7 posts tagged “sleep”
I'm exhausted right now. I want to pull out the Wii Fit and get in some exercise, but I don't think I have any energy. This morning was a bit rough. I usually love Friday mornings with Stephan. He still wakes up pretty early, but will watch Praise Baby sitting in our bed and let mommie get some more rest. Some mornings include more rest than others, but usually it's a nice time ... and I get a few snuggle moments with Stephan too.
This morning he came and crawled in with me a little after 7am, and just wanted to cuddle. He went back to sleep. Then, after maybe 15 minutes, when I was just about to get to sleep myself, I heard Andy's alarm clock go off. Or so I thought. It sounded really odd, like no other alarm I'd heard, since usually he wakes to a cd. The sound was almost like the ring of a cell phone. Then I started to hear chirping. Different from the nature sounds on my alarm clock. The whole time I'm just thinking, "Please stop that noise. Don't let it wake up Stephan." Course then it starts getting louder. That's when I realized it was a freakin' woodpecker. And Stephan woke up. And was scared of the noise. I got him settled with a Praise Baby and some cheerios and cup of milk and thankfully, by that time, the woodpecker had gone on to torment someone else. I eventually did get some rest, but it wasn't the greatest of mornings.
Add to that Andy and I staying up late to play LEGO Indiana Jones and I started the day out a little wiped. I'm so glad that I went out yesterday to get what I needed for Andy's birthday. After a bowl of cereal (if you haven't tried the new chocolate mini mini wheats you sould they ROCK!), Stephan and I started work on "daddie's birthday." He loves to help in the kitchen and most of the time I enjoy his help. We made the batter, got the cake in the oven and then I washed all the dishes. It is his birthday after all, and who wants to do a bunch of chores on their birthday. I'm hoping that will make Andy happy! While I think the cake may have spent about 5 minutes too long in the oven, it looks great. Thanks to Pam spray with flour, the cake came out of the pan PERFECTLY! I've never been that lucky! After getting Stephan set up to decorate daddie's birthday card, the UPS man came with my package from Old Navy.
We then finished up coloring and stickering and started trying on all our new clothes. All the shirts fit me fine, I shouldn't have to worry about them shrinking in the dryer either, since they are all a little loose. The pants were another story. Usually ON seems to be small so I got the pants in a size 20. The good news is that they are quite large on me. I'm hoping that if washed in hot water and dryed on hot, that they will shrink and fit me. I'm glad they don't fit, but bummed since they were clearanced and I can't just order a smaller size and exchange them. If they don't fit me, even after the washing and drying, I'll pass them on to a friend or my sister and see if they work for them ... or maybe take them back to ON. I really hope they work though, since they are cute. I guess I could also try taking them to a tailor since one pair was $3 and the other pair $10. But I'm not sure if that would be worth it or not. Stephan loved trying on all his clothes too. We got him four shirts and three pants in size 4T for next fall/winter. He also tried on all the clothes we got on clearance at Kohl's. Should be pretty much set for next winter. We'll just need a warm coat and maybe we'll be able to find him some winter boots. He wanted to show everything to daddie, so I told him we'd do a show for daddie tonight.
After that, and getting the wash started, I intercepted Stephan smashing my softened butter for the frosting, got him cleaned up and started on lunch. Made him macaroni & cheese and gave him some corn to munch on while that was cooking. Kid loves corn now. Frozen. Right out of the freezer. Cracks me up. I put some in the bottom of his bowl and he said, "mommie, fill it up." He certainly didn't need to eat a bowl full of corn, but I did give him a little more. He also wanted one of my baby carrots, so I cut one up for him.
Lunch ended with some chocolate for Stephan, he loves 3 Musketeer bars. We then made the frosting so it could chill in the fridge during naptime and while I cleaned up all those dishes, Stephan played.
Then he crashed for nap.
All that before 1pm. Phew!
I think I might just wrap this up and watch The City and maybe play Super Paper Mario before Stephan wakes up. Then I'll set him up on the Wii Fit and frost the cake and make sure everything is ready for dinner so when Andy's almost home tonight I can get that going quickly.
I hope Andy has a wonderful birthday. We love him so much!
Oh the joy of walking outside after church and discovering that the sun was back out again warming things up and drying them out.
Speaking of church, Andy and I have agreed to co-teach Stephan's class during second hour. I'm a bit freaked by the prospect but am up for the challenge. We will hopefully be sharing the responsibility with another couple so thankfully it won't be every week. As soon as the other couple is found we will hash out the schedule of who will teach when. It might be a couple we know, and that would be great, though getting to know someone new would be fine as well.
My greatest uncertainty is the size of the class. There are a significant number of 2yo at our church. Andy and I will have help, but classroom management is not my strength. I'll have to work on that. When I taught 4th grade a few years ago there were only 8 kids in the class which suited me fine as I can manage eight kids. Maybe there will be more kids on the roster each week than show up. Sure there will be regulars, but hopefully not too many kids overall each week.
I know all will work out fine, especially once we get started and figure things out and get to know the kids.
Exciting news: Stephan has gone down for nap/bed quite nicely the past two days. Last night he got out of bed once after I thought he was asleep but I just had to tell him once that I wasn't going to tuck him in, he could do so himself, and after a minute of tears he climbed in bed and went to sleep. He does tend to ask that we put up both gates (one on top of the other), which is fine with me if that's what he needs to remind himself to stay in bed. I'm just glad he doesn't scream and try and get out of his room for 45 minutes anymore. Makes life a whole lot smoother!
So, the debate is this: is he sleeping better because the full moon has passed, or is it because of all that we have done over the past two weeks to establish firm boundaries. I would guess it's a bit of both. We've been working hard with him and I'm sure his behavior got a bit worse with coming of the FM, but regardless, Stephan's learned that we are going to stay firm with the boundaries and that's the important piece. Funny how the two coincided though.
Yes folks, Stephan has inherited my stubborn trait.
Or maybe it’s just him trying to figure out boundaries and trekking through the interesting “terrible twos.” Either way, he’s darn good at waiting till the last minute to listen to you and is already a pro at manipulating, whoever says we aren’t born sinners hasn’t had any kids.
Lately, the biggest drama has been around bedtime. We go through our typical routine and do bath time, story time, prayer time and then we tuck him in and say good night. After we’ve left the room it takes him five seconds or less before he’s crawled out of bed and is tearfully asking for another “tuck in” over and over. When we say, “you’ve already been tucked in, no more tucking in tonight,” he cries a bit harder. When he first started this I’d wait till he’d calmed down on his own and when he asked quite nicely to be tucked in again I’d go tuck him in and then he’d stay in bed and go to sleep. Now he’s started pushing that so we clamped down and it’s one tuck in, the first one, and that’s it, NO MORE. Well, last night he ended up whining and complaining at the gate till he finally pooped out …
Today, I’m crafting this post, on guard so to speak in the hallway, he’s asking for another “‘tuck in” and I was letting him know he wasn’t getting one. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him climb into bed and thought, “finally, he’s going to climb in bed and lay down on his own.” After going through that twice, here we are:
That’s right. He got in bed to get his trusty companion Pop and then back to curl up on the floor for nap.
What is this? If the floor is such a great place to sleep, why do we spend money on expensive beds and cribs? Sometimes I really wish I could know what he was thinking.
Last night I put him in the big bed after I knew he was sound asleep, but I’m a bit nervous about doing that for naptime when he doesn’t always sleep as soundly. Guess it can’t hurt him to sleep for two hours on the floor.
This is usually my least favorite part of the day, mainly because you have to wake up and I do love my sleep.
Lately, I’ve been enjoying mornings though and am not looking forward to giving some of those mornings up to early rising and rushing out the house for work.
Typically, Stephan wakes up a bit too early for me, and at the beginning of the summer he’d stay in his room and play while I got more rest. Then he started climbing over his gate and running into my room wanting to watch Praise Baby and eat some cereal and drink his milk. I still got to wake up slowly but no more sleep ever happened.
Now when I hear him wake up I go into his room and we snuggle in the big bed. He’ll fall asleep and get some more rest and so do I. It’s a nice part of the morning. We still tend to wander into my room after he wakes up at a more reasonable time and watch Praise Baby with some breakfast for him. I’m only part-time so a few mornings a week we’ll be able to have this routine but I’ll still miss our lazy mornings. Especially when I’m getting up before the crack of dawn to drop him off at Sarah’s and head to work.
I'm tired. Shooting for posting every day this month but this post might be pretty lame. We had a decent weekend but I'm having some trouble falling asleep at night and if I wake up getting back to sleep. It's annoying. Trying to deal with it but it sucks. Some days are worse than others. Stephan's been a bit of a challenge too with some crabbiness and more tears than usual. He just falls to pieces if he needs to stop doing something he is enjoying or can't do something he wants to. Always wants to watch the fireworks video on my computer and doesn't like hearing "no" or "later." Tough to distract him with something else too. Bummer he got my stubborn streak.
On a more happy note, I'm going to try the "Knit Together" group at my church tomorrow night. They mentioned it in the bulletin this morning and said they would teach you if you are clueless, which is me. I like that the group makes stuff for needy people but also let you make things for yourself if you're working on something. I went to Micheal's and got a pair of knitting needles and some chenille yarn that was clearanced, all for $7 and am ready to give it a try. Start with a scarf of something simple. Might be something useful for relaxing which could be great since I always seem to be stressed about something or other.
Off to try and snag some zzzz's before Stephan decides to wake me up too early.
Andy went to check on Stephan and had me come look too. We do this often because a sleeping child, especially ours, is just so darn cute. We are often amazed at the positions he gets himself into. Tonight tops everything we've experienced so far. He went down without a peep. However, before he went to sleep he must have decided he needed to send a fax to someone with the recently discovered fax machine mommie and daddie have stored under his crib (and now know needs to be donated soon) and after that was apparently too tired to get back in bed. I pulled him out and got him covered up and tucked in again. Silly boy!
i hate that just when you think you've figured out your child's sleep habits they change again on you.
so fine, you are ready for only one nap in a day, great. then stop screaming at me and being so cranky in the afternoon after your late morning/early afternoon nap that only lasted two hours. you might refuse to take another nap (even though i know you need one) but i'm going to leave you in your crib anyway since i need a break from the crankiness being right in front of me and maybe, just maybe you'll give in an take a nap. sleep is not the enemy!
