(no subject)
Yesterday was my birthday. My husband took the day off work, and we piled the kids in the car to go see the redwoods. We've lived a stone's throw away from this old growth redwood forest for years now and have never bothered to go see it. (Mostly because it is notorious for having little to no parking, and we're crabby about that sort of thing.)
The drive is down this incredibly windy road through the hills. Just thinking about it kind of sets my stomach turning. I drove, which helped, and we made it both there and back again without a single heave on my part. We even managed to get a parking space. (The LAST one. In the overflow lot!)
It was nice. Evan was very impressed, walking around yelling, "Whoa! Big tree!" It was overcast and cool, but not cold. Just right for getting a hot cup of tea at the cafe and sipping it while strolling down the hiking path. Somewhere along the way, Ryan lost a Ninja Turtle sock, which I was never able to track down again. But such is life these days. I leave a trail of baby socks everywhere I go.
I am still off wheat, dairy, and soy. So my birthday "cake" left something to be desired. You might mistake it for cake if you'd never had cake before in your life. It was pretty flat and spongey. I ate it anyway.
Ryan, by the way, is 8 months old now. Blows my mind a little. It seems like it is going so much faster this time. He is army crawling, but not cross-crawling. I'm okay with that. The longer he holds off on being able to race across the room, the better.
He still sleeps like crap. Up all the time at night. Sometimes he doesn't even need anything. He just cries out in his sleep, then grumbles for a bit and drifts back off. But it still wakes ME up, and I lay there awake every time waiting to see if he'll go back to sleep on his own or require some form of soothing. Because if he fails at going back to sleep and ends up wide awake...then it is an hour long ordeal to get him down again. So I have to step in before it goes too far.
I'm not sure what to do about it. I don't like the idea of sleep training. But I don't like getting up four times a night either. I'm okay with co-sleeping and letting him nurse all night, but I'd much MUCH rather not do that. I know when I take him in for his next check up, the pediatrician is going to ask about sleep and I'm going to get the TALK again when I admit that he's still getting up so often.
Mostly, I am surviving. Days are so packed, I lose track. My mom called me a week or so ago to talk, and told me she hadn't heard from me in a long time. And I was surprised. I hadn't realized I'd fallen out of contact with her. I just sort of make it from one moment to the next. I am hoping that over the summer someone (either my mom or my mother-in-law) will be willing to come out and visit us for a nice, solid stretch of time. More than the usual week. That way I can get my feet under me and stop just treading water all the time.
This all sounds really negative. But I'm actually pretty happy. Not in terms of contentment, but...fulfilled, I guess. My life is full of purpose. And that's good for me right now.
The drive is down this incredibly windy road through the hills. Just thinking about it kind of sets my stomach turning. I drove, which helped, and we made it both there and back again without a single heave on my part. We even managed to get a parking space. (The LAST one. In the overflow lot!)
It was nice. Evan was very impressed, walking around yelling, "Whoa! Big tree!" It was overcast and cool, but not cold. Just right for getting a hot cup of tea at the cafe and sipping it while strolling down the hiking path. Somewhere along the way, Ryan lost a Ninja Turtle sock, which I was never able to track down again. But such is life these days. I leave a trail of baby socks everywhere I go.
I am still off wheat, dairy, and soy. So my birthday "cake" left something to be desired. You might mistake it for cake if you'd never had cake before in your life. It was pretty flat and spongey. I ate it anyway.
Ryan, by the way, is 8 months old now. Blows my mind a little. It seems like it is going so much faster this time. He is army crawling, but not cross-crawling. I'm okay with that. The longer he holds off on being able to race across the room, the better.
He still sleeps like crap. Up all the time at night. Sometimes he doesn't even need anything. He just cries out in his sleep, then grumbles for a bit and drifts back off. But it still wakes ME up, and I lay there awake every time waiting to see if he'll go back to sleep on his own or require some form of soothing. Because if he fails at going back to sleep and ends up wide awake...then it is an hour long ordeal to get him down again. So I have to step in before it goes too far.
I'm not sure what to do about it. I don't like the idea of sleep training. But I don't like getting up four times a night either. I'm okay with co-sleeping and letting him nurse all night, but I'd much MUCH rather not do that. I know when I take him in for his next check up, the pediatrician is going to ask about sleep and I'm going to get the TALK again when I admit that he's still getting up so often.
Mostly, I am surviving. Days are so packed, I lose track. My mom called me a week or so ago to talk, and told me she hadn't heard from me in a long time. And I was surprised. I hadn't realized I'd fallen out of contact with her. I just sort of make it from one moment to the next. I am hoping that over the summer someone (either my mom or my mother-in-law) will be willing to come out and visit us for a nice, solid stretch of time. More than the usual week. That way I can get my feet under me and stop just treading water all the time.
This all sounds really negative. But I'm actually pretty happy. Not in terms of contentment, but...fulfilled, I guess. My life is full of purpose. And that's good for me right now.