Strange Bedfellows

My daughter has crossed the line. The last few weeks she's been crawling into our bed around 6:30 in the morning to snuggle and defrost her Popsicle feet and we rather enjoy it so we indulge this behavior. It's been a good stretch actually. For a while she was coming in at around 3:30 to sleep on the floor next to the bed or covertly sneak between us (her version of stealth mode means a knee in your belly and not a knee AND a foot). There was also that three day "my mattress is like a large diaper" spree. Check. But lately she's been going to be easily and sleeping the whole night in her bed.

But recently she's been coming into our bed with a host of friends. She doesn't just bring Julio. She brings Julio, Mousey, a soft doll that make crinkle noises and two small wooden dolls from her doll house. Yes, wooden dolls. Ever snuggle up to a wooden doll? Or rolled onto one at 6:45 am? Yesterday she brought all of those items plus the lamp from her doll house. And today she brought the animals, crinkle doll, wooden dolls, the lamp, her ladybug key chain chapstick and two magnets.

But I will leave my husband to deal with this burgeoning problem while I go away for the weekend. By. My. Self. Yes, friends. This mama has the weekend off. Full disclosure when I return. Or partial disclosure.

Now go make some time for you too. Let's report back on Monday.

Miscellaneous

OK. Here's what's going on. I just sent out the Mishmish Studio newsletter volume 3 which you can see here if you don't currently subscribe. If you'd like to subscribe (I send them out every few months) then go here.

My daughter's ear infection has returned. Her doctor said her ear looked like pea soup. Never good. So now she has another course of antibiotics which she can't stand and most of it ends up in her hair plus her ear is draining, the eardrum having likely burst during the flight home from New Mexico (I was like what on earth is all of the brown crap on her sheets if it's not actually brown crap). And that pea soup gunk, well it doesn't exactly smell like pea soup. It's putrid. And that's in her hair too. So she's really got a lot going for her right now.

And she's back to creeping under her bed. And calling for me at 2am because she's stuck under there. Her bed is maybe eight inches off the ground! How she can get her big head through? I need a web cam.

Oh, and I started a sewing class! I have my grandmother's old Singer and even though my husband has tried to teach me many times how to sew I still kind of suck at it. So I joined this class with about 16 other old ladies. It's a hoot. Yesterday I made a little wallet and a purple Knapsack. The craftsmanship is hideous but on the outside they look cute! Now I need cool fabrics. Knapsacks for everyone who comes to my surprise birthday party next year!


Notice the fine stitching detail. Is there an opposite to craftsmanship? Like slobmanship?

Mountain Time

I am loving Mountain Time. Ever since we went to Santa Fe and the kids got used to going to sleep an hour earlier - even two - I have had entire evenings to do with what I please. It's amazing the difference between putting them to bed at 9:30 and putting them to bed at 8:30. It's the best freaking hour ever. I'm delirious about this hour. And it just worked out that now sunset is happening earlier anyway so the kids don't question the shift. They don't even know! And this whole week they've been falling asleep without the usual hassles. I don't have to repeat the sleep tricks for the hundred millionth time. And they don't call me back to sing one more song or one more kiss or I have to pee or go get Aba or I want to sleep with your crocs (this was a real request). And here's the kicker: they don't wake up any earlier! They wake up at 7:00 am! So they're sleeping an extra hour! Providence! Today, in fact, they fell asleep in the car at 6:00 on our way home from a friend and slept for a solid hour. Any parent will tell you this is kiss of death. A nap at 6:00?! Forget it. You're screwed for the next two days. But they woke up as we were pulling in and I told them to get ready for a bath. We had the bath and I got them in the jammies, made them their snack , read them two stories, brushed their teeth and they were in bed by 7:50 and asleep by 8:15 which is my personal best. If my competitive side takes over the kids will be asleep by 6:30 come November.

Sleep tricks

Every night when my son goes to bed, after the bath and the pajamas and the snack and the dessert and the stories and the teeth brushing and the whining and the singing and the whining for more singing and the drink of water and the pee pee break, I ask him if he remembers the five tricks I taught him about how to fall asleep. And every night he doesn't remember. So every night I tell him these five things again and I tell him to put those five things in his head and lock them in there so he doesn't forget and then the next night he wants to hear them again because even though he locked them in his head they got out. A squirrel opened up his head with a key and took out all of the sleep tricks so he needs to hear them one more time. And there's a squirrel somewhere sleeping soundly.

So what are these tricks?
1. Count up to 100 and back to zero.
2. Look at your alef-bet quilt (hanging above his bed) and make up stories for every picture.
3. Have dreams about sheep jumping over a fence and count each sheep as it jumps in your dream.
4. Make up a pinky and pongo story.
5. Dream about everyone in the world that you love and everyone in the world who loves you and give every single one of those people a hug in your dream.

I mean I'm about to fall asleep just typing about these five tricks.

Tonight, ten minutes after I put them both to sleep and went over, again, the sleep tricks, he came padding into the office and sat down on the floor asking for new ways to fall asleep. For the love of ginger, just close your freaking eyes! But no, I threw out some more suggestions. Dream about folding all of mommy's laundry. Dream about mommy losing ten pounds on her new Nutella diet. He was not happy with these suggestions. Then I offered that I would give him one more suggestion and Aba would give him one more. So Aba said he should think about how much he loves riding his bike and I told him he should think about how great it was to swim using the noodle without holding on to any swim teachers (!). He still wasn't happy so that's when I started writing this blog entry. And three minutes into the period where I'm ignoring him and typing, he says I will do those two things and then he mentioned a third thing that I can't remember now because a squirrel came and took it out of my head. I'll go wake him up to ask him so we can start this whole exercise again because it was so much fun the first time around...

Respiracy Theory

I have a theory.
Follow me for a minute.
I was listening to NPR, which is where most of my theories begin including the one about how Rene Montagne, Michele Norris and Carol Wertheimer are all the same person. But I digress...

They were talking about sleep apnea in kids and how one persnickety kid didn't know he had it until he was twelve and then they took out his enlarged adenoids and his personality changed entirely. Maybe because it was the first time he'd slept a full eight hours ever. They said his only symptom was snoring and waking up tired.

Well my daughter doesn't wake up grouchy, not in the morning anyway, but she does wake up often at night. Not fully, but enough to either mumble or get out of bed or catch her breath and make a snarfle. Last night she came into our bed (big shock) and proceeded to swing at me half the night. And she snores. Loudly. She's basically had a cold since she was born, but even on the rare occasion when she doesn't have a runny nose, she still snores. She's like an 82 year old man. AND she doesn't talk. I know she can hear but I don't know how well she can hear. She says words but her pronunciation is crazy. I'd say she has about 25 words which is probably normal, but my theory is that she has enlarged adenoids and tonsils and all of it has to go. Then she'll be able to sleep and hear and she'll stop snoring and start talking and then we'll really be in trouble.

I should have been a doctor. Except that when I had a mole removed on my belly recently and had to change the band-aid, I almost passed out.

I'll stick to writing.

The Boom

My son slept through the night when he was two months old but it was relatively short lived. So at four months we sleep trained him using a combo Ferber/Weissbluth method since he'd already proven he could physically do it and, frankly, I was really freaking tired of feeding him at night. It was only mildly traumatic and mostly for me. He cried his head off for ten minutes, went to sleep, woke up at 2 am, cried his head off for twenty minutes, went to sleep and that was about it. He is a champion sleeper. Or was, I should say.

About six months ago, after he had just turned two but before the baby was born, he started waking up at night. It was right about when we transitioned him to his toddler bed, perhaps too soon. We'd put him to bed and ten minutes later he'd come running out crying that he heard a boom.

Him: The boom!!
Me: There's no boom, honey. You need to go to sleep.
Him: I heard the boom.
(boom)
Me: Sweetie it's the water pipes expanding when the water runs through them in the ceiling.
Him: -
Me: It's the water.
Him: It's the water.

Then he started waking up in the middle of the night, something he hadn't done since he was an infant. The first time he padded into our room and refused to go back to his room so we let him sleep with us. Kiss of death. You give a toddler an inch...

Next night, he wanted to sleep with us again. I told him he had to sleep on the floor.

Next night I played hardball. I walked him back to his bed. He wasn't thrilled about that.
He came back an hour later. I walked him back. We did this about five times. My husband continued snoring.

As an aside: What is it about being a man that makes you biologically deaf when sleeping? From discussing this with girlfriends it seems universal.

The fourth night was better but he was still having trouble falling asleep. He'd come out three or four times after the evening ritual complaining of the boom at which point I'd ask if he wanted to sleep in his crib and he'd say yes. Love the crib.

So we've gone back and forth between the bed and the crib over the last six months. Now he's mostly in his bed. He still talks about the boom but he says, "the boom from the water."

One day, curious to know if nightmares were causing this night waking, I asked him if he sees pictures in his head while he's sleeping and he said yes.

Him: Of aba.
Me: You see aba when you're asleep.
Him: Ya, in the window.
Me: What's he doing?
Him: He has the knife...

Cue: scary music. Now, my son calls several things knives. A pair of scissors. The weed-whacker. Garden clippers... But it was definitely a Stephan King moment. Is my husband a knife-wielding psychopath? Probably not since he's sleeping and deaf in the next room.