Why Didn't I do this Earlier?

Charlotte is sleeping through the night! I read a bunch of baby sleep books before she was born, and though they didn't agree on what age a baby can sleep through the night, I seem to recall that all of the suggested ages were waaay younger than 1 year old. (Although I guess Charlotte is really only 11 months).  I've put off sleep training because she's been sick, teething, blah blah, excuses, but since we are leaving the girls with their Nana and Poppy in two weeks, I decided I needed to get serious.

Last week she woke up at her normal time of 11:30 p.m. I knew she wasn't hungry, as I had stuffed her at dinner so I wouldn't be worried about that, I knew she wasn't poopy because she didn't sound angry. In fact, if I were to do a little voiceover to her cries, it would sound like this..."Mom, why aren't you getting me? Usually when I wake up and cry I get a reward of milk or a long cuddle. Why am I not being rewarded for waking up? I'm so cute, you know you want to pick me up..." Yes, I know she doesn't need anything at night at this age, but it's so hard to resist a crying baby. That's why I went in every 10 minutes to give her a little cuddle then put her back down. "I'm here, I hear you, I'm just not going to give you a prize for waking up in the middle of the night." Of course, psyching Charlotte out by picking her up only to put her back down made her really mad, but it was more to reassure me than for her. After doing this a couple times she calmed down and went to sleep. Elapsed time? 40 minutes tops.

The next night Charlotte slept through the night. For me, sleeping through the night for kids is the solid 12 hours they need--7:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. Success? Not yet. The next two nights she woke up at 11:30 p.m. again. Old habits are hard to break. I just held her for a minute, sang her a song one night, then put her back down. Five minutes tops.

Now we are here a week later, and she is solidly sleeping through the night. I'm still pleasantly surprised when I wake up in the morning refreshed and energized. And I can't help but wonder...how many months ago should I have done this? How many nights was I needlessly disturbed from my sweet sweet slumber because I didn't have the gumption to listen to her cry for half an hour? Parents these days. So soft.

Epic New Year

Sammy at Cici's current age (14 mo.)

The year 2012 didn't begin in a very epic way. The non-epic-ness of our New Year celebration, which basically involved going to sleep, was topped only by the non-epic-ness of my parents' celebration, which involved reading a Nancy Drew book together. To be fair, Austin and I have been dealing with a rash of sleepless nights (Thanks kids!) which is why we turned in early. Good thing, too, because we were woken up by Cici around 1:30 on New Year's Day. At least she wasn't up at midnight--supposedly whatever you're doing at midnight is what you'll be doing the rest of the year, and I can't handle another sleepless year.

On a more positive note, my goal for this year is to do something for my mind, body, and spirit every day. Something fun I've been doing for my mind is memorizing the countries of the world. (Hopefully I'm not the only nerd out there who thinks this is fun.) I found this free website for country quizzes and a pronunciation guide for countries like Kyrgyzstan. For my body, Austin and I have jumped on the P90X train and are shredding our way to fitness !!! while stuffing our bodies with more vegetables and protein than we've eaten in the past year combined. On the spiritual side, I want to have meaningful personal prayer, scripture study, and one act of service each day.

I'm excited for this year. I'm excited for my plan: mind, body, spirit, because it can be as simple or as complicated as I'm feeling up to for the day. This year may not have started out in a grandiose way, but I have a feeling it's going to be an epic 12 months. I'll keep you posted!

ASBC: I Should Have Gone On Vacation

"People will suffer less when they do not disrupt annoying experiences, and enjoy pleasurable experiences more when they break them up. Any interruption, they guessed, would keep people from adapting to the experience, which means that it would be bad to break up annoying experiences but useful to interrupt pleasurable ones (Ariely 177-78)."

This means we should have gone on a cool vacation instead of buying a house. I've adapted to my house now; I guess I no longer get as much pleasure out of it as I did when we first bought it. Anyway, when we first moved in, I wanted to paint everything and buy furniture and artwork to fill up my beautiful house, Extreme Makeover style. But if I read correctly, I will get more joy out of slowly redecorating my house, room by room, year by year, because I'll be breaking up the pleasure and enjoyment of buying new things. That's good, because I can't afford Extreme Makeover.

One more personal insight. My intuition tells me to wait a while before we have another baby, otherwise I'll go crazy from the sleepless nights. Reading Chapter 6 tells me my intuition is wrong. I should have another child very quickly (if possible) because I've adapted to the disagreeable experience of getting no sleep. I guess you could go the other way and say welcoming a new baby into the family is a pleasurable experience (which it certainly is) so you should break it up. However, I see my parents trying to adapt to taking care of small children after so many years of grown up kids and am leaning towards grouping my years as a crazy woman together.

Anona's Skin Care Regimen

Makes you feel smart to say "regimen," doesn't it? Anyway, after a couple bad face days I decided it was time to update my skin care regimen. I did some research so I wasn't just pulling things off the shelf.

Old regimen: splash water on my face at night every once in a while.

New regimen:

1.) Wash with this every night. It doesn't dry my face out and it takes off eye makeup too, so I don't have to use seperate makeup remover.

2.) Lotionize with this every morning. It has sunscreen in it, keeps my face moisturized ALL DAY (drying out is a big problem here in the West) and feels lightweight. Perfect to go under my non-exsistent makeup.

3.) Scrub with this once a week. The internet said one can also use a mixture of brown sugar and olive oil, but what with doing the baking soda shampoo every once in a while, my bathroom and pantry are starting to look alike, so I just bought the scrub. I admit: I haven't actually used this one yet. Felicity has given me like 15 total hours of sleep all week. Exfoliating is not number one on my "To Do in My Spare Time" list. But I like that you can leave it on as a mask as well as scrub with it. Apparently, a deep exfoliate once a week will get rid of gross dead skin cells, which is why I bought it.

My face feels awesome. All of these are in the face care aisle at Target. Next move, save up money and buy make up.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Ay, there's the rub. Felicity's been going through a growth spurt (or teething? Or messing with Mom) and has been up every two or three hours for the past week. Back into survival mode for me! The weird thing is, a lot of times when I don't get enough sleep I start having dreams about...homework. The other night (in my dream) Austin and I both had papers due--I checked his and it wasn't long enough and wasn't very well organized. Mine involved a three-part thesis followed by a sequential explanation, etc. I didn't actually have time to finish my paper, because Felicity woke up. Drat! It would have been an A paper for sure!

I think my sleep deprived brain dreams up homework for me because it thinks I'm back in college when I never got any sleep. That's my theory anyway. Maybe I should write a paper on that...

The Wake Up Call

Through a vague haze of sleep I dimly sensed a dark presence hovering silently next to our bed. "Austin!" I nudged my husband. A strangled groan was my only response; I resigned myself to my fate. "Come on, Sammy, let's go back to bed." 4:30 a.m. is just a bit too early to let your children stay up.

Yesterday I came up with the ingenious idea of plugging Christmas lights into a timer in Sammy's room and telling her she couldn't get up unless the lights were on. It worked out pretty well this morning. Yes, I was feeling pretty crafty until I read my sister's blog.... making homemade chocolates with all the neighbor kids, treasure hunts with the family, crafts and murals and field trips with the kids--how can I compete? The answer is, I can't. I'm not getting enough sleep at night, I'm lazy, and I think I lost my imagination somewhere around age 12.

I can see it now--the family reunion where my kids realize that they got the boring parents. "Can we go live with Aunty Anna?" "No! Now go watch some tv or something."

On a more serious note, I am a bit worried about having lost my imagination, so I'm working on the book again. Just to prove that I still can tell a story.

She's still awake

I wish my baby was asleep. She'll go silent in her room for two or three minutes, and right when I think I'm home free she starts screeching. Granted, she gave me the gift of a three hour nap today, but I figured she was catching up on last night--when she stayed up 2 1/2 hours past bedtime. I like to blame her weird sleeping changes on getting new teeth, but could it be that she's just messing with me? There seems to be method in her madness.