Sunday, July 31, 2011

Two years, seriously? Good thing I have no expectations






I really should change the title of my blog to Parenting without Expectations, but it just doesn't have the same appealing 'ring' to it. I fully expect that I'm yet to be discovered and certainly the title of my blog is a real eye catcher.


I'm not sure how I ended up letting this blog go for two years, but life happens. A couple years, a few states away, and two toddlers later... I'm back. I can't make any promises that I wont disappear again for several years, but tonight I am fully here. I'm all yours. Well, that's not true... I'm all theirs. My husband and I have already negotiated who will be taking which child tonight. He'll take Thing #2. She'll be up by 11:00 pm. She's getting way too attached to mommy, who is now working full time and is WAY too tired to be up for an hour in the night. I'll take Thing #1. Hopefully he'll sleep through the night, although it's hit or miss. Last week was nightmares, this week it's vomiting. Honestly, it's a crapshoot. My husband and I wake up in the morning and instead of the good morning kisses and greetings we used to enjoy, it's a game of who had the worse night. It goes something like this:


Me: "Did you put the coffee on?"


Him: "Not yet, Julia just woke up."


Me: "Nice, I've been up since 5:30.. glad you slept in."


Him: "Since when is getting up at 6:15 sleeping in? Besides, she was up from 2 to 3:30. How did Gabe sleep?"


Me: "He slept on the floor again, ended up waking himself up when he rolled under his bed and got stuck. I'm exhausted, can you put the coffee on?"


I'll never forget when Gabe was a newborn and one of my girlfriends told me about her six year old who was sleeping in her room. My self control must have escaped me with the placenta and without a filter I exclaimed, "What the fuck? Your kid isn't sleeping through the night at six?" She smiled with that 'knowing' mother look and calmly replied, "No". Clearly not satisfied with that answer I asked, "Will I ever sleep normally again?" Her response: "You will sleep normally again, but it will be a new normal." Um.... a new normal? What the hell does that mean, I wondered? Two years later I finally GET it. New normal = You get used to functioning on 6, maybe 7, hours of interrupted sleep for the rest of your life. Lack of sleep becomes such a way of life that over time it becomes your new 'normal'. Long gone are the days of sleeping 'in'. Alarm clock? Dude, the Things that wake us up in the morning have no 'snooze' button.




Goodnight.










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