Back on Schedule

It's school time! 

 The kids have been giddy with excitement and now it's finally here.

There were some bumpy parts, getting classes and teachers worked out.  Joseph was originally put in a Spanish class, but switched because he doesn't speak Spanish.  Then he got put back in the Spanish class and had to be switched again.  In the end, he's in a dual-language class, so he'll learn some Spanish after all.

Elena had a teacher, but got moved to make room for all the new kids, but that teacher wasn't G/T certified and Elena really needs a G/T teacher so she got switched back.  When we got to school, on Monday, we had to find out which of the three possible teachers she'd be with.  I'm glad we talked with all of them at Meet the Teacher, last week, so we already knew what to expect and she could walk right in and get settled.

 It's so nice to have my days on a schedule, again.  I know when I need to get up, when I can run errands, when to have dinner ready, and when we all need to be in bed.  Sometimes, things get hectic, but I know what's going on and I feel like I've got a handle on things.

And none of that would be possible without this:

 Right before school started (seriously--Saturday or Sunday night) Lucy decided that it would be OK if she settled down to sleep at 10 or 11pm, instead of the 1 or 2am that she'd been doing all summer.  With that, she also started sleeping through the night, most nights, then wakes up for a light breakfast and goes back to sleep.

 

 I have gotten mountains of laundry washed, folded and put away, the last two mornings.  I feel so productive for the first time in months.


Why laundry?  Well, 1: the kids were out of not-school clothes, and 2: since the house is relatively empty I decided to just stick James in underpants, apply lots of juice, hang out in the bathroom all day, and deal with whatever laundry results.  It's past time and it just needs to be done.  He kept asking for a diaper, the first day, but after his initial frustration of having Mom say No has resigned himself.  He does pretty well if he's naked, which is what did the trick for Joseph, so we'll see.

Green

I had been hoping to post pictures of field day but Elena spent the better part of last week at home with a series of fevers and general yuckiness. In fact, she managed to miss all (and only, poor girl) the days that there was something cool going on at school. On Tuesday she missed awards and her fever didn't go down until late that night so she had to miss field day on Wednesday, too. She went back to school Thursday but woke up crying with a 102 degree fever and the dry heaves at 4am on Friday and had to miss the bounce houses. Sigh...

Anyway, we do still have interesting stuff to share. We found a caterpillar in the back yard and Elena decided she wanted to watch it turn into a butterfly. I decided this would be OK and would nicely follow up their recent science unit about butterfly life cycles. So this is her caterpillar. She named it Green.


I dug out my old fish tank and Jonathan found it some sticks and leaves to hang out on, and we've had a really fun time watching it eat. It tried privet and elm and tomato but seemed to prefer basil. It's probably going to be an ugly brown moth but we're OK with that. All the excitement has been very tiring, though, and she's taken a ton of naps, this week. She even fell asleep while draped over the exercise ball.

Green is currently curled up in a tomato leaf, wrapped in a silky little cocoon. I need to remember to take more pictures.

No Wonder He Falls Asleep on the Floor

Sure enough, this was Joseph this afternoon.

I woke up at 4:30am to the sound of Joseph trying to get Elena to wake up and help him with something. I got up and discovered that not only was Joseph out of bed, he had turned on the lights throughout most of the house. I told him to go back to sleep and he pitched a fit. "Binty!" (blankie) was the only word I could make out. So I went downstairs to fetch it. This is when I found out why Joseph needed Elena's help. Joseph had turned on the stairwell/upper hallway, living room, dining room and kitchen lights; stripped off his PJs, the zip-up feety kind, and left them on the kitchen floor; been into the cat food and relocated the food and water bowls; scattered a dress pattern and fabric pieces from my sewing table all across the living room; eaten half a loaf of bread; then found my personal stash of candy, but couldn't get it open. All this at four o'clock in the morning.

Since it was two days later, I don't think it's related to the 18 straight hours that he slept Sunday afternoon to Monday morning. Either way, he's a weird kid.

Praying for Naps

I've been trying to get Elena on some sort of regular schedule, to bring order to our lives and (hopefully) make potty training easier when I get to enforcing that sort of thing (we're doing diaper changes with a potty-sit in the middle--advice?). So, for the last three days I've continued naps for both children, in the afternoons. Since Elena and Joseph like each other so much, though, I have to seperate them or neither gets any sleep. That means Elena naps in my bed. To get her settled down, we do a naptime routine similar to the one at night, complete with a fun song and a prayer. Elena loves to pray, so she's been getting lots of practice, lately. Yesterday, she said almost the entire prayer by herself: "(prompt: *Dear Heavenly Father...*)Dear Heavenly Father, so He can hear you; (*thank Thee for...*) Thank-ee Mommy, Thank-ee Joseph, Thank-ee Simon,Thank-ee Gwamma and Popa, Thank-ee Uncle Rick and Aunt Sherry, Thank-ee Mena and Mommy feel better, (*please bless...*) Pease-bess Mommy and Mena feel better, Pease-bess Daddy at work, (*in the name of Jesus Christ...*) Amen!" In to bed she went, and came out two minutes later. She wanted me to boot Simon from the room. A few minutes later, I hear my door open, but nothing else. When Joseph woke up an hour later, I saw that my door was still open, so I poked my head in and saw this.


Yes, those are my glasses.

So, for all you relatives out there, Elena remembers you in her prayers, at one point or another.

Superstitions

Today was pretty good, all things considered (Elena and I both have a cough), because I absolutely insisted on naps for both children today. At bedtime, after a long relaxing bath, we sat on the stairs singing, since Joseph was already asleep. When I tucked her into bed I kissed her head and slipped out the door. Then, just before I closed the door, I whispered "I'll see you tomorrow." I say the same thing every night. Somewhere inside, I'm afraid that if I don't say it I *won't* see them tomorrow.

So here is my question: does anyone else have superstitions? Is there something you just have to do or else you just don't feel right?

Half-Way

Happy Half-Birthday to Elena! She's officially 2 1/2 today--that's halfway to Sunbeam age at 3, and also halfway to Kindergarten age at 5. How scary is that? My baby girl is getting so big, that it's a sweet reminder of how young she really is when she needs her Mommy in a crisis. Last night she went to sleep just fine but then woke up crying every half hour from 9 until midnight. Finally I decided I just had to sit up with her since she'd only sleep curled up on someone's shoulder. I tried to sleep, but I have to say that butterfly chairs are the most shockingly uncomfortable pieces of furniture when you've got a sleeping toddler on you. Somewhere around 2:30am Elena was able to settle down and I could find my own bed. Because of that, today's pretty low-key.

I guess I'm not that different from Elena. I was *that* close to calling my own Mom, last night. So, to expand on my tradition of calling my Mom on my own birthday to thank her for all she's done for me, I'd like to say Thanks Mom for being there for me when I've needed you the most. I hope I'm never too old for one of your hugs to make me feel better.

Greet The Dawn

Joseph decided he was done sleeping an hour and a half ago, so now I sit here typing and enjoying the early morning sunshine that is now pouring in my living room window like a fall of honey across a golden carpet. I'm not sure why lack of sleep makes me feel poetic, but it's worked before. There's something about those first rays of dawn that makes one a bit introspective as well. Bit of a shame I'm too tired to make coherent thoughts, but the peace and quiet is refreshing. Most of my quiet time is late at night and the darkness, while good for many things, doesn't have that certain something that lends itself toward the Zen moments I so crave. I know that the solution is to go to bed earlier and sleep better so I actually want to get up early, instead of merely enduring it as a necessary evil, but I'm not the only factor in this equation (see earlier post: "Not Much Sleep"). At least I'm getting a new mattress, soon. Maybe if the sleep I do get is better things will even out.

Not Much Sleep

I don't know how long it's been since I slept through the night. I should be old enough to do that, right? My children should be old enough, shouldn't they? "Shoulds" aside, they don't. Or Joseph doesn't. He's waking up and screaming anywhere between one and four times a night. If he weren't able to pull up on stuff it wouldn't be so bad, but it's really hard to remember that you do know how to get back down from there at 3am. And to top it off, once I slip Joseph back into bed after his usual 6am feeding (hoping he'll nod off for at least an hour, maybe two) and as soon as I get comfortable in mine, Elena wakes up with a blood-curdling shriek and groggily yells something at our cat (whom I could have sworn was not in there). And yes, she's done this three or four times in the last week. Combine that with Jonathan's school and work schedules (he gets home after 10pm nearly every night) and I'm just exhausted. Which do I cut out, though? I have to take care of my children, but do I do it when I'm sleep-fuzzed, or do I give up the only free time I have with my husband so that I can get a few extra hours of sleep? I'll need to figure it out soon, though, because Urban Design is a demanding field and architects' hours aren't much better than what we're keeping now. Anyway, here's one of the faces I wake up to every morning.