Hide The Mess

ugh

Lets talk about my kids sleeping because it's SO INTERESTING - yes?

Yesterday I took the leap and pushed my kid to only one nap. It actually went fine. Except for this morning. He woke up at 4:30am. FOUR FUCKING THIRTY. So yeah, that was fun. And his mood this morning? Shitty. Very, very shitty. I tried to get him to go back to sleep but eventually just said eff it and got him up. I guess that means today: two naps. Duh. In fact, he was back down before 8am. So I have no idea what this day is going to be like and it makes it complicated to organize my work day. I have two time consuming things I need to focus on, in fact, one of those things I was supposed to meet with my boss about today, but that is not going to happen so I asked to reschedule. I hate having to do that - but I am not prepared for our meeting and I really need to be - it's performance review shit I need to have completed. We have quarterly reviews and I find them to be a very large ass whipping, but I have no choice, this is what they do, so I need to stop screwing around and blowing it off (which I pretty much did last year for every review) and put some thought into what they've asked me to have completed. I'm not very good at that kind of thing, which is why it gets shoved to the back of the drawer so I don't have to think about it - but I really need to work on collecting the examples they've asked for through out the quarter so I'm not banging my head on my desk trying to recall things from three months ago. I can barely remember what I did last week, much less conversations I may have had in February. Heh. My life is hard (not). I have a job. I should probably just shut my complainer hole.

Last night my husband and I went to dinner, got a babysitter and everything! Drank wine, had appetizers and ate seafood (him) and steak (me) until we were uncomfortable and needed to go home and put on our fat pants. I want to start doing that more often (the going out, not the gluttonous eating). Going out just the two of us for dinner or a movie or both. I am reluctant to get babysitters because my kid and his sleeping habits are unpredictable. Maybe he'll stay asleep the entire time we are gone, maybe he won't. It's a roll of the dice and that will start to stress me out. I used to be really critical of my sister and how she didn't let her boys do sleepovers until they were older (not babies, not toddlers)  and now, I have an understanding that I didn't before and I wish I could go back in time and be less critical of her because you don't know until you get here how you're going to parent and I'd like to tell my critical self to STFU.

Toddler Sleep

I had no clue when I had a child how much of my life would eventually revolve around a very tiny persons sleep needs. When he was a newborn / baby I obsessed about his sleep in a way that was slightly insane. I kept logs and visited sleep training sites and micro-managed his sleep. In some ways I credit this hyper-vigilance with giving me a happy kid. He is in a good mood most of the time and when he's tired, he is a big pain in my ass. I didn't follow any one sleep training method - we tried cry it out, but it never felt right so at some point I just abandoned it. Now that he's almost 1.5 there is more freedom and flexibility - not a lot, but more than there used to be. I feel more relaxed about it too, which I think helps. Right now at daycare he's in a class that takes one nap - from 11:30am - 2:00pm - and he's been doing well on that schedule there. Although, I really don't know how they tolerate him in the morning because he is an early riser and sometimes he's up at 5am - so to not get a nap until 11:30am - whoa boy I bet he is a mess. Or maybe the activity at daycare keeps him distracted enough that he isn't miserable. I actually was going to try that same schedule at home today. HAHAHAHAHA. That shit might work at daycare but it did NOT work for me. He was up at 5am this morning and by 8am he was OUT. I thought about pushing it and seeing if I could get that nap later, but the idea of trying to keep him distracted enough to push through for another 3.5 hours? Fuck that. I guess for now, when he's home he'll get two naps and when he's at daycare he'll get one. In the past, that would have caused me so much anxiety but now? Whatever. We'll just roll with it. I feel the same way about the bottle. He doesn't get one at daycare, it's all cups all day. But when he's with me, if he wants a bottle, fuck it, I don't care. He holds it himself now and I know that he will not be in college drinking milk from a bottle. These are the things I refuse to get uptight about anymore. And if other people make different choices for their family - God Bless Them. Seriously. What works in my house probably wouldn't work in someone else so you know, do what works, do the best you can, and keep on moving forward. In the end, I think most parents want the same thing: Happy, well adjusted, healthy kids. Maybe we all take different paths, but we're aiming for the same place.

flying by the seat of our pants

I’m a softer parent than I thought I would be. I’m not hardcore about a schedule and I really assumed that I would be. That I would wrangled my kid onto a schedule because I sure like to know when things are going to happen. The problem isn’t that my kid won’t allow himself to be scheduled (not that I’ve actually put any effort into it so that could be total horseshit), I simply don’t do it. I haven’t the heart. What’s the point of letting him cry and cry and cry just to get things on a schedule? If I thought in the end he would be happier, I would do it, but he’s a happy baby now, so … I don’t know. I just can’t make myself do it. And my husband doesn’t seem to mind that there is this sort of fluidness to our days. When I have made a (half hearted but born out of necessity) attempt to structure the nap schedule it has backfired and I ended up with shitty naps and spent more time trying to get the kid to sleep than doing anything else, and honestly, that’s not how I want to spend my time with him. At all. So I guess for now we’ll be sort of a fly by the seat of our pants sort of family. I’m sure my husband is thrilled. No, seriously, he likes to leave all schedules open for ever and always so he can decide on a whim what thing he may want to do. If we get invited places, he doesn’t really want to commit to going until the very last second because what if the time arrives and something better has come up or he just doesn’t feel like going out? I can appreciate the latter of those two reasons. I often don’t want to go out. Which is why sometimes I need to commit right away so that I’m locked in and don’t let my hermit like tendencies keep me holed up in my house for days on end. See the issue there? He doesn’t want to commit because he’s more a spur of the moment type guy and I need to commit because left to my own devices I would be a recluse. I also like knowing well in advance what is going to happen, what the schedule is, what is expected of me. So. This circles me back around to my opening statement (sort of!). I am softer and more flexible as a parent in terms of scheduling and knowing what happens next than I thought I would be. I’m having to adjust things internally, I’m having to figure out what the truth is for me, what my head says or what my heart says, because those two things don’t always match up. My head tells me that I should put my baby on a schedule because that is the right thing to do (according to….?) and my heart says, eff that shit, just go with the flow, enjoy him now because he’s not this little ever again and do you really want to spend the small window of time forcing him onto some schedule if he’s perfectly content to just sort of let things be fluid? (yes, I have these long internal dialogues with myself on a regular basis) Shit. I seriously could talk myself into either argument. But at the end of the day, or rather, the beginning of the day, when my son is awake at 4:50am, rolling around in his crib, talking to his feet and hands, it’s hard to simply leave him alone in there because the cuteness is entirely too much and I must go in there even though I do not want him to think 4:50am is an acceptable wake up time (it is NOT!). I want to go in and watch his eyes find mine and see his little face explode in a smile. I love that part of my day, even if it’s happening at 4:50am. I have said this a million times already and I will probably say it a million more: Parenting is confusing. I knew it would be difficult in very specific ways but I did not expect to feel confused. There is no book, there is no map, you’re simply plopped down in the middle of things and left to figure it out on your own. Because no one can tell you what will work for YOUR baby, they can only tell you what worked for theirs, and we all know every single one of us is different and unique like a fucking snowflake or whatever so just because A + B = C for one person doesn’t mean diddly squat when it comes to me. So we’ll just do the best we can and keep our fingers crossed that we aren’t fucking up too badly.