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The No-Nap Monster
Hi. Remember me? The mom who used to blog every day? What happened to me? Why so little blogging? Harumph. See that sad but very adorable and pissed off face up there? That’s the reason I can’t blog. It’s her fault.
Baby Bug officially turned 18 months. Eighteen months is when babies usually give up the morning nap and take one long one at 1 o’clock or so. At least that’s what my mom tells me and she knows what she’s talking about some of the time. Maybe some other version of that is realistic.
What Baby Bug has been doing is: not taking a morning nap until we drive somewhere in the car. I try and stay home and not do any errands anywhere but in the last few weeks we’ve had a million and one things to do involving all kinds of family and situations that are bigger than us. So here’s how it goes:
Baby Bug sleeps for ten minutes in the car (or an hour if I’m driving to the sticks) and decides that’s it for the rest of the day until we drive somewhere else. I try and try to put her down but it’s world war three every time. There’s only so much crying and carrying on I can put up with. Not to mention there is an office in our house where a troll works and he gets really really grumpy when there are babies crying all the time.
Finally, I get tired of waiting for her to take her afternoon nap so I haul her off to the grocery store or wherever other place I feel I need to go in order to keep the house running and Kabamo! she falls asleep in the car. It’s that blasted car seat. (or stroller)
It’s like magic. I buckle her in and la la la off she goes to the Land of Nod-your-head-off-your-neck-in-that-freakishly-toddler-rubberized-way. Except this never works if I put her in the car seat with the intention of putting her asleep. Not that I’ve really tried it… I’m already feeling guilty for all the breaking-her-will methods I’ve used on her.
By the times she decides she does need an afternoon nap after-all, it’s five o’clock and she says it’s time to take a big loooooooooooooong nap and sleep right through mommy carrying her up the stairs, right through mommy banging pots and pans around to make dinner, all the way until seven p.m.! Which would be an HOUR before her normal bedtime. Then she’s up for two hours (or more) and by the time she goes down for the night, the mommy (who used to be a blogger and freelance designer by night) is so frustrated and tired, she lays down with the wiggly baby to help her go to sleep and Kabamo! she falls asleep too!! We’re like two tired soldiers falling asleep in the mud, face down.
My normal trick to keep myself up at night blogging and working and making things is the “Just work for 15 minutes” rule. OMSH taught it to me a month ago or so. It really works. Every time I sit down to “just work for 15 minutes” I end up working for an hour or more. The time flies by and I’m fine. A little tired in the morning but nothing a little (or a lot of) caffeine can’t fix.
But lately my plans have been foiled and everything is suffering. I don’t know what I’m gonna do. Maybe I’ll just set an alarm for midnight and hope I’ve managed not to interrupt a normal sleep cycle. Or maybe I’ll just tell my eleventy-seven (well, not really that many but enough) clients that I’m out. Sorry. Here’s your money back.
Baby Bug is actually taking a nap right now in her “big girl bed”. I was desperate so I’m trying anything. I folded our futon in half and set her up with her favorite Hello Kitty pillow, then I lay down with her (read: held her down with my strong mom arm) until she fell asleep. It was the only way I could get her to stay asleep. Maybe she just has an aversion to her crib or something. Whatever works.
I gotta run. She might wake up and I have so many things to do!!!
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Thursday is Box Day
…because Friday is Trash Day. (the coffee shop next door saves them for us) I like it that every day in my week now has a name. Monday is Grocery Shopping Day, Tuesday is Laundry Day, Wednesday is Hang-Out with Mother-in-Law Day, Thursday is Friend Day (as in make plans with a friend, you hermit) OR Box Day (if you failed to make plans with a friend, you hermit) and Friday is Trash Day! Whee it’s so fun to watch the smashing noisy trash trucks, definitely a highlight in our week. Saturday is Farmers Market Day and Sunday is well… Sunday, the Lord’s Day and also Family Day. But then every day is “family day” at our house so Sunday just Sunday.
Don’t you feel so updated now? Boy, that was interesting. Almost as interesting as twittering what I’m doing every minute of the day. Speaking of… we now feature Baby Bug’s twitters over there in the right-hand upper corner where the side blogs used to be. Remember those? They were cool. So sad how they didn’t play well with the new wordpress upgrade and COMPLETELY SCREWED UP MY WHOLE BLOG AND DELETED MY EMAIL ACCOUNTS! Yeah, I’m a little wound up about it. I’ve been without email for the last two days. Who knew that could send me into such a spin.
I have my laptop set up on the counter that is between our kitchen and our living room. It’s an excellent place for it because it is central and right out in the middle of everything so I can constantly hop online to read an email or twitter or something and still watch Baby Bug with the eyeballs in the back of my head. The only drawback is that it’s in bright sunlight and it is impossible for me to see color in the middle of the day. But that’s okay. I’d rather be color blind than completely disconnected to my virtual world.
You thought this post was going to be about boxes but actually it is about my addiction to the internet. Something I came to terms with during the two long days that my email was cut off. You see, I have my email set to “ping” at me if there is a new email. It checks every five minutes. I can hear this “ping” all over the house. I am like Pavlov’s dog and when I hear that “ping”, I jump up from whatever I am doing and slobber over to my laptop to read the latest message of wonderfulness (or spam). It’s terrible.
It’s so bad that when family members hears the “ping” they now say, “Auntie got an email!” Sometimes I turn it off but then I get lonely for it and turn it back on. Toby says, “How can you live under the tyranny that is your email?” I don’t know. It’s not a tyranny to me. It is like little sweet somethings in my ear all day long. It is my life. I’m not one of those moms who says, “I can’t wait to get out and talk to some adults” after spending all day with a little tyke. I spend all day with my little tyke and about a thousand friends online. Well, maybe not a thousand but a lot. I don’t miss real people much.
Maybe you have this addiction too? If you can finish the sentence below with more than three positive things, you might understand how I feel. But lets switch gears and put in blogging instead of emailing because in reality, blogging is the cause of all my emailing and it does take up bigger chunks of my productive (the-baby-is-sleeping) time.
Okay here’s the sentence:
If I didn’t blog, I would…
What would you do? If you don’t have a blog then put “read blogs” in there instead.
If you were me, you would do A LOT OF THINGS!!!! LIke paint some paintings for that real art show you are actually going to be in (in August ACK!). Remember that dream you always had since you were eight? Or you might actually break out the sewing machine and work on that fabric plush laptop that you day-dreamed up for Baby Bug because she wants to be just like you and play all day on the shiny silver portal. Or you might fix the caulking in the bathtub that Baby Bug wants to play with every night when she takes a bath.
The possibilities are ENDLESS! And you know I would do these things because I am a very driven person and I love praise. If I didn’t get praise on my blog then I would seek it diligently elsewhere. I have a sickness that way. So that brings us to the obvious conclusion. Time to stop blogging.
Ha Ha ha ha !
Nope. Can’t do it.
I just have to develop some other super powers because I just can’t stop. I won’t. Maybe I’ll think about “streamlining” as Whoorl suggested. Maybe I’ll force myself to shut the laptop for certain hours of the day but I can’t stop. I will stop sleeping first.
Okay, so go comment now so I can hear your email pinging at me all day long because it is so sweet after being gone for two whole days. I love you, my little pingers!
p.s. I am abandoning my animated gifs and adopting the flickr picture route to save space on my server. I know, it’s new and different and will take getting used to but it is a good thing. My blog needed to go on a diet.
