Too Tired to Write Anything of Substance

Excuse me while I whine for just a moment...

My three year old child is not sleeping, or rather, he is not sleeping well. This has been a "situation" for the past year. We average one or two good nights a week and that is not an understatement. He is a very restless sleeper and often yells out. LOUDLY. It always starts about the same time: 2.5 hours after he goes to sleep and then nearly every hour afterwards until 3:30ish. Then it resumes again around 5:30 or 6:00. If we can make it past that dreadful hour then we know it might actually be a good night. Lately, we have not had many of those.

For the past two days he has not taken a nap, which makes him over-tired, which makes him unable to sleep at night, which triggers the night-terrors which in turn makes him cranky all day and over-tired and the cycle repeats itself. Over and over. I am nearly at the tipping of point. I can't remember when I last slept soundly and on the rare nights he does sleep, I am automatically awake because I have been trained to awaken every single hour. On alert.

Combine that with my current agitated and restless fretting over whether or not I should go back to work full-time (that's a different topic for another time), and I am just wiped out. Mentally and physically.

Something's gotta give soon.

The Cutouts

Many, many, many years ago when I was a young thing in my 20's I would occasionally babysit my sister's kids. It was one of the many privileges of being an Auntie. I could go over to their houses, play with them, hold them, hug them and then leave and get a good night's rest. Depending on the time of the year, we would do all sorts of seasonally appropriate activities. One year, when my niece and nephew were about 3 and 2 years old I came over to play while my sister and brother-in-law went Christmas shopping. Before they left, my sister showed me where their jammies were, what was for dinner, how to operate the remote and oh! Some cookie dough for Christmas cutouts--won't that be a fun thing to do together with two very small toddlers? In my naive and childless world I thought "Oh yes! That DOES sound like fun! We will bake the cookies and decorate them while they are gone! How fun! How festive!"

What I failed to realize, and only realized years later when I had small children of my own, is that baking and decorating cut out cookies with small children is something that sounds great in theory...but fails miserably in execution. Either one of three things happens: 1) Someone ends up dumping an entire bottle of sprinkles into a bowl of icing and/or floor, 2) A fight breaks out over the bottle of sprinkles and THEN ends up being dumped into a bowl of icing and/or floor or 3) Someone ends up dumping an entire bottle of sprinkles onto one cookie and/or bowl of icing and/or floor and then EATING said sprinkled cookie and then proceeds to be seemingly jet propelled across the entire house for the better part of an hour.

Actually make that three hours. My boys are still amped up beyond belief. Actually as I type this, Liam is laying in his bed laughing maniacally over a JibJab video he watched an hour ago. Oy. Methinks Christmas Eve is going to be a loooooooooong day...

How Did it Get So Late So Soon?

How did it get late so soon? December's here before it's June. My goodness, how the time has flewn! How did it get late so soon?  --Dr. Seuss

Reindeer antlers & a big smile.

"A fire truck and match box cars!" (Sawyer's only wish list items)

Slightly over ONE WEEK until Christmas. Just in case you were counting. Am I prepared?? Not even close. Ahh well. Maybe next year I will be on top of it all.

Yeah, probably not.

PS-Photos are from Sawyer's Christmas program today. Surprisingly, Mr. Ham did NOT sing a single word but rather stood up on the bleacher, nervously playing with his upper lip. He did however, manage to belt out the words to every single song LOUDLY at the dinner table tonight. I guess he just prefers a more intimate concert setting. 

Pausing...

You may have noticed I have been remiss in posing lately... I have a good excuse, really and truly I do! It's just that I have been busy preparing for house guests, my mother-in-law's move, house hunting, trying to finish my final painting, drum up new Dotty Finch business (preferably the paying kind) and start Christmas shopping. I am letting the blogs lag and I am sorry. (Don't feel bad...my other blog hasn't been updated either.)

So the next few weeks might be lean over here in Blog land but I will do my best to post when I can (on both sites). As always, thanks for your patience and your readership.  All two of you.

Here Kitty Kitty

PS-
To follow up on the Mountain Lion situation I posted last week... The Department of Wildlife finally decided allowing a Mountain Lion family to set up permanent residence in a subdivision probably wasn't the best idea. So they tagged them and relocated them far enough away that they shouldn't find their way back into the Mesa Subdivision.

O' Christmas Tree!

Yesterday, while the boys were at school, I snuck out and got our Christmas tree even though we told the boys we weren't going to get it until this weekend. Ken put it up for me and I started to decorate it. I don't know what made me decide to put it up early...normally I wait, put it up and then yank it down the day after Christmas. It's not that I don't enjoy the  holiday... it's just something about having up a bunch of decorations for more then a a week or two leaves me feeling claustrophobic... craving space in an increasingly smaller living space. Plus, the past few years have been hard for me to get into "the season." I put on a happy face for the boys but deep down I just wanted it to be over.

But not this year. This year I am actually really into the whole shabang.  I have had Christmas music playing since Thanksgiving (VERY unlike me). Part of the reason could be that I am no longer gone all day at a job I hate, constantly stressed and pressed for time. Christmas for a working parent means even more time crunching in already time-starved schedule. Even though I miss the income, I certainly don't miss the stress that came with it. (And it's not lost to me that the year I am most excited about Christmas is the year I can't really afford it. Oh the irony!) Another reason I am into it this year is because of a certain tow-headed boy who is over the moon excited about everything. Every day Beanie sees the Christmas tree at his preschool he is just as excited and happy as he was the day before when he saw it. Every. Time. His enthusiasm is infectious and it makes my heart swell.

When we pulled into the driveway last night he spotted the lights immediately. He ran inside and detected each and every Christmas decoration and he did it with MUCH glee. He then "helped" me hang the ornaments on the tree by neatly placing every single one of them on the same two branches. He said "We sure made the tree look beautiful didn't we Mommy?!" We sure did.

Liam, on the other hand, has lost some of his enthusiasm. He didn't want to help decorate the tree because he was busy working on an art project. I see a lot of the little wide-eyed boy growing out of him. He even told me the other day "I'm six years old Mommy. I'm too OLD for toys." It was a sad little knife in my heart. Of course he changed his tune only a few seconds later by showing me his "Wish List" but still...the wheels are already in motion. He has always been a bit of an old soul, and I know that the days of him believing are numbered and I am going to hold onto them as long as I can.

I have only wonderful memories of Christmas from my childhood and I want the same thing for my guys. So this year I am going to fully throw myself into Christmas. We will bake many cookies, we will see many lights and maybe we will even carol. We will make ornaments and maybe even string popcorn garland. (Maybe). And most importantly, I will actually be present and in the moment as opposed to checking off things from my to-do/get-it-done list.

Currier and Ives will have nothing on me.