Monthly Archives: February 2010

Sweet Naps

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I have done everything possible in the last hour to avoid writing a blog.

I don’t even know why.  There is NOTHING coming to my mind about what I would like to write about today.

Then I realized that I could celebrate a breakthrough last night.  Only I don’t want to jinx it.  I’ll just put it succinctly… I got some sleep last night.  And Ronan did too.  That’s all I’m going to say about it for now.

Birthday party anxiety is ramping up.  Way up.  So far, I have 14 people RSVP’d and are coming to my tiny little house.  My tiny, little, dirty house.  I’m planning on working on that today – you know, since I’m all rested up.

What does any of this have to do with the title of my blog?  I love it when Ronan is napping.  I swear, God invented naps to preserve mothers’ sanity.  I could genuflect over naps alone.

Goals for today?

  • New baby gate at Target
  • Kitchen tidied and cleaned.
  • Floors swept/mopped.
  • Living room tidied.
  • Laundry DONE!
  • Bonus goal: Clean master bathroom.
  • Bonus goal: Clean and organize baby room.

I’ll admit, my expectations for today are a little unrealistic, but why not aim high?  We’re getting the trip to Target out of the way early.

And right here, I’d like to do a little celebratory dance… just days from my son’s first birthday, we FINALLY have him paid off.  *dance*

My Valentine.

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Another Valentine’s Day has come and gone.

This is one holiday that I have no particular like nor dislike for.  I don’t look forward to it… I usually forget about it until the week before.  I don’t really WANT or EXPECT anything for Valentine’s day, and am always lovingly surprised when my husband does something wonderful.

This year, he wrote a letter.  Yes, ladies and gents, he HAND WROTE a love letter.  He left it sitting by the front door, and I read it as soon as I walked in from work.  I had a hard time getting to the bottom of the page because I had started crying.  Yup, he wrote a whole page about how much he loves me.

Isn’t it funny, though?  Just two weeks ago, it was all we could do not to yell at each other every day.  We didn’t even want to spend time together if given the choice, because we just kept ending up at odds.

People always say relationships change.  I read once that passion is like the tide… it ebbs and flows.  The older I get, and the more we go through difficult times together, the more I realize that those things are really true.  Yes, there are days when we can’t stand the sight of each other.  Yes, there are times when we don’t really seem to want the same things.  And yes, there are really moments when the relationship seems in vain and we can’t figure out what we’re doing.

But.

But there are times when things are so wonderful, when all we want is to be together, and the kisses are amazing, and the sex is unbelievable… times when we talk, and cuddle, and never get enough.  Those times make everything else so worth it.  They make the rest of the days worth putting up with.  We find ourselves going out of our way to make the other person happy.  Everything just fits.

I love my husband so much today.  I love him every day, but today I know that our love can last forever, even though a week ago I questioned it.  And days like today will help remind me that even though sometimes things are bad, we will always be okay.

Picture Day

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I have been terrible about uploading pictures lately, so here is a nice little picture post.

Ronan likes to snack while laying on his back.

This is the face he makes when I use the flash now.

Look at that sweet face!

You see this huge grin?  It’s because he has the power plug.  He tried to put it in his mouth, and I told him “NO!” firmly.

Then he looked like this:

A pout?  You ain’t seen NOTHING yet.

Have you ever seen anything so sad?  It breaks your heart.  Woah, baby.

Birthday Parties and I’m Sorries.

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I took two days off.  I don’t really know why… I have been so good about posting every day, it just didn’t come to me yesterday.  Or the day before.

Today, I’m watching the Biggest Loser.  I effin love this show.

So, I’m planning a birthday party for Ronan.  Only, sort of.  I’m totally unable to handle doing things like this.  I don’t want to have a bunch of people at my house, and I don’t want to try to make sure everyone has fun.  We have a ton of friends without kids that we want to come, and a ton of friends WITH kids that we want to come.  How do I make sure that everyone is having fun?  No one will know each other.

I know, I’m stressing over this for nothing.  It will just be fun, I know it.  It’s not a big deal.  I don’t know why I’m so anxious about it.  Same as everything else with this kid:  it seems a lot scarier when I’m thinking about it than when I’m actually doing it.

In other news, Ronan has the funniest poop squat ever.  He always goes to the dog crate to poop.  It’s hilarious.

Okay, so what else is going on?

Evidently, in my last post about sleep, some people that I care about very much felt like I was implying that they lie to me about their children sleeping.

First, I want to apologize.  It was never my intention to behave as though I think that everyone lies.  Nor was it my intent to act as though the fact that your children DO sleep through the night is something bad or that you should be ashamed of, regardless of how you got them there.

My point REALLY was that I used to lie to people about how Ronan sleeps.  I got so tired of hearing people telling me that I just need to let him cry, or that there must be something wrong with him because he doesn’t sleep, that when I was asked if he sleeps through the night, I would simply answer “Yes.”

I lied because it felt like I needed to.  I was tired of feeling like I was a failure as a parent because he didn’t sleep.  I don’t feel that way any more.  I don’t equate sleep with skill.  To me, they simply don’t connect.  Maybe that’s my way of protecting myself, but I really feel like every child is different.  And it’s okay that mine doesn’t sleep.

So.  I’m sorry.  I don’t hate you because your baby sleeps, and always has.  I don’t think any of YOU are lying to me about it.  But, hells yes I’m JEALOUS!  I know my time will come.  And I’m okay with how things are.

It’d be really nice if my next kid could sleep through the night.  I could really just love that.

Parenting FAIL.

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I had my first major parenting FAIL moment today.

Yeah, I know.  The other things I’ve written about here weren’t major fails?  Well.  This one puts the rest of them to shame.

I suffer from Monday night insomnia.  It has something to do with working a midnight shift on Saturday and Sunday.  I try to stay up as late as I can on Monday night, so I’m really tired when I go to bed.  That way, when Ronan wakes in the middle of the night, and I get up with him, I wont get stuck awake and spend the rest of the night struggling to sleep.

It didn’t work last night, and I was up for almost all of the night.  When I got up this morning, I wasn’t ready to get up.  So I did what I usually do in that case.  I double checked the room for baby-proofed-ness, laid my blanket on the floor, and dozed while Ronan played.  I dont get much more sleep, because he wakes me every 10 or 15 minutes or so by jumping on me, but it makes me feel better.

Right before I laid down, I changed his diaper and noticed he’d had a little pebble of poop.  I set the diaper aside so he couldn’t kick it while I was changing him, got him dressed, and put him down on the floor.

Then I forgot about the diaper.

Ronan crawled over to me about an hour later, and he smelled like poop.  I got up, and asked him if he had pooped again… and then noticed the poop smashed ALL OVER THE CARPET.

He had found the diaper, and dropped the poop pebble on the floor.  Since he can now walk, he proceeded to step in the poop, and then walk around the living room.  I spent the rest of the morning scrubbing baby poop out of my carpet, spaced several adorable inches apart.

All I can say is that I’m thankful he didn’t TOUCH the poop with his hands, nor put it in his mouth.

Mandy = fail.

Sleep = Judgement.

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As a mom, I have come to question why sleep equals good parenting.

Why do people so often meet a new baby and immediately ask, “Is he/she sleeping through the night yet?”  I can’t count the number of times I fielded that question before Ronan was two months old.  I didn’t even hope that he would be sleeping full nights at that point, I was surprised other people thought he should be.

See, for me, sleep is something kids need help to learn to do.  And parenting a child to sleep isn’t all that terrible.  Yeah, getting up at night really sucks, but what part of being a mom is about making MY life easier?

To get back to my point.  I hate the fact that so many people associate whether or not a child sleeps with the quality of parenting.  I want to take a stand here, because I have a beautiful, happy, healthy little boy.  He’s sweet, and funny, well behaved, smart, and growing like a weed.  By all accounts, he’s wonderful.  My friends love him, my family loves him, my sitter loves him… even when he was in daycare, they were constantly telling us what a good boy he is.

But.

He doesn’t sleep.  And therefore, my parenting skills are suspect.  I must be doing SOMETHING wrong, and so I am probably doing EVERYTHING wrong.

You know what makes me feel better?  The friends that I have that ALSO didn’t listen to convention that have three and four year olds that still wake in the night.  The parents that DID cry-it-out and still have trouble getting kids to sleep sometimes.  Sleep is not easy, and there is no quick fix it… not one that I’m willing to employ, anyways.

My problem, and all of my complaints about Ronan’s sleep have never had anything to do with the fact that he would wake at night.  It has always been about the WAY he would wake up, and how he seemed to be in such terrible pain.  Ronan has been on Prevacid for over a month now, and the night wakings that included screaming have stopped COMPLETELY.  Sure, he still wakes up.  But he wakes up, and rolls around a bit, and can be put back to sleep.  That is all I’ve ever wanted.

This blog is all disjointed and has no flow because I just got up from my two midnight shifts.  My brain hasn’t officially moved back into gear yet.  But really, here’s what I want to say:

If your baby sleeps through the night, it doesn’t make you an amazing parent.  I don’t think more highly of you simply because you get sleep.  I think you probably lie about the amount of sleep you get because you think you should.

If your baby does NOT sleep through the night, it doesn’t make you a horrible parent.  You shouldn’t have to feel like you need to lie about sleeping habits to impress people.

Twitter.

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Yeah, I’m addicted to Twitter.  So what?

This was my Twitter feed last night.

  • Baby in bed at 9 sharp. Up at 11:15, and 11:30. Tried to hold him off. Bottle at 11:45, sleeping again.

Brock and I watched Zombieland, and then I went to bed.  I had my phone next to me, and this was how I kept track of how often Ronan woke up.

The funny thing is… I have found more support, sleep and otherwise, on Twitter than I’ve found anywhere else in real life.  What is it about Twitter that makes it so easy to make friends?  I push a follow button, you follow me back – BAM – instant buddies.

So many of us parents on Twitter have the same problems.  It’s easy to gravitate towards each other, to commiserate and support.  And it feels amazing to know that other people are out there going through the same thing, offering advice and judgement-free compassion.

Yeah, I haven’t been getting any sleep.  But it hasn’t seemed so bad.  I’ve watched a really amazing lady (@manhattanspeak) get her twins to sleep through the night in under a week WITHOUT crying it out!  I’ve watched as a father of triplets (@ryantrips) has seen major improvements in his childrens’ sleep, only to have all three of them come down with RSV, and be set back immensely.  I’ve watched the stolid acceptance of another father (@jgbreton) as he enjoys his time with his young son, instead of getting frustrated at his lack of sleeping.  I’ve had sweet help and suggestions with a few laughs from a wonderful mom (@dianasaurus).  And SO many more.

There are some awesome people out there.  I feel lucky to have met them.