Children = No sleep

I once read (somewhere) that the constant waking up and not getting a full nights sleep during the last months of pregnancy is Mother Nature's way of preparing you for the new baby (when it wakes up every three hours and screams to be feed). Mother Nature is a bitch and she can keep her nasty little joke to herself, thank you.

The first three months are hell on one's sleep schedule, then it gets better... a bit. Once your child reaches about six months they should more or less sleep through the night a good 8-10 hrs. THEN the teething happens, which can take months before the damned teeth even poke through but in the meantime your happy baby becomes a whiny monster who wakes up all night long. Worse this comes and goes. So on week your fine the next not so much. And let's throw in some growth spurts while were at it. The times when your darling becomes a ravenous pig demanding to be feed at all hours. There now we are done with the first year, whew... Oh crips, what did I do? I have to go through this again.. damn.

The second year was not so bad. The boy was still in a crib and I could just leave him in there for a bit if he woke up before ,oh let's say, 9 AM. Note: I am not a morning person in any way form or fashion, I despise the morning.

But once we moved him to the big bed there was nothing keeping him confined expect a gate on the door. Which is all fine and dandy for keeping small children trapped in their room but children do not come with a remote for volume control. So he is loud while playing and singing to himself and I am not a heavy sleeper at all. Which means I have to get up anywhere between 7 -9 AM, it varies from day to day, week to week and month to month. Of course he naturally seems to get up early on the days when I don't go to bed until 2 AM or so (he seems to sense when I do this) and later on the days when I go to bed at old people time around 10 or so. And it never fails that since I have two now if one wakes up before the other they usually succeed in waking up the still sleeping one with their loudness.
The biggest issue is that the boy refuses to go to sleep when I lay him down at night and he usually plays his stupid game of " I am still up, Nah Nah Boo Boo!" with me. Some nights I say "screw it" and ignore the little brat and other nights I go in and threaten with bodily harm if he opens the door one more time. Needless to say he does not fall asleep until well after 10:00 PM when the hubby has left for work. By this time I have two choices go straight to bed and get as much sleep as I need OR spend some much needed ME time. Most of the time I choose the latter and do something like read a book, watch a movie, zone out watch mindlessly stupid TV shows, surf the internet search for Nothing and Everything, or play Wii (right now it is Zelda) which tends to cause me to stay up way to late. So I am usually none to cheerful in the morning when the rooster crows with his usual "MOMMY!". But that it is alright I can lay back down for a bit during nap time right???

Or then again maybe not.... My kids suck right now. Almost everyday I lay the baby girl down and then try to get boy child to lay down. She goes right to sleep, he doesn't. He spends almost 2 hrs squirming and doing everything he can do to NOT go to sleep. Most of the time I have to sit on him (well lay next to him and hold him still). Then I go take a nap, YAY! After about 30 mins, baby girl wakes up and wants to play, not by herself. Joy...up I get to get the baby before she works herself into a tizzy so not to wake the hubby up sleeping off his 3rd shift job. Play with her a bit, feed her and she wears herself out again then lays back down. Okay now I can try to lay down again... or not. Now boy child has awoken...sigh.

If I am lucky I can catch a bit of a nap in after the hubby wakes up but sometimes I don't see the point of it by time it becomes 5 PM.

And here we are, another night... boy child still up playing his game. He has added something to it that makes it even more frustrating, he wants a kiss (sweet yes) but every five minutes! Ugh

"I hope you have a child just like you !"

My mother told me this once..or maybe it was more than once, oh well. And sometimes I hate her for it, cause she succeeded in her wishes (or curses perhaps)upon me. I apparently was a strong-willed stubborn child who gave her hell for the first several years of my life. But I ever grew out of it(or had it beat out of me) before I got to old to really be a nuisance in my teenage years.

I had my first child in Jan of 2007, he was born two months early for no known reason. THAT should have been my first clue! Every since then the child has been marching to the beat of his own drum and not giving a damn about what anyone else tells him he should do in the process. He has always been a very loving and sweet child but he as also always been very busy, very independent and very stubborn. There have been numerous amounts of time since I have become a mother that I have often pondered the wonderment that is loving someone so much while hating them all at the same time.

My lovably stubborn first born has been sort of potty trained for almost two months now. I say sort of because the child flat out REFUSES to tell me when he needs to go. And even when I tell him to go he gives me the typical toddler response of "No". And the damnable thing is I know that the child has got to go he just refuses to do "Simply" because I told him so.

Today I put him in his room for about 20 minutes so I could take a brief shower and when I come back out the boy has peed in his pants. AR-UGH! So then breaks out berserker mom who screams, yells, throws boy in bathroom and pops him. And I know I will suffer for it later when I make myself feel guilty for getting mad and being a "bad" mom. It was partially my fault for putting the gate on his door so he would not run around the house getting into things- I was cursed (or blessed) with a curiously smart child as well- or let himself out into the backyard. BUT he STILL could have said something like oh I don't know " Mommy Peepee!" or some such ilk. But No, god forbid he should stoop to the level of telling someone he needs something.

It is like this with every blasted thing! Eating, sleeping, playing, bodily functions! And to add to all this crap I have a nine month old that I am dealing with too. Fortunately for me she is of a sweet disposition currently and for the most part is a very happy baby, she just likes a lot of attention. Which is exhausting when added with the busyness of a three old.

So everyday is an adventure of how to make this stubborn child listen to me without destroying his independent spirit. SIGH.....

And of course the child now comes over to give me a kiss (blast the forgiving nature of young children)..ugh

At least I got a consolation prize from my mother this week. She told me basically that she admired me or in her words "I don't see how you do it everyday, I never would have been able to deal with two so close together!" You see she only stayed home with me until I was about 2 or so and my sister is seven years younger than I. So she never had to deal with that chaos that I do every day. So that is something I guess