same sound coming from le bebe, screams of uncertainty, of change, of wanting a warm body to comfortably  lay up against in order to drift happily and content off to sleep.  This night the tears stopped after half and hour.

The third night, I braced myself for some more anger, tears, screaming, chest clenching, breath restricting, shoulders tensing.................nothing.  When I eventually checked on him, he still had the blanket on him.  He didn't even stand up to for quick shout of rage before he drifted into dream land.  The three day lucky is actually true (well for me anyway).

I don't regret the delay in sleep training.  I really really enjoyed laying down with the wee one, watching as his little eyelids grew heavier and heavier, listening to his soft breath slowly getting louder and louder with the sound of baby snoring.  For the most part, I loved sleeping with my baby.  But sleeping was something I just wasn't getting a whole lot of during that time.  He sleeps through the night now.  Just like that.  Bam.  Three days.  Now I need to stop waking up to every little mumble he makes in his sleep.  He needs to move out of my room.

Now to find the time to completely rearrange the entire upstairs sleeping situation.............maybe next month!

Day two is WAY better

So I have finally caved.  After nearly 4 years of broken sleep at night, I have decided to take a stand for my sanity.  Maybe even give myself a chance to be a happier, well rested..........cheerful even, mother.  I can feel this overwhelming crankiness take me over on most days, I guess I can now see why.  Sleep is important.  Not only for myself, but for the wee ones.

This is good for him, it teaches him the essential life skill of putting himself to sleep, a skill he knew before Jack Frost started nipping at our noses, one that slowly drifted away with the assistance of his over protective, smothering mother.  A fever here, a cold room there and bam, the wee one, who was the best sleeper ever, is in my bed and only falling asleep while in my arms or laying down beside me in my bed

  This is good right?

As I lay with Rohan, listening to the tortured screams of my little baby, going against all of my maternal instincts to nurture and comfort when upset, I had to repeat the mantra 'this is for you, this is for me, we need to sleep child before we LOSE it'.  This is so when I one day decide to go out at night I will enjoy myself and not feel horrible for making someone else deal with having to put him down to sleep. For those nights that the man is away and I am left to my own devices, trying to get both boys to bed without having to lay down with both of them in my bed while reading a book with a flash light.

This is good.  This is good.

This is awful.  I hate this.  I never thought I would be the mom to do the 'crying it out' method.  I know that he is fine, he is full, he is clean, he is VERY tired.  But he screams.  Loudly.  Very very loudly.  I just want to lay down with him and give up the battle.  But I won't.  This is day two.  No backtracking.  15 minutes.  Will this traumatize him for bed time from here on in?  Am I screwing myself?  Nope, don't talk your way out of it, it is okay, he still loves you.

It took an hour last night.  I can't believe I made it.  He would trick me with these little pauses and I would breath out a sigh of relief, ahhhhh thank god, he is finally sleeping.  Then the tortured screams would come out again.  Damn.    Please go to sleep, please go to sleep.

Rohan drifted contently off to sleep without a worry in the world!  A good sign for putting them into the same room together I guess.  Yes, my baby, at one and a half is still in my room.  I wish I could say that I am done with it, but I kind of still love it.  I love having him in my room, I love having him in my bed.  That is probably what makes it the hardest, giving up having my baby to snuggle with at night.

Whew, this really really sucks.

I am sorry Avery, I love you, please go to sleep...........

Lavender the Cure

So I have not been getting much sleep lately.  Both the boys have been taking over my bed and waking me up periodically through the night requesting water, boob or a change of clothes due to wetting the bed.  This has made me and them pretty cranky kittens in the morning.  The big guy, in a separate room, gets a full night sleep every night.  Lucky bastard.

So, after several torturous weeks of broken sleep I finally came up with a wild and fantastic way to get the wee ones into and staying in, blissful dream land.  Lavender.  Lavender oil in fact.  So I went from room to room dropping lavender oil on all of their pillows, saying a silent prayer to the sleep gods as I went.

Was it a successful endeavor?  Nope.  But I sure felt like a fairy princess prancing around the bedrooms with my vile of lavender oil strategically tilted hovering over each boys pillow!  The upstairs smells lovely.  The boys are still waking up.  If it wasn't such a horrible idea to mix babies and rocks, I would be placing a small piece of amethyst in each of their pillows, with another prayer to the sleep gods of course!

For now, however, it will be an ongoing morning ritual of LARGE coffees and blood shot eyes!

ABC"S

Here is my big boy singing the ABCs.   *Proud Mom Alert*

Liar Liar Pants on Fire

Kids Lie.

 I was under this misconstrued impression that these innocent little beings were beyond the ability to make up stories.  So filled with innocence and a lack of understanding of negative consequences, that they would always just tell the truth.  They had to, their minds couldn't possibly be so clever as to decide when to tell a fib to suit there little needs or to tell the truth.

I was horribly horribly wrong.

They really truly tell fibs.  These can be the fibs that prevent them from getting into to trouble such as 'why is your brother on the floor crying Rohan, did you push him?'  'No mama, he fell'.  I know he pushed him, Avery knows he pushed him (though he has such an adoration for his big brother he would never tell even if he could), and yet, he offered me a bold faced lie.

There are also the fibs to get what he wants, 'Mama, daddy said I could watch mindless adult sitcoms while eating poptarts and drinking coca-cola'.  I would like to think that daddy would not promise such a thing, though I have seen a box of pop tarts in the recycling box.........

Truly, and honestly, I really did not think that these little buggers could lie, and they really really can.  Well, well well, you really do learn something new every day in the wonderful world of parenthood!  Huh

Separation Guilt

I know I know that this it is more common than not to have a two working parent family where the children spend all day, five days a week, in daycare.  I am not sure if there is any guilt involved in this scenario, but as a (semi) experienced mother, my understanding is that being enveloped by constant guilt is just par for the course, so I can only assume that there is, of course guilt here as well.

Our situation, at the moment, is a bit different.  Our kids have so far avoided days spent in daycare.  And yet, YET, I have constant separation guilt.  I had plans of going to a spa with the man, as well as to a gig at the local bar, and a playgroup with only one of the boys....all in the  span of just over one week.  But now, I got called into work last minute, so will have a whole extra day away today.  That adds up to three and a half ish days away in 2 weeks.

Instead of jumping for joy at having some time away, 'enjoy it while you have it' they shout, I am feeling a bit uncertain. Now I am actually reconsidering one of my days/nights out to make up for my work day.  That is right, I include my work day as a day away, a day of escape, a day of health food bliss..........I love this job, by the by!!  So of course it counts right?!

Is this ridiculous case of separation guilt a direct result of the time I am constantly around the kiddies?  If I had had a career to go back to, or a grandparent/ready made babysitter would I feel the same dripping oozing 'my kids will never survive without me' sensation?  I know I am not alone in this....a stay at home mom's dilemma perhaps?