I am surviving my week of single-parent-ness. Barely, but I am surviving.
Our schedule for the beginning of the week was bath for Mallory as soon as we get home, then dinner, and then book & bed time and I was able to have her in bed by 6.45p with lights out for me by 9p. Thus I was able to function fairly well Wednesday & Thursday. Carson woke up only once per night those nights and went back to bed easily (I should raise his allowance!).
Thursday night we went to my dad’s to watch the Michigan softball game that started at 7p. So both Mallory & I were up way later than we should have (Mallory went to bed ~8p, me ~10p). That wouldn’t have been so bad if this wasn’t how the rest of the night went:
Mallory started out in the pack & play, Carson in his carseat next to the bed, Cooper & me in the bed. Carson didn’t like sleeping in his carseat, so moved Cooper to the floor and Carson into the bed (didn’t want Cooper to lay on Carson). At midnight, Mallory woke up crying so I brought her to bed with me, moved Carson to the pack & play, and then listened to Cooper whine because he wanted back up on the bed. I told him to stuff it and go lie down. Carson woke up at 3.30a to eat and the alarm went off at 5a. I am so exhausted today, I hope I can stay up for the Michigan game tonight.
I’m starting to feel like I’m getting a cold so this lack of sleep isn’t going to help things. I had Mallory in bed by 7.15p or so and Carson is down in the crib in their room too. I am trying to power blog so I can relax (and probably fall asleep).
Mallory has been pretty good all week. Her meltdowns have been semi-tolerable only because Carson has been pretty good. I have continued on my chocolate & caffeine-free diet and he’s going great. I have determined that if I have a beer in the evening, it seems to cause him to be grumpy that night and the next morning. I had a beer last night so of course Carson was grumpy this morning. But he was all smiles by the time I picked him up from daycare! But add beer to my list of things to avoid, at least as long as Rick is out of town. A friend got me a bottle of natural colic tablets and promised me that I could eat/drink whatever I wanted since those tablets would solve all of Carson’s issues, but for as long as Rick is gone, I’m not going to do anything that will upset anyone’s delicate balance (i.e. only waking up once in the night, etc).
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Mallory has had some funny Mallory-isms that I’d like to share:
Carson was in his bouncy seat, and Mallory started to sing “Everybody have a seat, have a seat, have a seat, Everybody have a seat on the floor. Not on the ceiling, not on the door, everybody have a seat on the floor…” and then she sat down on a chair in the living room next to Carson’s bouncy seat and held up a book and said “today we are going to talk about…” like she was the teacher.
A couple of new songs of late: “Miss Mary Mack”, “I’m bringing home a baby bumblebee”, and “Take me out to the ballgame”. The funny about the last song is that I have a three-CD set of kids CDs in my CD changer in the car. There are 123 songs total on the three CDs; I know which CD and track most of Mallory’s favorites are but I had to pull the box out to find “Take me out to the ball game”. Well, the next day Mallory said she wanted that song again and I remembered disc 5, track 31 but Mallory was telling me from the back seat that I had to get “dat” from the “dere” (that from there = CD box from glove box).
At the grocery store the other day, Mallory picked out a purple playground ball and told me she “needed” it. We didn’t have a ball like that at home; well we used to but Rick was teasing Cooper with it and Cooper popped it. Anyway, I decided to let Mallory get the ball and wanted her to actually ask me for it. So I said “what do you say?” thinking she’d say “please can I have this purple ball”. But instead she said “thank you” and gave me a smile.