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Tantrums
Mine, not those of my dear daughter.
It’s always a little disheartening to realize that despite being a rational, responsible, focused, so-called “adult”, there are some points in life where you have all the finesse of a two-year old. Admittedly, my tantrums are not outwardly focused, foot-kicking-screaming-spitting events of glory, but rather the temporary inner loss of all semblance of rationality, patience, and sanity. In my experience, usually these events are enabled by an ongoing bout of sleep deprivation. This is a good argument for naps, in my opinion.
There seem to be only two primary triggers for these momentary lapses in emotional-mental functionality: homework (curse you, graduate school!) or being pushed to a fraction of my last nerve by my dear little genius daughter.
Anyway, the kiddo has not been sleeping well again and really, I’m so done with this 4+ year war. Last night, she randomly stayed awake in my bed fidgeting, playing, flopping, wiggling, kicking, squirming, and generally making a nuisance of herself to her poor, exhausted parents who kept desperately trying to go to sleep. Who am I to begrudge another person’s occasional nighttime restlessness? Yet when THEIR restlessness keeps me awake, it is pretty hard to be endlessly tolerant. Cue the internal, silent, temper tantrum in which I found myself indulging in unrealistic fantasies involving locked bedrooms, duct tape, and sound-proof walls. I know, this really shows a total loss of parenting mojo, but what the hell…we all have our dark moments, I guess.
This experience made me remember another tantrum along the same general trajectory when she was around 7 or 8 months old, during which I kept tearily arguing with GMom about my hopelessly sleep-defective child.
I guess the worst part is that I don’t really have a solution. It seems all or nothing at this point…keep to the same routine and hope she smooths out again, or wage war and force her to sleep by herself all the time. It’s not that I don’t have the moxie to force the issue and make it happen; but I don’t know if I have the moxie to deal with the guilt over crushing her spirit and ignoring her needs related to this issue. Yeah I know, she’d get over it eventually, but for some reason, she seems to desperately need the closeness and reassurance of snuggling with us. What is the trade-off or outcome of crushing that need? My instincts so far have led me to respect her need, at the cost of my own sleep quality (and thus, sanity) but after nights like last night, I can’t help but think it’s almost time to go bad-cop-mommy.
OMG! Run faster!
*not actually me!
First, take a moment and look at these date tags, will you? NINE days since the last post. This is totally unacceptable and management will address the problem forthwith. Well, hopefully.
Yes, as this picture illustrates, I am back on the hamster wheel of grad school again. The break went by in approximately 5 nanoseconds, I think. (Vegas’ll do that to a person, I hear). Even though the semester technically started a week ago, I find myself floundering and completely at a loss for motivation, comprehension, organization, and any other applicable tion‘s you can think of. On Sunday night, I did the first assignment for one of my classes and it should have been easy in theory but in practice it took me about 4 hours, and included an elegant mental breakdown, 2 temper tantrums (on the inside [mostly]), and a very, VERY strong impulse to throw my mouse through the window just to hear some kind of satisfying breakage. Yeah, welcome back to academia!
Sooooo, yeah, I’ve been a in a marvelous frame of mind and lots of fun to be around lately. Just ask FF! On second thought, don’t ask him. Work, too, has been pretty nutty, although, not as bad as some semester launches. I attribute the manageable-nut-factor to my awesome coworkers. (and possibly I should also recognize here the fine contributions of my good friend, Beer.)
So anyway, this is another one of those “whatever pops into my head with no organization or coherent theme” posts.
K has not been the best sleeper lately. After 4+ years of dealing with unholy sleep disruptions, I’d like to say at this point that becoming a parent is FULL of false advertising. When they are all tiny, cute, and fit in one arm, you tell yourself that all the sleep deprivation is worth it, and after all, they’ll sleep through the night eventually, right? FALSEFALSEFALSE!!! Woe is me.
I have to proclaim something very important: vanilla oreos dipped in Nutella might be the most delicious thing on Earth. So delicious in fact that I will not be able to buy them ever again, because merely looking at the package is approximately 200 calories. This is most definitely what I want for dinner. Sigh.
Just when I am about to pull my freaking hair out over my daughter’s sudden shift to demanding parent-interactive play CONSTANTLY, a $6 investment in a pretend-pizza-set kept her busy for 2 days straight! What the heck? I mean, she always used to be really good about creative, imaginative pretend and/or toy play, and I always felt we had a really positive mix of solo and interactive play. Lately though, it has been Mom/Dad/K2 or nothing but complaints. I don’t get it. Is this a normal developmental shift? Geez kid, go entertain yourself already and let us take down the Christmas decorations!
Now that the dining room area is painted, mostly deboxed, and we have an actual table and chairs, we have started eating at the table like (mostly) civilized folks. Thus, I am teaching K to set the table. So far, she thinks it is a lot of fun; especially when it comes to lighting or blowing out the candles. I wonder, am I starting a pyro here?
My self Christmas present this year was my ridiculously cute Coach bag. FF, on the other hand, has been lusting after a Keurig single-cup coffee brewer for quite awhile, so that was his self-gift this year. I expected to get indifferent service out of it, just as I have viewed any other coffee apparatus in the past. Well, that was the past. I’m now a slavish fanboi for this thing. Go figure. But hey, it brews perfect single cups of coffee, tea, or cocoa in mere seconds, directly into my travel mugs and there are no distracting measurements, clean up, filters, blah blah blah. It’s ridiculously awesome.
/Soapbox:
Dear Ghost Whisperer / JLH:
I feel that some of the storylines this season have been waning in quality. For example, who had the great idea of digitally rendering the “Shiny people” on the cheap, thus ending up with something that looked like the love child of Casper the ghost and the Stay-Puft man? Also bear witness to the oddness of sending JLH inside an online virtual world avatar. Please understand that I hold you to no specific intellectual standards, but there is only so much ridiculousness that I can tolerate in the name of my JLH crush. I hate to bring this up and all, but I just saw the preview footage for next Friday and all I can say is….couldn’t you spend a little more on those glowing orange contact lenses? And hasn’t the cheesy demonic possession thing been DONE enough already? I’m really ok with numbing, formulaic regularity in your episodes, so please consider this my request to skip the contact lenses, avatars, and marshmellow people forthwith. /Soapbox off
OK, one more last thought: DAMN, some days I wish I could have gone from pregnancy to a 5 year old in the blink of an eye with nary a scratch, saggy boob, or misplaced hair.
It hurts
So I was catching up on this mommy blog that I really enjoy reading…and the author mentions that her 4 month old son has been sleeping reliably through the night for about the last month, and doesn’t require a bottle anymore as part of his bedtime routine.
I finished reading that part and then died inside a little. Just kidding, but really, it hurt. Yeah, yeah, I know–don’t compare your kids to anyone else’s but REALLY, my evil genius daughter still doesn’t reliably sleep through the night, and still really needs her bedtime bottle. Not for any physiological reason, but just emotional and habitual. And yes, I realize that her nightly waking-up-and-coming-to-our-bed thing is a habit that we could (and will eventually/gradually) eliminate through sleep training.
But she is a really high-intensity child and even the smallest of changes can turn her into a raving maniac (a raving maniac that vomits at the drop of a hat, no less*). So we try to make small adjustments gradually over time. For example, when we took the crib rail down and converted her bed to toddler style, she freaked out majorly and tried to refuse to sleep in her bedroom altogether for about 2 weeks.
I just don’t know why she couldn’t have been one of those really easy-going kids that falls into a routine easily and rolls with changes. (yes, this is another of those reasons why she is still a single child and may very well REMAIN THAT WAY.)
*sleep deprivation is one thing, but being sleep deprived and up every night at 4am with vomit to clean up as well…just shoot me.
DVR Love Affair
I LOVE my DVR. If I could find a way to elope and marry it, I probably would (sorry honey). The addition of DVR into our lives approximately 3.75 years ago was literally and truly a life-changing experience. I’d heard people rave about Tivo and such but little did I know that cable DVR service was going to SAVE MY LIFE.
We had just gotten DVR a couple months before K was born and as with most new shiny toys, I was relatively nonplussed at first. (also not being a parent yet–watching TV when it was actually ON, didn’t seem like such an exotic thing.)
Within a few weeks of K’s birth, the reality of being up all night, and having to try and stay at least minutely alert (so as to not drop/lose/misplace/mangle said infant) was taking its toll. By some serendipitous chance, I caught a rerun of Law & Order SVU late one night, and thought hey–that’s a pretty cool show, I should queue it up on DVR and watch the old episodes. So hubby set it up for me (remember, I had a mewling, half-starved, miniature suckerfish attached to some part of my body for approximately 22 hours out of each day at that point).
Miracle of miracles…hours and hours of glorious entertainment began filling my DVR to meet our every middle-of-the-night whim. It was quite literally the one thing that got us through many a tough night. And the best part? Not falling asleep during commercials!! Holy praise the lord for that fast-forward button! If I had a clip of that sound effect where something is revealed and you get the epic/reverent “aaaahhhhhhh”, that would totally fit here. Nor was this amazing revelation limited to us–bro and sis in law also had the DVR life-saving, middle-night realization too as they were on their own sleep deprivation path with K2. We’ve never looked back since.
So I sometimes don’t get to catch up on these shows until weeks/months after they are on live, but hey, at least I GET to watch TV every now and then, which would be impossible without the joys of DVR.
So in no particular order, here are my regularly DVR-ed, favorite shows: [feel free to mock as necessary!]
- CSI (the one, the only, the original)
- Law & Order SVU (yep still a fan to this day!)
- Medium (FF got me hooked on this one and then later decided it wasn’t his cup of tea, something about mushy girl storylines)
- Ghost Whisperer (I have NO idea why I like this show. But I do, and this is another one FF actually got me started on and then later abandoned)
- Eleventh Hour (1st season newbie here, but I like the main actor dude–he was in A Knight’s Tale)
- Bones (Love David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel–great chemistry)
- Sanctuary (New Sci-fi series, love Amanda Tapping as a British middle-age hottie supernatural superintellectual)
- Ghost Hunters (woohoo!)
- Legend of the Seeker (new series, book adaptation. Satisfies the urge for fantasy, wizards, and witches, oh my)
- Mystery Diagnosis (Discovery health channel series to FREAK PEOPLE OUT OVER WEIRD DISEASES YOU’LL NEVER GET!)
- In the food network corner:
- Ace of Cakes (Duff rulez)
- Dinner Impossible (Robert Irvine, yum)
- Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives (I’ve seen Guy Fieri in person!)
- Iron Chef America (woohoo food network cheeseball show!)
- Good Eats (FF got me obsessed with Alton Brown long ago)
PS: Even a few of K’s favorite shows (ahem, Little Einsteins, Wiggles) get queued up every now and then. I heart my DVR so, so, so much.
