Author: Shane

A new chapter in the no-sleep saga

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Sigh.

It’s rather unfortunate that when it comes to Evie, the no-sleep saga is a never ending story. I can’t even begin to tell you the number of times we’ve “solved” her sleep issues. It’s quite clear that it’s something that’s never going to BE solved, it just is what it is at this point.

So once again we arrive at the point where Evie is waking everybody up in the house. Our room shares a wall with theirs, so we would frequently be awakened at 5 a.m. or so to singing filtering through the (very thin-seeming) wall. Worse than that, she would wake us up a million times per night, usually to tell us that she “had to go to the bathroom” or “needed to be tucked back in”. All of this was frustrating in the extreme, but we could live with it.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was poor Ollie. It’s one thing to wake us up, but he would literally cry in the morning asking to go back to sleep. The final straw was waking up one morning to him screaming at her to stop singing so he could get some sleep. Poor guy. We just realized that it wasn’t fair to him, and something had to be done.

So Evie is back where she started, downstairs in her own room.

Of course, she’s still terrified to be down there all by herself. The first night in particular was a rough one. The thing is, I know that she has a very vivid imagination, just like I did, and often terrifies herself, just as I did. So my heart just absolutely goes out to her when she’s crying and scared of the dark, and it’s really difficult for me to resist her pleas in a situation like that. But I knew it was the best thing for all of us.

And so it was. By the morning she was already over it, and Ollie has been sleeping like a rock. We’ve been waking him up in the morning, he’s been sleeping so well. And even then he doesn’t want to get up. Evie has broken the rules a few times and come upstairs to wake us up, but far less overall than she had been.

She’s still not exactly comfortable down there. Every night after I tuck her in, she pushes things in front of the door to block it. But there are perks to being down there as well. Now that she’s not going to bed with Ollie, we’re letting her stay up a little later to read in bed. She suddenly seems so much older now that she’s reading in bed, turning the light off herself, and then getting dressed before she comes upstairs in the morning.

I am a little disappointed that they won’t be sharing a room anymore. But I will drown my disappointment in 8 glorious hours of unbroken sleep tonight, and I suppose I’ll get over it.

Quote Monday’s got smooth moves

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Ollie: “My skin is smooth. Your skin is not smooth.”
Me: “No, my skin is mostly hairy.”
Ollie, touching my head: “Not up here!”

Evie: “Who’s Bubble Fat?”
Sara: “Were some boys talking about that at school today?”
Evie: “Yes, someone’s going to be him for Halloween. And someone else is going to be Star Wars.”

Sara: “I can’t keep up! They’re texting at the speed of smartphones!”

Me: “Evie, why aren’t you dressed yet?”
Evie: “I had to go to the bathroom first.”
Me: “Yes, but you had to wait to get into the bathroom. What were you doing during that time?”
Evie: “Dancing around in my underpants.”

Finally, a book for my children

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I finally found a picture book suitable for the impressionable young minds of my children: The Very Hungry Zombie.

It’s practically identical to the original Eric Carle version, both in illustration and style. “On Wednesday he gnawed on three football players. But he found them tough and gritty.” (Yeah, that’s an actual excerpt…no word on if the zombie gets a tummy ache at the end of his feeding frenzy.)

So now my children can learn how to count as well as learn about the unceasing menace of the undead. Two zombies with one headshot birds with one stone!

Email from the past – A day in the life

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I was searching my work email and I came across the following email:

From: Halbach, Shane C.
Sent: Friday, March 15, 2013 1:46 PM
To: Sara
Subject: ooooooh Sara

Ooooh boy oh boy.

So we were playing hide and seek today. Oliver found a great hiding spot: balled up under the shelves behind the curtain in the bathroom. He was down there for a while, and when I found him and he came out, he was *covered*, head-to-toe, in crystallized cat urine. It was in his hair. It was in his eyelashes. His face and hands were sticky with it. His clothes looked white.

I put his clothes right in the laundry and put him in the shower. It was so gross. When I crawled in there to clean it out, it smelled so ungodly, I can’t imagine how he could have been laying in there (face down, mind you). It was putrid. Afterwards, I told him 3 or 4 times, “Buddy, if something smells that bad, don’t crawl into it, okay?”

As you can imagine, he was generally in good spirits throughout all of this.

And that’s the kind of emails you get at work when you’re a mom.

Long time readers will remember that we once had a problem with Nala using that part of the bathroom as a toilet. It turned out she was up to her old tricks again (but hasn’t been since then).

Even though this was back in March, I can remember it like it was yesterday. I can only assure you it was probably worse than it sounds.

Missing: One Tooth

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Missing Tooth

Oh, my friends. I cannot tell you what a big day this is. Evie has been *DYING* to lose a tooth for years.

Partly because she tends to make friends with older kids, and partly because she seemed to be a little late to the table as far as losing teeth, but it seems like every single kid she knows has lost teeth. She’s the oldest in her class and there’s only one other person who hasn’t lost one yet. It’s gotten to the point where even her friends’ little siblings are losing teeth now. And it’s not like she doesn’t notice these things; she has been pining for this every minute of the day since the time a year and a half ago when a classmate had a tooth fly out at school, during music class.

Perhaps the long wait was worth it though, because she was flying pretty high. She literally could not be any more excited. And that was BEFORE a visit from the tooth fairy!