What a Nightmare!

Thing 2 has long been my troubled sleeper.  She hardly slept through the night until into her third year of life, and has had a really rough time off and on with nightmares.  Compare this to her sister who slept through the night at 3 months and has only called me a handful of times in her 9 years.

Thing 2 can go for weeks with no incident, and then I'll have three or four nights in a row where she's screaming for me in the middle of the night.  Then when I get there and calm  her down, she's insistent on telling me her nightmare, in detail.  Usually after the nightmare, when she's 100% sure she's awake, is when the scary part happens.  She sees something or someone right over her bed... or hears them right next to her bed... that's when the screaming starts. Some of the descriptions she's given me have creeped me out too, but my assurances that there was NO ONE in her room, and she had to have still been just a little bit asleep don't convince her one tiny bit.  She KNOWS there was a monster/person in her room.  And yes, the screaming is heartbreaking and she is truly frightened, and I am usually pretty sympathetic and calm and sometimes it does just work to hold her and pet her head and rub her back until she calms down and can go back to sleep.  But over the years that too has worked less and less and my sympathy has waned a little.


When Hubby's out of town, my resolution to the nightmare problem has been to take her into my bed with me.  I am not a co-sleeping advocate, but I am a ME SLEEPING advocate, and if my unconscious sleeping presence can calm her enough for both of us to get through the night, that is a concession I'm willing to make.  Also it allows me to calm her down on subsequent outbursts by just reaching for her instead of tossing off the warm covers and sprinting down the hall to her room.
I usually have a large feather pillow in the middle of the bed which I spoon to compensate for Hubby's absence, and I put Thing 2 on the other side of it.  I hold onto her waist or back or shoulder across the pillow.  She doesn't like this much.  She wants to be plastered to me.  But she wiggles, thrashes, touches my face, and pokes me with her hands, feet, and elbows.  So I need the pillow there as an insulator between myself and all that thrashing.  It's my only hope of getting any sleep at all once she's in bed with me.  When Hubby's in town and she wakes up with a nightmare, sometimes he goes and squeezes into her twin bed with her, and sometimes she joins one of us in our bed and the other takes her bed.
Thing 1 sleeps in the top bunk, by the way, and almost always sleeps right through the screaming and crying.  Thank heaven! 

Last night Thing 2 woke me up at 3:00 am.  I stumbled into her bedroom, got her to stop screaming, and lead her back to our bed.  I situated her on the other side of the pillow.
For the next hour we alternated her whimpering and reaching across the pillow to me, and me petting her and asking her to please stop wiggling and be quiet and go back to sleep. She'd lie still for a minute or two and I'd just start to doze off when she'd thrash and start over.  She insisted that she'd seen something (with her sleeping mask on) and the only way she could make it go away was to poke it or wiggle at it.  Yes, really.  She was becoming as agitated with me for asking her to stop as I was with her wiggling, because, she insisted, this was how to make the scary stuff go away.

I believe myself a patient person, but after AN HOUR of this my patience was completely gone.  I started pointing out that a tired mommy is an ANGRY MOMMY and if she couldn't let me sleep she had to go back to her own bed.  Of course this gets her really crying and apologizing, and saying she needs a REAL HUG not just across the pillow.  At that point I gave up, swapped places with her and the pillow, rolled her onto her other side so her poking appendages were mostly facing the other direction, and spooned her.  Either I was exhausted enough to sleep through any further thrashing, or she slept the rest of the night without thrashing but the next thing I remember was my alarm going off.

Ever since a particularly bad nightmare in California the nightmares have been more frequent, and I have the bags under my eyes to prove it.  Nightlights just cast creepy shadows.  Stuffed animal protectors work sporadically, but apparently lose their powers.  She wears a sleeping mask, which helped a lot for a long time, but it too seems to have lost its nightmare defense potency.

I have no real answers.  I'm too tired to figure out answers.

Me Being Crafty

I am not accomplishing nearly what I had hoped in this little ramp-up to Christmas.  So, to offset that, I am taking a little of my precious double-and-triple booked time to post some past accomplishments.

I finally finished a couple of quilting projects for Christmas.
This one I started over two years ago:

Go ahead!  Click on it and zoom in!  It shows up much better.  I need to work on my photography skills.
I did these in a church quilting group with a half a dozen or so other women. Some of the fabrics we swapped, and some we didn't. On mine, I swapped some of the creams to get more variety, but I didn't swap many of the greens. The other women had a lot more going on in their greens, they were pretty busy, and I didn't like some of those busy fabrics. The problem was when the others were done and mine was next to them, theirs looked like decorated busy Christmas trees, and mine looked kind of plain. So, in a brilliant plan to make my life much more difficult, I decided I'd attach little magnets on mine, on the wrong side of the fabric, so we could use little metal things to decorate the tree. This slowed me down considerably, but I finally found something that would work, and found some sparkly things to use as decorations.  I just finished it up a couple months ago, that's the kind of schedule I'm running on. I'm pretty pleased with the result, though every now and again someone walks by and brushes it and all the little metal decorations skitter across the floor.
Here's some detail:

The next one was the project from a year ago. I noticed that it is the same size as the opening on my front door, so I hung mine there. Normally it is hung the other way, facing out and the sun isn't shining through it.  I should have taken the picture from the other side, but it's could out there!!!  I have some buttons to sew down his front, but that's farther down my to do list.

Okay.  Now I should get back to work.
I got my Christmas cards off, finally, but there is so much other stuff to do.  And I haven't even figured out what to do for the neighbor gifts!  I'm doomed to be up until 2:00 am every night between now and Christmas!!!  And we were going to cut back this year!  Ha ha ha!

Putting one over on the guy in the red suit

Santa is a sap.  He will have those elves of his make ANYTHING.


Not me.  I will NOT buy those horrible battery operated talking robot pet toys, but Santa, he is a complete push-over.  My girls know that anything you REALLY want, you ask Santa for, and that chubby old partially deaf guy with the thick white beard and REALLY DEEP POCKETS will find it for you.  The old guy hasn't let them down yet.


Yesterday Thing 1 asked me how many times we'll be seeing Santa this year.  Well, there's one this weekend at the church party, and we might see another one at the mall, why do you ask?


Because the tradition seems to be you can only ask Santa for one thing, and she has two items at the top of her list = two Santas.
Oh, clever girl!

Thing 1's cough has gotten worse but I've been sending her to school to cough and spread germs to all her class mates.  Because they only have two more days of school before the break, even if they're both half days, (?!? Why is the Thursday before Christmas break a half day?!?) and then after that I've got to ditch the kids to accomplish anything.

As I tucked Thing 2 in last night she decided she can't sleep with the vaporizer running in their room.  She decided that she needed something, preferably earmuffs, to muffle the sound.  I didn't find any earmuffs in my quick search of the available winter clothing but I did find a fleece scarf, which she agreed to let me tie around her head.  I forgot to mention that a month or two ago Thing 2 took to wearing sleeping masks.  She saw one at Old Navy and fell in love. I thought sleeping masks were something women only wore in movies and sitcoms, never in real life.  It seems kind of dramatic to me, but whatever.  It seems to work, she no longer calls me in the middle of the night complaining about nightmares, now she just calls me complaining she can't find her sleeping mask.  It's usually around her neck or forehead, but still it's less frequent or alarmed as the nightmare calls, so I'm cool with it.  She now has three, in case one gets lost.  Her favorite has huge exaggerated eyelashes painted on it.   So back to the scarf.  Last night she just had me tie the scarf around her eyes and ears and left off the sleeping mask.  I tied it in back so the knot would be out of the way because she sleeps on her side, and she looked like the sleeping bandit or someone who got just got really tired of swinging at the pinata.  Tonight she wanted the knot in front, and when I tied it over her eyes she pushed the knot up on her forehead so she could still wear the sleeping mask.  So she is wearing the fleece scarf tied in front on her forehead, and the sleeping mask underneath.  Rather than embarrass her by taking a picture of how she looked, I have taken it upon myself to make a digital recreation.

Except Thing 2 doesn't have the exceptionally pleased smile, of course.  She is quite serious.  But I couldn't find any towel wrap pictures looking serious, probably because no one can hold a straight face if someone points a camera at them when they're wearing one.
In any event, she looked awfully darn cute.  And almost regal.  Like she was wearing a towel crown.  It was sweet.

Ignorance is guilt

I am not normally a procrastinator.  I procrastinate, on occasion, but in general my motivation runs along the avoidance of pain and suffering.  I have found that procrastination makes my life frenetic and harried, and actually brings more work.  So I try not to put things off until they are actually on fire.  However, lately things seem different.  I have been procrastinating.  Duties and commitments are sliding.  Look at me ignoring my responsibilities!  I am putting off commitments until the very last possible moment!

Things that have deadlines and should take priority aren't as appealing as the stuff that is farther down on the priority list.  Why is it the higher the priority, the less appealing things are?

I SHOULD be writing the primary program.  This is my fourth one, and I can tell you I am sick and tired of them.  Yessirree, I would just about do anything on earth other than write another Primary Program!  And I am doing just about anything on earth instead...   I've already used up all my clever ideas, I'm tapped out.  Every other ward I know of has already had theirs, and I haven't even started writing ours! Oh, the humanity. And to top it off, we are having it on Halloween, of all days.  I want to throw in a spooky song.  And maybe have the kids wear costumes.  It will be the Best Primary Program Ever!!  The kids always pull it off, but first I have to write it, publish it, distribute it, and we have to practice it.  

I should also be making Quilt Blocks!  Slightly below the Primary program on the Priority list, but still pretty important. I committed to participate in a Christmas Quilt Block exchange, and it is going to be wonderful, but if it's going to happen on October 11th, I have to hold up my end of the deal.  12 quilt blocks finished and pressed in about two weeks.  Should be plenty of time, but... did I mention I haven't actually completed ANY of the quilting projects I started with this group? 

I should also be cleaning my house.  My folks dropped by today, my mom called from the road that they were coming into town and would be at my house soon.  I was at Costco buying, among other things, Nutella (the food of the gods) in bulk.  I could not be interrupted.  

So I didn't have time to even get home and load the breakfast dishes from the sink to the dishwasher.  I can imagine the horrified conversation the folks are having as they pull away from my house, something about depression, therapy, and slovenliness.  
And I should be getting our financial ducks in a row.  I'm the bookkeeper, and I haven't actually reconciled the bank or AM EX account for several months.  I haven't made a travel report (required for tax purposes) since the 2nd quarter.


Did I mention the sprinklers are broken so I turned off the water a month or so ago?  I remember to hand water occasionally, but the whole yard is starting to have the professionally neglected look of a "Bank Owned" property.  (On that one I think I'm giving up.  I think I'll hire someone come in and fix the sprinklers.)

So what is it I'm doing instead of these important things?  Blogging, for one, or rather reading other people's blogs. Also working on the sweater that I started for Thing 1, but Thing 2 is quickly growing out of  - I was so close to finishing it three years ago when I put it down for one reason or another, and finally picked it back up last week. A kid grows a lot in 3 years and I would like to see someone wear it.  While I knit I watch 24, season 6, in which Jack Bauer can cross LA in 7 minutes, catch terrorists single-handed using nothing but... well, his hands, and use his body to shield innocent bystanders from the blast of a nuclear warhead.  Well, almost.  There is so much shark jumping going on it isn't interesting anymore.  Yet I'm addicted to watching through to the end.

I've also been reading.  Nothing amazing, just picking up a book now and again and ignoring everything until I put it down. 


And I've been staying up late at night to do all of these things (or, more correctly, to NOT do the things I should be doing, but to do the other things.)  Speaking of which, it's past time for bed and I haven't had the nightly call with Hubby... so I guess I should prioritize bedtime as #2 (right behind phone call) and then stick to my priorities, at least until tomorrow.

Orlando Bound

We leave for Florida in the morning. Hubby has a conference in Orlando and when he first suggested the girls and I come too I told him no thanks, we've done DisneyWorld twice already (for someone who lives a 5 hour plane ride away and has 7 and 8 year old kids that's saying a lot, I think), and sure, DisneyWorld is fine, but for the age of our kids I kind of prefer DisneyLand... and we've been-there-done-that more than a lot of people who live in California, I think. Save up those frequent flier miles for something cool. (Wow, how blase am I?) Then he told me the conference is at the Disney Swan. What?? (We don't stay at the Swan. Too pricey for us little po' folks.) And of course the conference pays for the hotel room. WHAT? So instead of trying to keep the kids from tearing apart a swanky hotel room or watching them paddle in the gorgeous empty pristine boring pool miles from anything but the nearest golf course and $8.00 bagel I get to lounge by a DISNEY pool with slides and waterfalls and a Disney park or Downtown Disney only a bus ride away? Well, that's completely different!

Tomorrow this will be us!!!

Uh oh... that looks like a plain boring square conference hotel pool to me. We'll have to see if there's not something more interesting around somewhere. We stayed at the Port Orleans before and that pool doesn't look much better from the internet, but it had a section of slides and squirty things for the kiddies off to the right out of the picture, I think.
Oh, here is what we saw, there are slides and waterfalls off behind this thing in the Port Orleans pool.


A second search found a more fun looking picture of the Swan pool. It looks like there is at least a waterfall somewhere, obviously there's more than one pool. And the Swan pool comes with that fun person to throw my kids into the air. Oh, yes, this will work!

The other time we stayed at a DisneyWorld property hotel we moved from the boring conference hotel to the Disney hotel just long enough to go to the parks, then we flew home. We didn't plan time in at Disney to just swim, we bought a four day pass, went to the parks every day, and it was always too late at the end of the day to let the kids play in the Disney pool. We just walked by it, listening to the other children having fun. My kids had to go to the PARKS. I am the mean mommy who dragged her crying little girls past the pool, as they stretched their little hands out to it, "But MOMMY! We want to SWIM! We want to play in the water! We wa-"
"NO! NO! We have TICKETS! You will GO to the PARK and you will RIDE the RIDES and you will BE HAPPY ABOUT IT!!!" That was me before. But this time, this time we may go to a park or two in between pool days, if we feel like it, but we have at least three days, maybe more, while daddy is conferencing. That's three or four full days we will be those folks sitting by the pool. Or I will be, anyway, while the kids swim. I think I better throw an extra novel into my suitcase. And another bottle of waterproof sunscreen. And a hat.

The dog will be staying at my fabulous sister's Dog Resort, playing with his doggy cousins for the week we're gone. I lost my good pre-trip packing days by driving him up to my sister's on Wednesday and stayed over Thursday to do some stuff at my mom's, then got back really late on Thursday and packed today. Today I washed every stitch of dirty clothing in the house, took the kids to their final swimming lesson, ran to the grocery store, and DID NOT get the battery replaced in either of my water proof watches, which torques my hide. Wah.

Hubby got home about 9:00 tonight from 4 days in New Jersey. We're almost completely packed and I've got to go to bed, there are just those nagging little things that I know I've forgotten... The plane leaves at 10:00 tomorrow morning so I won't have much time to figure it out. Hubby's probably going to pull an all-nighter getting ready for the conference... there just aren't enough hours in the day to be him. I keep thinking of that old movie where Michael Keaton cloned himself...

Restless nights

Thing 2 is back on a not sleeping through the night phase.  This comes and goes, and I am really tired of it - pun intended.
For the past week or so she has been waking me up twice a night, usually between 3:00 am and 5:00 am. One time she'll call because she has kicked off her covers and is completely unable to cover herself up again.  I grumble and grouch at her, and cover her up, and stumble back to bed.  I usually have enough time to get back to sleep and maybe sleep for an hour before she wakes me up again.
The other call is usually because she had a nightmare.  Sometimes she's woken up screaming, and she gets less trouble from me about it then.  But when she just seems to want to inform me of the tenor of her dreams, I start getting pretty crabby.
Last night she called about the covers first, and then the 2nd time when she called I stumbled in grumbling and she said her sippy cup (in the bed to try and prevent night time water trips) was empty.  Grumble grumble fill her water cup.  When I brought it back to her she admitted she'd also had a bad dream.  I assured her as quietly (so as to not wake up Thing 1 in the upper bunk) as I could as firmly as I could that this has got to stop, I am really sorry she's having nightmares but she can't wake me up to tell me about it every night.  She started whining and saying but she's scared, I started shushing her, she gets more upset, shush, whine, shush, whine, until Thing 1 pops her head up and looks around the mostly dark room.
She sees that Something has Happened -
A couple of naughty Leprechauns had visited them last night, dangling underwear from the blades of the ceiling fan, posing the toys and stuffed animals around the room, draping clothes and blankets from drawers and chairs, basically messing up things a little.  Thing 1 was very excited. I told them to both go back to sleep, it was 4:40 am and they could see it in the morning.  Thing 2 started crying that she wanted to see it now.  I responded I don't care what you do, just do it quietly because I need to go back to bed.  She starts to cry.  I reemphasize turn the light on if you want, I don't care, just do it quietly.  She cries, I went back to bed.

Hubby is laying in bed getting frustrated, he gets up and goes in to put a stop to this middle of the night stuff, and tells Thing 2 in his firm voice that this has got to stop, at 6 years old she's old enough to pull her own covers back on, and put herself back to sleep if she has a bad dream.  She starts to cry.  Harder.  He tells her that by dragging us out of bed she's being very disrespectful of our need to sleep.  She starts to HOWL.  She insists we hate her, she's stupid, etc. etc. etc.  He calmed her down a little before he came back to bed, but the whole thing took about 15 minutes, and of course I can't go to sleep while its going on.

Sigh.

In other news, the girls were thrilled with last night's visit from the Leprechauns, Patrick O'Malley and his mischievous friend Fabian O'Flartey.  Thing 1 had written a note to any Leprechauns who stopped by, and Patrick wrote a reply on the back in his very very very tiny handwriting.  He responded to her questions about his size (6 inches), his pets (2 dragonflies, Moira and Blarney), and where he lives (in a highly secret place in Ireland) and told her he might have left her some Leprechaun gold but he knew she'd never find it in her messy room, which was a mess even before Fabian started throwing things about.   She had drawn a self portrait on her side of the paper, so Fabian drew a small picture of Patrick on the reply side of the note.  The girls were thrilled with the whole business.  
The nights' problems were forgotten by everyone but those of us who are most effected by the lack of sleep.