Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Today's mutterings

The last couple nights have been rough. Aiden hasn't settled down much between midnight and oh, say, 8:00 in the morning...I thought he had made the transition from a nocturnal lifestyle to a... um.... what's the opposite of nocturnal? Diurnal? whatever.... lifestyle... But I was sadly mistaken. So, I am trying to keep him awake more in the evenings so that he'll sleep after midnight... I gave him a bath the other evening and that seemed to help a little... but you can't give a bath every night, and last nights efforts to keep him awake yielded little fruit. It's pretty frustrating. So... what tricks should I try to keep him awake?

We had a roofer guy come to give an estimate on some damage on our roof and Brad was telling me that as soon as he shook hands with him, he knew he liked him because the first thing the roofer did was tilt his head in the direction of one of our neighbors and say, "So what's with the deer?" Here it is - January um... something... the days have lost their numbers in my mind... and the crazy-ugly white reindeer are STILL up on our neighbor's lawn. Actually- they're not even reindeer! They're just big white plastic DEER. A family of three deer, awkwardly frozen in prancing stance in their front yard. For three successive years, they have done their best to ruin the festive Christmas beauty of the neighborhood. ( Well, they probably did their tacky magic for many years before we arrived - but we've only been here for three Christmases.) For eleven months, I almost succeed in repressing their memory, and then December rolls around and they make their unwelcome reappearance. Thankyou, Mr. Roofer, for validating our befuddlement. Sometimes I have had to just swivel down the venetian blinds on the window that looks out on that side of our house because I can't bear to see those strange creatures anymore. Talk about a blight on the landscape. Brad and I considered moving the deer incrementally every night to see if anyone would notice... until one morning, the neighbors would wake up and the deer would be staring in the windows at them...

On a completely different note, have I mentioned yet how wonderful it is not to be pregnant anymore? I can actually get up off the couch or out of bed without massive effort ( which is good because it seems like I'm constantly getting out of bed...Funny, I don't seem to be ever GOING to bed, I'm just always getting out of it), I can start wearing some normal clothes again, I can completely wash my ankles and feet, I can pick things up off the floor, I can look at myself in the mirror and not mistake myself for a bedraggled white manatee ( now I just look plain bedraggled) and I can actually wear SHOES now. I had almost forgotten what life was like before pregnancy. And now instead of people looking at me in the store and asking when I'm due, they look at Aiden and we talk about when he was born. It's much better this way.

5 comments:

Claire said...

Well, somebody must have prayed or something, b/c Aiden slept better last night! ( which means I slept better...)

:)

Thanks!

Unknown said...

Unfortunately, I don't think there are any magic answers, but here's what worked for us.

We were trying to keep Maisy awake more during the day so she would sleep at night (in those first couple of weeks). But I think she needed MORE sleep. So I let her sleep whenever she wanted to, and that's when she started sleeping through the night. There's lots of info out there that the better they sleep during the day, the better they sleep at night.

Prayer helps. :-) I still pray, every night, that she sleeps through the night.

How's the breastfeeding going? Lansinoh is a miracle if you're experiencing pain. It helped me a lot, especially when I was in tears because it hurt sooooo bad.

Last night, out of the blue, Maisy was awake from 2-4. She hasn't done that since the first month. I hope it's not a trend.

Anonymous said...

The house on our right still has their lighted reindeer (the kind that move and look awful in daylight...theirs are actually wood color rather than white, which might be an improvement, but I haven't decided) out. Hooray for festivities and all, but we ARE 1/3 of the way through January.

Congrats on feeling normal again! Now you're just sleep deprived. And next time I'm washing my ankles I will think of you and not take it quite so much for granted.

ljm said...

9 months has been the magic number for me...that's when mine start sleeping through the night. Ha, ha...not what you wanted to hear? Wish I had an answer.

kw said...

Had a good cackle over the tilted head and the deer of course...