How to get more sleep.

For years after I had kids, this question would have applied to me and Daddy J. For those who may not know, Miss D was a terrible sleeper until well after two years old. As in she never, not once, slept through the night until she was about 2.5. Ugh.

Now the littles were better sleepers as babies than Miss D was, but there were still two of them, so even a good baby that only wakes up once or twice a night is a PITA when there are two of them waking up once or twice a night each. Throw in a few wakeups where one woke the other one up and, well, you get the idea.

This post, however, is not about me getting more sleep. I do keep waiting for that magical time in old age when you no longer stay up until 3:00 in the morning like a teenager and miraculously wake before the sun happy and well-rested. But this post is how to get more sleep for two of my kids who desperately seem to need it.

First up: M-Moo. This is a child who likes to sleep. If left alone, she will easily sleep 12-15 hours a night. She would also, if she didn't have active sisters, nap at least an hour a day, maybe 2. But right now she's getting barely 12 hours of sleep at night and no naps. And she is my most whiny, crying child. Now maybe she would still be whiny and crying if she got more sleep, but on those rare occasions when she manages to sleep in past oh-dark-thirty (when her early bird sister, K-Wiggles naturally arises, full of piss and vinegar), or on those days when she takes a 2 hour nap in the car in the afternoon (like yesterday), she is a totally different child. More resilient, more happy, so much less apt to cry at the drop of a hat, and way less whiny.

But I can't figure out how to get her more sleep. My only idea has been to revert to car naps and have lunch in the car for the littles every day at 12:00 noon when I pick 'em up from school, then drive around until M-Moo falls asleep, which usually doesn't take long. It's an option, I suppose.

K-Wiggles seems to need the least sleep of anyone. She definitely bows her head come 6:00 p.m. and is ready for bed, and gets totally hyper if we keep her up later than that. But she's always up at just before 6:00 a.m., 7:00 at the absolute latest. And she almost never naps, even in the car, unless it's really late, like 5:00 ish, in which case I think it's just that she would go to bed for the night that early if I could organize it!

My next problem is Miss D. Miss D begged and begged to be a "lunch buncher" and in January I finally relented. So now, M-Th, Miss D goes to school from 9:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. It's a long day. It just is. And she comes home tired. And it gets worse as the week progresses. By Thursday afternoon, she's a sobbing mess. This afternoon she must have broken into spontaneous tears totally out of proportion to some very minor event at least 5 times that I can think of. The kind of "dissolve-into-mama's-arms" tears over something little tells me that she's just exhausted and can't cope.

But I have no idea what to do. Obviously a nap is not going to happen when she gets home at 3:30. And if it did, I think she'd be up so late at night that I couldn't cope! She has only one extra-curriculur activity during the week and that's 1/2 hour of karate on Wednesday. I honestly don't know how these 4 year old kids do it who are in dance twice a week, swimming once a week, skiing on the weekends, etc. Miss D just can't hack that kind of schedule (never mind that I won't do that to myself either!).

Miss D goes to bed most nights between 6:00 and 7:00 and I think she gets up about 7:00. I have no ideas for helping my kids sleep in in the morning. K-Wiggles is up at crack of dawn and she knows to get herself a snack and put on a quiet movie. But somehow the other girls just know that she's up and they pop up too even though they could use an extra hour of sleep.

I thought if I posted all this out I'd see some magical solution, but I don't. I guess we'll keep hammering on the early bedtime and hope for the best. Now aren't you glad you read all this?!

Feeling too much like a grownup.

It's been a bad couple of months in the grown-up news department. Thankfully nothing too bad in my immediate family, but my friends, both IRL and online, seem to have had a rash of heavy stuff happening. Between divorces, infidelity, and hospitalizations, the holidays were very rough for some of my friends. And now drug rehab, a domestic violence situation, unemployment, foreclosure, and a death in the family are making things very difficult for some people I care a lot about.

I can't help feeling blessed that I'm not dealing with anything nearly so serious -- though I do wish my kids would stop peeing on the floor! It sometimes feels like I'm way too much of a grownup just knowing that these things are happening in the world, never mind happening to some people who are very important to me. I wish there was more I could do to be helpful or to ease their burdens or make it all go away, even for just a little bit. It's a helpless feeling watching people you care about go through tough times.

*sigh* Sorry for the heavy post, but I just got a lot of bad news today and it's bumming me out. Tomorrow will be another day, right?

Sorry for the posting slump lately.

Things have been, well, busy. Truth-be-told, I've been uninspired to blog the last week or so. I haven't had time to take any pictures, and even if I did, I haven't had any time to upload them or edit them. I always feel the blog is better when there are pics.

So what have we been up to? The girls went back to school on Monday. Their Uncle Marc from Michigan flew in on Saturday and has been entertaining the girls to no end. Too bad the snow has been totally crappy for his visit. He's been snowboarding anyway, but it has definitely not been the best conditions.

As tradition dictates, Uncle Marc, Daddy J and I went out for Sushi on Monday night. We went to a new place that just opened a while back that we haven't tried before. It didn't bode well when we were the only patrons in the place and the TV was on an blaring! But we asked them to turn it off and put on some music, then some more patrons showed up and it got better. The food was absolutely fantastic. Marc and I both love sashimi, and the portions at this place were absolutely gigantic! And the rolls we had were really good too. And finally, the place passed Daddy J's ultimate test -- the chef created a special non-menu roll for us that was terrific! All that and the price was about half what we're used to paying on our sushi pigouts!

Today was the Chinese luncheon at the girls' school. They have been studying Asia this month. Daddy J signed up to cook the stir fry for the luncheon (ok, I signed him up, but he went). I bought him a new electric wok for Valentine's Day so he would have one for the luncheon (he loves to stir fry, and the electric gets so much hotter than a wok on the stove). The kids chopped all the vegetables and Daddy J stir fried away. Other families brought homemade potstickers, homemade spring rolls, a chicken dish, rice, green tea, and a bunch of different sauces. The kids seemed to really enjoy it!

The kids have also been studying the orchestra this month, so I got tickets to take Miss D to the Lollipops concert that the Utah Symphony puts on for kids in March. We'll go early and go to the "instrument petting zoo" that they set up in the lobby to let the kids try the different instruments before the concert. The theme is "cowboys," so it should be interesting.

And that's about all that's been going on, besides work, which you definitely don't want to hear about. There you go... three days of posts, all in one post!