Sleep

One of the hazards of being a parent is that no matter how hard you try, you can never get as much sleep as you need. I'm hoping that it's not a permanent thing, and when my kids are eighteen I'll be able to sleep again, but then there will be so many more things to worry about, I'm trying to be realistic but there are some days that I really miss my sleep.

Now, I'm not trying to get twelve hours of sleep a night. I'd be good with about six, a solid six. I just can't seem to get it. Some nights it's really hard to shut down and get to sleep by midnight. Some nights I can pass out before I hit the pillow, but wake up and can't get back to sleep. And that's just me sabotaging myself. Adding Keith and the kids into the mix and I'm pretty much guaranteed that a good night's sleep is out of the question. And my poor husband has it worse than I do. Keith says he has always had cycles where he sleeps great and feels great when he wakes up. And then he can't sleep, for long periods of time.

My kids, however, have no problems in the sleep department. Mackenzie has the benefit of being three and is able to sleep, her problem is that she chooses not to want to. The word NAP sends her into a convulsion of despair over what she's going to miss while she's sleeping. And she has already mastered the art of the stall at bedtime.

David sleeps like a rock. Has always slept like a rock. He is my idol when it comes to sleep. As a baby, he gnashed his teeth, I'd could hear him from the other room. I'd roll him over and he'd never wake up, just reposition himself and keep right on sleeping. As he got older, the gnashing stopped, and then he picked up snoring. Never knew a child could snore as loud as he does. And though it all, he sleeps. When his dad and I were separating and going through the divorce process, a friend told me to watch his sleep patterns for any restlessness, a sign he wasn't dealing well with our situation. He started biting his nails down to his wrist, but he could still sleep a solid ten hours without waking up. (He doesn't bite his nails anymore.) Keith and I watch him with longing and envy, wishing we could be out ten minutes after we hit the pillow. But for the last two nights, David has been having problems going to sleep. Monday night, it took him almost an hour and a half to fall asleep. He didn't know what to do. He came into our bedroom asking for help. I put him back to bed, rubbed his back and his head, and it was all I could do. Maybe if I had had some more sleep, I could have come up with a better response.

Now that we're back in school, we're up at 6:00 a.m. On school nights,the kids' bedtime is 8:45, pushing either time just causes trouble, and on a good night if Keith and I are in bed by 9:30 p.m.. We're up early for choir practice and the twenty minute drive to school. After school, we have Cub Scouts meetings and guitar lessons, and let's not forget homework. We're still trying to work in gym time, and I have meetings back at school and at church for a variety of reasons, Keith will have occasion to stay at work and take care of things he can't get to during the day, I try my best not to overschedule the family, and yet there are days it just can't be helped. Any wonder why we can't sleep?

Schedules

I am trying to book airline tickets for a flight I don't want to take. For a flight my husband doesn't want to take. Why do I need to purchase said airline tickets? Because the holidays are coming and we know that we need to see our families, and we do want to spend time with them, but the hassle of the holidays, and running from one house to another, with two kids, I could keep going. I'd love to just stay home and cook for my family, but I'm 95% sure that's not going to happen. Add to that, David is with us for Thanksgiving this year (the whole one year here, one year there thing) and I'd really just like to stay home. I'd rather spend ten hours cooking, so it can be eaten in fifteen minutes at home than travel this holiday. We're trying to do the right thing.

But these airline schedules! David won't get out of school until noon on the 24th, so the earliest we could leave comfortably would be 1:30 p.m. (I won't pull David out of school for vacation travel, it sets up a bad precedent for his dad, and I'd hate to have that thrown back at me.) The schedules are for before 1:00 p.m. and then nothing really until 4:00 p.m. which gets us in late to our destination. The return flights aren't that much better, apparently the airlines feel that unless you catch a flight before 7:00 a.m., they're going to have to stick it to you in the pocketbook. So it looks like we'll have to pay top dollar, and travel either really early or arrive really late (the kids'll love it!, the parents will be frazzled!) for a trip we don't want to make.

Don't get me wrong. When I was single, I loved flying early, no one at the airport to get in my way. And I loved coming home late, squeezed in every last ounce of my getaway I did. But with kids there is decidely a much different take on things, it definitely is more along the lines of how-quickly-can-I-there-no-change-of-planes-please-can-I-bring-along-food-and-snacks-for-my-kids? I love our portable DVD player, the flights are much more quiet, for ourselves and our fellow passengers. But we still have to push them through to the gate and through baggage claim.

And the airlines are running only 80% on-time! What is the point of that? If they're going to be twenty minutes late more often than not, then let the flight leave at 1:30 and let me get to the airport without runnng a marathon.

How do you take your life with you?

As I waited in the doctor's office one time, they had a television showing medical videos and information while you waited. A woman came on moaning about her purse and how impractical it was for the things she needed to carry around. She then went on to a really funny comedy bit, pulling things out of that purse to show why she carried a huge bag. An overstuffed makeup bag gave way to a crammed wallet which gave way to a myriad of other things that had no business being in a purse, such as a bag of groceries (snacks), a complete encyclopedia (to answer the millions of questions her kids constantly ask her) and a full size pillow (so she could catch up on her sleep while waiting at soccer practice).

Mackenzie is not yet three and a half, and she is completely potty trained, and has been for about three to four months. Occasional accidents occur, but I haven't had to carry a diaper bag for about three months. When I did carry it, my wallet, keys, etc. went into a pocket in the diaper bag that was earmarked for my stuff only.

Since I've been diaper bag free, I haven't been able to find one purse that would work for me. Men won't find this amazing at all, since all they worry about is their wallet (and I'm currently wallet challenged as well), and they don't understand the logistics of carrying more than a wallet, but my husband has no problem asking me for a baby wipe, then if I've got a snack for our daughter, and if he can borrow a dollar so he doesn't have to break his twenty. How am I supposed to carry all this in one purse?

Today, I am kid free until 3:00 p.m. I'll be leaving here shortly to go to the grocery store and do some miscellaneous errands. I don't need to carry baby wipes, or snacks, or crayons and paper today. So I switch to a smaller purse, not nearly as bulky. That purse will work only today, since the weekend is coming up it will definitely need to hold more things tomorrow. But tomorrow, we're going to the fair. That requires free hands to hold drinks, ride tickets, food, so the backpack purse will be required tomorrow. Not the biggest purse I own, but it will work tomorrow, since I won't have to carry snacks and crayons, but definitely will need to carry baby wipes.

I am the PTA President this year at David's school. I've got two big binders filled with information that I need to know and have at hand, and occasionally will need to take to school for meetings. I've been looking for a decent bag I can use to carry them, something with strong handles and a strong bottom, very practical, nothing flashy or loud, and something that isn't going to cost $200. I'd like to get something I'd use after it doesn't need to carry binders anymore, I don't want a bag just to have a bag. I can't find one. They're not large enough for what I need, or I don't see them lasting more than three months. There are lots of neon greens and bright pinks, those hot colors are popular right now and they're not me. Even designer handbag makers such as Dooney and Bourke are using those colors right now and if I were 25 and single, I could make it work, but then I wouldn't need the bag I'm looking for, right. I'm 37 with two kids and while I don't feel particularly old, I get the idea that the cute pink bag would make me a laughingstock.

Practicality is necessary at this point in my life. The designer bags were great, and although I never had a crocodile bag, I admired them from afar, and the sleek, shiny, handbags were always spectacular. I see the very small, petite bags that can hold a pencil on the arms of a 19 year old and I think "Very cute!" But at that point, at 19, there is only the beginning of a life to be carried around and the small purse works. Could somebody please make a bag for me?

Quiet

One of the nice things about summer being over is that there are more opportunities for quiet. Life seems so fast, so loud and noisy, that it's hard to find the quiet times, and I appreciate them more. With kids, quiet is a rarity, as they try to make themselves heard in the grand scheme of things. Add to that fact that they start at a decibel level somewhere between rock concert and jet airplane, and throw in the TV, the video games, the music, multiply by a few friends and you're on the edge of hearing loss. I'm convinced if I did ever lose my hearing, I'd be OK because I can read my husband's lips from across the room without actually ever hearing what he's saying.

David is at his dad's tonight, and although I'll see him tomorrow after school for a bit, he'll be there this weekend. So I'm down one child. Mackenzie will more than make up for it, but she'll be in preschool tomorrow morning, and with David gone as well, there will be quiet. Will I curl up with a book? Maybe make a fabulous dessert for dinner? I'll be lucky if I can get the laundry done without interrruption.

Time passes...

Haven't written in awhile, I gave up after the time with both my kids became more important. With both home from school, I had lots of projects to do with them, and fun I wanted to have, but this became the nine year old's summer of discovery, and I wasn't ready for it. He went to summer camp by himself for a week, and wants to go for two weeks next year. Sleepovers with friends turned into two days without him every time they happened, and I couldn't tell him no. Plus time over at his dad's, including their eight day vacation, and now I feel like I really didn't see him. As a parent, you try to do the best thing for your kids, and now I'm watching him slowly grow and make those decisions I'd hoped he'd make, and I don't want him to.

School started Monday. Fourth grade. He's rather non-plussed about it. Wasn't he just a kindergartner? He had no problem with me walking him to class, I'm tearing up at the first-day-of-school kiss goodbye. I'm watching him set up his desk (from thirty feet away, where all the other parents were), he's unpacking his new backpack and getting comments from some of the other kids about how cool it is, and he's telling them how he paid for the backpack with his allowance money and saved for it most of the summer. That's my kid? He's asking others he hasn't seen about their summer and that it's nice to see them again. My kid? One of the other moms makes a comment. "David is so grown up now." I want to suddenly grab him and run from the room, go home, sit on the bed under the covers, and curl up watching Thomas the Tank Engine videos or Toy Story together. I've always been aware of the passing of time, and had a healthy respect for it, so I never expected it to slap me in the face.

That night, as we were going through notes from the teacher, and going over class rules and responsibilities, I knew there was something he wanted to talk about, but I couldn't pull it from him. We talked about his day, if he liked where he was sitting, what he was excited about and what he was nervous about and so on. After his shower, and some bedtime reading, it was lights out. He said good night to everyone and crawled into bed, and asked if I would crawl in with him for a minute. Not a strange request, he asks me once or twice a week. But when he told me he didn't think I would, now that he's in fourth grade, I grabbed on and didn't let go, well, when he started turning blue I did.