My Poor Babies

My kids were both conked out by 6:15 tonight. They are beyond exhausted so we stayed in this afternoon and just hung out watching tv, playing and getting laundry done. After an early dinner and early bath I read them their stories and turned out the lights. Kaylen was asleep before I finished the first of two chapters in "Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing". Kelton was out just moments after closing the book.

But it has been anything but quiet. They are both jabbering away in their sleep (this has actually been going on for the past few nights). Kelton is just saying non-sensical things but Kaylen is clearly having nightmares of some sort. Yelling out for me, screaming "NO! GO AWAY! MOMMY!!!" and "Rainy day, watch Barney. No sunny day, rainy day." It's the squirming and yelling out for me that get me though. Poor little girl. She really is at her wits end with being able to deal with things.

Hopefully she will get a good amount of decent sleep (and me, too). Goodness knows all three of us need some good quality rest.

Here's hoping.

"Mommy! Hep Me"

My evening and night sucked last night. This cold has really smacked both Kaylen and I (Kelton seems all but back to normal today). She was miserable last night and kept waking. I would go in, soothe her and get her back to sleep. Then I'd sneak out, sit back down at the computer and BAM! She was awake again. Crying out, struggling...it was really sad and frustrating. I was feeling pretty awful myself and really, I just wanted to have alone and quiet time.

I heard this through the monitor:
"Mommy! Hep Me! Mommy!"

I went racing down the hall to her room.
Me: "Mommy's here. What's wrong, honey?"
K: pointing to her nose said "No beath."
Me: "You can't breathe? I know honey, You're all stuffy from your cold."
K: "Hep me."

It was just so sad.

I was sitting on the couch holding her when Dakota walked in so she took her and rocked her for a bit but Kaylen was just too uncomfortable. She put her in our bed and turned on Barney. Now I know a lot of people don't enjoy the purple dino but I'm here to tell you, he is a hero in our house. Kaylen LOVES that guy and would happily watch episode after episode all day long. So she was quite content snuggled in our bed watching her friend while Dakota and I got ready for bed. It was a long while before Kaylen finally fell asleep. Poor girl.

Dakota went in late this morning so she could be here in case I needed her. It was so nice not to have to jump up and be "on" immediately. Kaylen and I are better today but still fighting it pretty hard. I haven't spent the day racing the Tylenol bottle at the 4 hour mark today so I guess that's a big improvement. :)

So that's life here today.

Now Where Were We?

Oh right - I was going to tell you all about the weekend.

Friday morning I took the kids to this brand new play place called Cafe Sip-n-Play. While it advertises itself as a place for the kids to play while the parent enjoy a cup of coffee and relax, it isn't quite like that. Sure, there are tables set up for grown-ups to sit and talk (and they have Wi-Fi) but it's a smaller-than-I-anticipated place and it was jam-packed with moms and kids. Even so, it was really a lot of fun. I'm not the type of mom who would just drop my kids in the play area and go read a book while I tried to keep one ear open for their screams so for me, the lack of seating wasn't really a big thing. I hung out in the areas the kids were in so I could watch and play with them. It was really, really fun!




I let Kaylen skip her nap so we could stay, have lunch and play a while longer so that night she went down without a fight and was asleep at 6:30. She did really well until it was time for *me* to go to bed when it was all bets off and she was up and down the rest of the night. I'm actually (sadly) getting used to it.

Saturday found Kaylen and I running errands while Dakota cleaned the carpets (thanks, honey! The look soooo much better!). Kelton stayed home with Dakota. We, again, ended up letting Kaylen skip her nap because by the time she and I returned home, the carpets were finished and she had a little down time; it was too late to think about putting her down. We had a birthday party to go to!

We went to our great-niece's second birthday (she and Kaylen are 12 days apart) and had a good time visiting with Dakota's family. From there we went over to Dakota's sister's house to check out their recently remodeled house. From there we decided to hit Azteca for dinner and then pick up a movie from Blockbuster. Phew! By the time we got home it was bath and bedtime for the kids. After the kids were asleep, Dakota and I settled in to watch "Man of the Year" which, if you haven't seen it yet, is a pretty good movie. Worth the time though I personally feel like they rushed the ending a bit too much. Still - worth the time from my point of view.

Sunday Dakota took the kids in the morning and I was able to catch a couple more hours of dozing. Not really sleeping since I could hear the kids laughing and playing but it was still really nice to drift in and out and dreams. After I got up, we lazed around and read the paper while the kids played. We were successful in getting Kaylen down for a 30 minute nap, too! :) After her nap we had given Kelton the option of going to a local mall to hang out (his all time favorite thing to do) but he and Kaylen decided they wanted to stay home and play on their swingset. A grand idea! The weather was very spring like and we all had a good time outside. Dakota and the kids went on a bug hunt (Eeeew! No thanks!) and then they created a "field journal" to keep track of the Bleeding Heart's growth. Very clever little guy we have. :)



After playing in the yard, we cleaned up and drive to the party supply store to pick up things for Kelton's birthday. It was fun to walk around and look at everything. We couldn't find decorations for his cake though (which we heard would be very difficult and it seems bakeries do not yet have a Backyardigan cake in their cake books) so we headed over to Kohl's. Dakota had remembered they had a big Backyardigan's toy section and she was right! We hit pay dirt with the pirate ship and two characters. It couldn't be more perfect because Kelton was really torn between The Backyardigan's theme and a pirate's theme. :)

When we returned home, Dakota started dinner and I went to work on the invitations. I'm really happy with how it turned out and I can't wait to see it when it comes back from the printers.

While I was trying to finish up the invitations, Dakota was watching over the kids. Or...........was she? I heard giggling and laughter which I *thought* was supervised fun but alas, no such luck. Want to know what happens when you leave temporary tattoo loving children alone with a bag of dinosaur tattoos? They apparently think it is big, big fun to cover their bodies with them...and yes, that does include their faces. *sigh*


In case you are wondering, vegetable oil does a fine job of removing them from faces. The rest of them we will just let come off over the next week or so. Silly little kids. :)

After that it was bath and bedtime for the tired kiddos. We stayed up to watch a few shows and then we hit the hay, too. Kaylen's sleep is still all over the place so I had a rocky night (again, still...whichever) but all in all, we had a great weekend! I am so loving the fact that this semester we have two family days in a row (Saturday and Sunday). The three previous semesters, Dakota spent Saturdays studying so we only had family time on Sunday. This is soooo much better! :)

Today dawned looking very much like spring! Since we needed a few quick items from the grocery store, I decided that we would walk. Well....I walked. Kaylen rode in the stroller and Kelton rode his bike. We had a blast! It isn't too far, about a 20 minute walk each way and Kelton was so darn proud of himself. Walks have just become a whole lot easier, I think! At least until Kaylen decides she wants to ride her bike too. But for now, I think I see more walks in our future.

When we arrived home there was a message from a friend of mine. I called her back and she wanted to know if Kelton wanted to come over for a playdate with her almost 5 year old. The boys have actually known each other since they were about 2 weeks old - I met Declan's mom when we were both pregnant living north of Seattle. A twist of fate landed us both down here by the time Declan was 19 months old (we moved here when Kelton was 10 weeks)- living about 15 minute apart. Kelton wanted to go play so they stopped by and picked him up. I had just gotten Kaylen down for her nap so with Kelton gone, I was able to enjoy about 30 minutes by myself. When Kaylen woke up, I snuggled her back to sleep and stayed with her until she got a decent (almost) 2 hour nap (since she was in our bed, I turned on The View and was able to watch it completely uninterrupted! WOW!). Hopefully that will turn the tides on the night waking. Time will tell.

After Kaylen woke up she and I headed over to Declan's house. We ended up staying and having a playdate of our own. We were even invited to dinner! After that, it was home, bath, wind down time and bed. Here is a picture I took last week of Kelton and Declan. Look at that size difference! WOWSA! The other pictures are of Kelton holding Graysen, their pet rat. I was pretty proud of him for being so brave and I think the pictures are adorable. :)





PHEW! That was long, wasn't it? Well, the good news is, I think you are up to date now. :)

You are all cordially invited to......

....my pity party. Aren't you the lucky ones. :)

I'm tired. I know that. So therefore it stands to reason that I am not coping very well. The last few nights have been filled with precious little sleep for me and I dare say, probably not a lot for my little girl either. She seems to be in the midst of some gigantic developmental growth. Her verbal skills have grown by leaps and bounds in the past few days (she is cranking out some four and five word sentences and using tons of new words) so I think her mind is just so busy that it is keeping her from staying asleep for longer than oh say...30 minutes at a stretch.

All. Night. Long.

For. Days. On. End.

She talks and cries out seemingly non-stop all night long. She thrashes around in the bed. It's incredibly frustrating to have a lot of patience for it at 2:30 in the morning when it had been going on since way earlier and I still have hours left to go. And naps for her? Forget it. The past three days she was napping for a mere 30 minutes, even though she is no where near ready to give up naps. She wants to sleep, I get that. I want her to sleep. Scratch that....I NEED her to sleep. I NEED sleep.

Ok - so the groundwork is down for you - I'm tired and my darling little one is the reason.

My pity party? I guess I'm just feeling like a loser these days (probably one day less than the sleep deprivation has been happening but whatever...I still feel like a loser). I feel like one of those girls in high school that no one wanted to be friends with who, if given half the chance was probably a really great person. And yet, people couldn't get past her ugly glasses or stringy hair or whatever it was that the popular crowd considered loser material.

I know I'm being sensitive. I get that. But is it really that much to ask that my posts in message groups and boards get responses equal to the responses other people get? Is it *really* necessary for one person, who seems to have an issue with me, to attack every freakin' thing I say when I respond to someone else's posts? I'm just saying that I don't recall an MD following HER name and it did indeed follow the name of the person who gave ME the advice I was passing on (and properly credited). Why do some people feel the need to throw barbs every chance they get? This is exactly why I stopped posting and responding on this particular group for a long, long while (and because of the exact same person) and yet why should *I* have to stop posting? Why does someone else have free reign to be an ass to other people?

I'm just tired. Normally it would (probably) roll off my back but today it really hit me hard. It made me feel like a loser - like I have nothing of value to add. I know that it's not true. I'm not that pathetic but for a while today I was (am) feeling *that* pathetic. And you know the kicker? I usually hit delete whenever I see a posting come through from her. I have no need to read her crap and yet for some reason, I scrolled through it (and her posts are longer than the freakin' Gettysberg Address! I guess she has a lot to be right about.) today to see the "not so subtle" attack on what I had posted.

And...in case that isn't enough..when I start feeling like I'm a loser I start to focus on all the other things that suck. Why don't I have many friends in real life? I used to have so many friends (and therefore know I can make and keep friends) but then, after kids and staying home with them, I just don't. I have a few mommy friends I talk with and one really good friend I talk with daily but I'm missing the connection from having friends you can just call up and say "Hey - what are you doing? Wanna meet for coffee?" I know it all changes once you have kids - I get that. I'm just feeling lonely. Isolated.

And again - I know this all comes from being tired. I just have to get it out.

Please, please, please - let me get some decent sleep tonight. Life always feels, and looks better, when you get sleep.

Sleep.

Totally under-rated.

Seriously.

And on another front - I scrapped tonight. Check it out:

credit: Unamused Boys kit by Jessica Bolton