Monday, June 6, 2011

It's been a while.

I have been a bad blogger. I haven't blogged in a while, and I really have no good reason, other then I am guilty of neglecting things that I enjoy doing. A ton has happened since I last wrote, but there just simply isn't time to review all of that.

I read thru some of my past posts before posting again, and thought it was kind of ironic that my current issue(s) and my last post are about sleep. Or lack of it. Our little princess was sleeping wonderfully until we moved. Once we moved, she started waking up in the middle of the night. After her hospital stay, she has turned into this guy:


and has been making life miserable for all of us. We follow the same routine, put her to bed, and after she finishes her bottle (yes she is 20 mo and still gets a bottle, yes I realize that is way too old, yes I will kick you in the shins if you try to take it away from her) she is howling that she is in pain. "Mommy, owiieeeeee. Owwwwiiiieeeee, mommy" she sobs from her bedroom while I sit on my bed staring at the alarm clock, counting down the seconds until I can fairly say I have tried to let her "cry it out". Epic fail for me. When I get to her crib, she of course is standing up, still proclaiming full body pain and needs to be instantly cuddled. As soon as I pick her up and she wraps her chubby, sweaty little fists around my neck and buries her tear covered face into me, I feel instantly guilty and start to mentally list all the reasons the child raising experts have no idea what they are talking about. I carry my 33+ lb baby over to the rocker and attempt to salvage any sort of chance at bedtime as she rubs my arms and covers me in kisses, letting me know how grateful she is that I haven't abandoned her. I inspect her from head to toe, to reassure myself that she wasn't dying, just simply too smart for her own good. Every once in a great while, I may get lucky and be able to rock her back to sleep. Usually though, after about 2 whole minutes, she sits straight up, proclaims "kitty!" and shoots out of my lap to hunt down the unsuspecting feline. Damn that cat!

After a couple of hours entertaining herself buckling and unbuckling the safety restraint on her high chairs, asking for "help peeese" playing with her shape blocks, and generally being as noisy as possible, she is ready for bed and behaves like nothing ever happened. Usually about 10:30. Another bottle at this point is necessary, and she of course wants it to be warmed up. She is typically good for about 4 hours, then is howling because of course she is starving and needs yet another bottle. If you are a skilled ninja like Greg, you may get lucky enough to deliver said bottle without completely waking her up. If you are me, you end up bringing preschool sized infant back to bed with you, where the only place she is comfortable sleeping is with her head on your chest and her feet in Daddy's face. Sometimes Greg and I can make it thru our morning routine and out the door before she wakes again, but usually around 6, she is up and crankily ready to go. I swear she can smell me, and she smells fear.

I saw a movie trailer last Friday in which the main character stated that having young children is like living with drug addicts. I think that is spot on. They stay up all night, they trash your house, have very fuzzy boundaries on what is appropriate, and they take all your money!

Besides my little party animal, my main hurdle with sleep lately is that I just can't. Don't get me wrong, I am exhausted. I get to the point at night where I have to go to bed, because if I don't, I will literally fall over. Once I am in bed, I have no problem falling asleep. It's just that I wake up shortly thereafter, and for the life of me, cannot go back to sleep. I know it's stress, but logically I feel like I am dealing with all of it well enough. I saw the Dr on Friday and got a prescription for anxiety, but she pointed out the obvious. First of all there is this guy:



My dad. He died unexpectedly last November. It shouldn't be a big deal for me. He didn't like me. At all. But it was still a shock when he died so suddenly, at 57. Brought mortality to a whole new level for me. Turning off life support for anyone is traumatic, but I think I am struggling even more since I am the one who had to do it, and knowing he probably wouldn't have been ok with me being that person. Dr pointed out that the looming Father's Day holiday probably isn't helping. I think it's the finality of all of it. Never being able to ask the questions I need to ask, and of course never getting the answers you want. I think that most children who have abusive parents never stop trying to convince that parent that they are worthy of their love, and of course approval. His death confirmed once and for all that no matter how hard I try, I will never get it.

Last week I got a call from my sister that Petunia had passed. So, so sad. She was only 5, and even for an english bulldog that is really young. April had no idea what had happened, thought maybe she had eaten some oleander or another plant. But no signs of distress or anything, they just came home and she wouldn't come when they called her. Dang I loved that dog. And will miss her. She was such a sweet girl. Ugh.

We have also been dealing with the little monster's health.....



Seems that her liver is not functioning like it should (yes, I know that this would be the appropriate place to question how much wine I consumed while pregnant, but I didn't, I swear!). Drs discovered the issue while we were at the hospital for her allergic reaction, her enzyme tests came back thru the roof. We had to spend the night in the hopes that they would come down the next morning, but they didn't. We followed up with our primary care physician, and while they came down a bit at one point, they are still too high and we now are waiting to be seen by a pediatric GI Specialist so that they can do an ultra sound on her liver to see if they can see if it is visibly damaged, or if there is a tumor or anything else. As much as I am dreading that, I am just hopeful that we don't have to do more blood tests, because let me tell you, she LOVES those.

Besides all of these issues we also have had to deal with the topic of potentially growing our family again. Those of you in the know "know". We agonized over it, and for a variety of reasons, we are just not in the place we need to be to travel that road right now. We haven't completely closed the door on more children down the road, but for now, our cup is overflowing!

So while on paper I know why I can't sleep, it sucks. I am tired. The backs of my eyelids feel like sand paper. And I want to sleep. It's how I deal with things. When the 09/11 attacks happened, I went home and went to bed. When I was younger, I would work through stress by cleaning things. Tile grout would get scrubbed, all of the cushions on the couch would be vacuumed under, etc. Now I just go to bed. Hopefully I will get some rest soon, if nothing else with the help of Xanax. Until then, I will continue to count my blessings. At least I am not one of those weirdos who gets too stressed to eat, right?