A Day In The Life
I should be going to bed right now, but instead I'm sitting at Steve's lappy typing away to kill the time. Ever since Pascha, I've had a hard time going to bed at a reasonable hour. It's meant that I've had very little sleep. Night after night of no more than four or five hours of sleep taxes the soul. This taxation is further compounded when I've got to deal with a crying, feverish, teething toddler who can't fall back asleep on his own. Every night I go to bed and hope that this will be the night that Isaac sleeps for at least four hours straight before waking me up. It happens about once a week these days. The rest of the time, he's up every two to three hours. He didn't even sleep this poorly when he was a newborn! I confess that it is all probably my own lazy fault. See, I weaned him from night nursing a while back, and then he got sick. Well, the universal rule of thumb is that when your kiddos are sick, it is best to nurse them as frequently as they want. Something about the exchange of antibodies while nursing means that they will return to health more quickly and so will the nursing momma. So, I nursed Isaac while he was sick. And, I discovered when he returned to health that I was just sick enough that night weaning him again seemed too hard. And, when I returned to health, I discovered that I was just too lazy to do the work of night weaning him all over again.
It is easier (in the moment, at least) to just wake up, nurse him back to sleep, and fall back asleep within a matter of minutes. Night weaning means that there will be entire hours of the night filled with the sound of his wakefulness until he gets used to the idea that I won't be nursing him at night anymore. Once or twice I decided that I would night wean him again, but then on those nights I woke up to discover that I was already nursing Isaac in a half-asleep dream state. I start nursing him when I'm so sleepy that I don't have the presence of mind to remember that I'm going to wean him! And this keeps happening, night after night after night.
I'm writing all this because I'm tired, and I've been tired, and I've no idea what to do about it. Even though I'd like nothing more than to have most nights occupied with uninterrupted, dream-filled sleep, I also don't seem to have the presence of mind at 3am to do anything about it.
So, today I woke up and went with Reader Mark to some hotel in downtown Austin to hear a sales pitch about a new line of books for girls. They're basically Christian competition for the American Girl series. I walked away with 6 books to read in order to recommend to Reader Mark whether or not he should carry the series. The sales lady promised that they aren't cheesy, sappy, sentimental Christian slush (like most of the so-called "Christian" fiction on the CBA market). These are real literature. Seriously. This series started as a revision of the highly-popular Elsie Dinsmore series written by Martha Finley back in the 19th century. Finley wrote 28 best-selling Elsie Dinsmore books in her lifetime -- books which remained best-sellers for more than sixty years and ran second only to Laura Wilder's Little Home On The Prairie stories. These new revisions take out words that would offend and confuse our modern sensibilities (like saying that the father "fondled" and "caressed" his daughters, or that someone "ejaculated" when they exclaimed something, or those terrifyingly bad words that categorize people's skin color). The new revisions also change up the chapter divisions and even book divisions in order to make everything more palatable. A couple of authors have started writing "spin off" stories from characters in the Elsie series, and those are being published in this new line of books as well.
So, I'll be reading lots of bona fide children's literature over the next few days, and I'll discover whether it's all sap and crap or genuinely good.
And yet, asking me to review the books might be a mistake. When I was a teenage girl, I didn't read fiction aimed at teenage girls (and certainly not "Christian" fiction). I read books like Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Gore Vidal's Lincoln, and Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. When I was twelve, I picked up Dicken's Tale of Two Cities for fun. And when I was thirteen, I read Sartre's Age of Reason. I read Tolstoy's War and Peace when I was 14. Granted, a lot of the content went right over my innocent little head. And, I've since read and re-read all these books many, many times, each time gleaning a deeper appreciation for the story. I imagine that I could spend my whole lifetime plumbing their depths. In any case, I was not any more intelligent or sophisticated than the average pre-teen or teenager. I just liked reading classic literature. It speaks to the heart more profoundly than most so-called children's "literature" does. I guess that's why they're called classics.
So, the revised Ms. Finley has a very high bar she's got to get over in order for me to heartily recommend these books. Let's hope reading them is fun, too. If only I could get paid to do this... Now that would be a fun living!
It is easier (in the moment, at least) to just wake up, nurse him back to sleep, and fall back asleep within a matter of minutes. Night weaning means that there will be entire hours of the night filled with the sound of his wakefulness until he gets used to the idea that I won't be nursing him at night anymore. Once or twice I decided that I would night wean him again, but then on those nights I woke up to discover that I was already nursing Isaac in a half-asleep dream state. I start nursing him when I'm so sleepy that I don't have the presence of mind to remember that I'm going to wean him! And this keeps happening, night after night after night.
I'm writing all this because I'm tired, and I've been tired, and I've no idea what to do about it. Even though I'd like nothing more than to have most nights occupied with uninterrupted, dream-filled sleep, I also don't seem to have the presence of mind at 3am to do anything about it.
So, today I woke up and went with Reader Mark to some hotel in downtown Austin to hear a sales pitch about a new line of books for girls. They're basically Christian competition for the American Girl series. I walked away with 6 books to read in order to recommend to Reader Mark whether or not he should carry the series. The sales lady promised that they aren't cheesy, sappy, sentimental Christian slush (like most of the so-called "Christian" fiction on the CBA market). These are real literature. Seriously. This series started as a revision of the highly-popular Elsie Dinsmore series written by Martha Finley back in the 19th century. Finley wrote 28 best-selling Elsie Dinsmore books in her lifetime -- books which remained best-sellers for more than sixty years and ran second only to Laura Wilder's Little Home On The Prairie stories. These new revisions take out words that would offend and confuse our modern sensibilities (like saying that the father "fondled" and "caressed" his daughters, or that someone "ejaculated" when they exclaimed something, or those terrifyingly bad words that categorize people's skin color). The new revisions also change up the chapter divisions and even book divisions in order to make everything more palatable. A couple of authors have started writing "spin off" stories from characters in the Elsie series, and those are being published in this new line of books as well.
So, I'll be reading lots of bona fide children's literature over the next few days, and I'll discover whether it's all sap and crap or genuinely good.
And yet, asking me to review the books might be a mistake. When I was a teenage girl, I didn't read fiction aimed at teenage girls (and certainly not "Christian" fiction). I read books like Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Gore Vidal's Lincoln, and Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. When I was twelve, I picked up Dicken's Tale of Two Cities for fun. And when I was thirteen, I read Sartre's Age of Reason. I read Tolstoy's War and Peace when I was 14. Granted, a lot of the content went right over my innocent little head. And, I've since read and re-read all these books many, many times, each time gleaning a deeper appreciation for the story. I imagine that I could spend my whole lifetime plumbing their depths. In any case, I was not any more intelligent or sophisticated than the average pre-teen or teenager. I just liked reading classic literature. It speaks to the heart more profoundly than most so-called children's "literature" does. I guess that's why they're called classics.
So, the revised Ms. Finley has a very high bar she's got to get over in order for me to heartily recommend these books. Let's hope reading them is fun, too. If only I could get paid to do this... Now that would be a fun living!