Silence

I love my kids.

Being a mom is amazingly inspirational. And downright tiring at times.

Right now, when I should be working (yes, at midnight - like I can get anything done when the kids are awake??! ha) I am sitting in my bed with hum of a Baby Einstein (it bores the kids right to sleep each night) DVD playing. Three little girls fill the the empty spaces of the double bed we are currently using in this house. Dan is on a flight back from Atlanta (finally after hours of waiting out storms), and the girls fought hard to sleep with me tonight, and I let them win. I remember wanting to sleep with my mom when my dad was out of town.

All three girls are sleeping. It amuses me to no end how each day pretty much begins and ends in perfection and somewhere in the middle is, well, sometimes perfect, but usually just good. Sometimes bad, sometimes hard, sometimes stressful. I mean come on... the second best thing about parenting are the free giggles.

But no matter how difficult my day is, I hold close the fact that before I go to sleep, I will get to cuddle with three angels. Their horns slide back in their skulls at night for comfortable sleeping and the halos perch just above their sweet little heads. I know that one of the last things I will see everynight are rosy sleep flushed cheeks. Normally I then get to skip to my room and enjoy silence, but tonight I'll take the light snoring and bumps.

The girls sleep just like they live.

Julia likes to be bundled up in her blankets. She throws her self around dramatically in her sleep, and frequently shouts out dire warnings or professions of love.

Anna can't be restrained by mere cloth. She throws her blankets aside (thank goodness for those soft, warm fleece jammies). She goes and goes and goes until she passes out. She sleeps as hard as she plays. She rarely moves but when she does it's usually to toss herself out of bed. Even in her sleep she's a danger to herself.

Em. Well, the best way to describe Em's sleep is that she doesn't do much of it. She's unpredictable even in sleep. One night she'll sleep 10 hours, the next night she'll be up every hour from 8pm-8am. She can sleep like a rock or throw herself about. She can sleep through barking dogs and accidental smoke detector alarms, but can wail awake with just the quietest padding of the cats feet across the carpeted floor.

I should be sleeping, but the silence is alluring. I don't realize how loud they are as a trio until they do finally stop for the day.

Ahhhh...

Halp a sistah out...

I've had a couple of you email asking for the name of the white noise CD we used - and so I thought I'd post it here in case anyone else was interested too. I personally love it because it doesn't have any of those scary musical tones like some of the others do - I'm a bit of a 'fraidy cat and can't handle those!

It is a download from itunes - Sleep 6 from Ambient Music Therapy. It's a combo - one is white noise rain sounds and one is just white noise, which sounds like either static from a radio (without the spooky interference - YES I watched the movie - stupid, stupid, stupid me!) or a fan running.

YES!

Last night I fell sleep at midnight after taking care of Julia and her cough and fever (humidifier and ibuprofen)...

I turned on the new white noise CD that I bought from itunes - it's the latest attempt to get Em to sleep for more than 1 hour at a time...

Well -------- it worked!!

I woke up at 4:30am to Julia coughing. I had to make a mad dash to Em to see if she was still alive (now that she's laying on her belly to sleep I am freaked out)... and she was. Just... sleeping. SLEEPING. STILL. She slept for another hour. I nursed her for 20 minutes and she went back to sleep until her sister woke her up at 8am. That means she got up two times between 9-8am. That is about 6 times less than normal.

WHOO HOO!

JINX

Ok - I know by putting this out there in the world, I'm jinxing myself but - I think we may have turned the corner on the baby waking every 45 minutes all night long...

Last night she was asleep by 10pm and only woke up twice until 8am. that's not bad for her... normally she'd be up 6-8 times during that time frame.

I'm cutting out caffeine for the most part... and it's helping. I rarely had caffeine in my pregnancies, and then while I nursed Julia and Anna. I started out not having any with Em since I know it can be a trigger for reflux issues and colic. Then after many sleepless nights I slowly gave in to the drug to get me by. I didn't realize how much I was relying on caffeine until I suffered from a terrible withdrawal headache last week.

So - the last 3 nights Emma is sleeping much better and I'm trying to cut back on my caffeine intake - and not have any after 3pm.

Once we get a pattern going (which we won't after I type this and jinx us) we'll start working on cutting out one of those night feedings.

Good Morning Starshine...

This morning involved getting all 5 of us Dough people up and dressed and out the door by 8am. For most of the world this is probably a normal, even mundane thing. For us... an exercise in precise planning and execution.

So this is how it all played out - I refused (and adamantly so I might add) to get my butt out of bed by 745am. This would be because I was able to go to sleep for the first time at 740am. Not kidding. Dan was up and showered and mostly dressed. This is a big thing for Dan to be the first one ready.

Julia was next up and headed downstairs and proceeded to dress herself out the 4t box of clothes that was accidentally brought into the house when we unloaded the moving van this weekend. Nevermind that she was a 4T approximately 3 years ago.

I get out of bed and hand the baby to Dan. I grab the closest clothes to me (last ones in the hamper) and struggle to gain the coordination it takes to get dressed while standing. At this time, now that I'm vertical, I realize that the entire left side of my head is on fire. Oh goodie. This means that the combination of zero sleep and sinus pressure is resulting in a migraine. Lovely.

Dan takes Emma Leigh and Anna and carries them downstairs. Anna goes back to sleep on my comfy new recliner and Em happily bounces in her new favorite thing on Earth - the Jumperoo.

I redress Julia in clothes that fit her, decide that Em and Anna's pjs are good enough for the commute from house to car and back again.

Make sure Julia has a portable breakfast, a snack and lunch money. We all load into the car and drive Dan to work. No traffic and we made good time.

Now - even though I have to pass Julia's school to get back to the house, she really wants to ride the bus. (I'm definitely not unhappy about this since riding the bus means I do not have to unload all three kids and drag them to the front door for drop off and then load the two car seat challenged kids back in.) Looking at the time I realize we will be cutting it awfully close. As we turn the corner to the main road outside our neighborhood - OH NO! The bus. I notice she has her turn signal on, so I too turn left. Then I stalk (in reverse) her to her next stop and beg her to take my kid. Of course she does... and the remaining three of us head back home.

It's time for breakfast for the little two, change diapers, get dressed and then head right back out as Em has her appoitnment with the specialist this morning. That pretty much means my nap is screwed, I mean, the girls naps.