Tired

That was neat.

I finally went to bed early for the first time this week, only to have my “get a good night’s sleep” efforts foiled by my kids.

I need to back up. Apparently our new house has the suckiest heating and/or insulation in the entire universe. Our first floor programmable thermostat would be set to 68 and the second floor (where the bedrooms and our showers are) would register a toasty 64 degrees. SIXTY FOUR. As in holy cold, Batman.

Thus I was sleeping on a heating pad set on medium every single night. It was taking me an hour to stop shivering so I could fall asleep. It was pretty neat. For fake.

So I guess I should back up again. I’ve been beyond nervous for our utility bills in our new house. Our old (smaller and probably better built due to the previous owner doing the renovations himself) house had decent utility bills – plus we had a well so no water bills. Our new (bigger and slapped together by Joe Schmoe and his cheapy insulator and mechanical contractors) house has already gifted us with bigger gas and electric bills PLUS water bills and while we were warned of the water bills when we moved in, it was a SHOCK to get TWO water bills, one for our house and one for the lawn irrigation system. Let’s just say that we figured out why the lawn was so trashed when we moved in late-July; we don’t think the previous owners watered the yard all summer! So we will have to be smarter with the sprinkler programming next summer because that water bill was a killer. But not as bad as our first winter heating bill (and we’ve been told that we haven’t really even gotten our first real full winter bill yet). I told Rick I needed to wear 14 layers so we could keep our heat low and thus lower the insane utility bills.

Because of this, we tried keep our heat turned down a bit so prevent more DTE bill shock but in order to keep the upstairs warm enough, we had to have the thermostat set to 70, which isn’t good when you are trying to keep your energy bills down, or your husband to not complain “IT’S SO HOT!” as soon as he walks in the door.

After some damper and register adjusting we have been able to successfully balance the heat in our home so we can keep the downstairs set at 67/68 and have the upstairs be similar. I’ve actually been sweaty in the morning (probably due to the addition of two extra blankets on our bed) but I’d prefer that to shivering all night. I was going to start sleeping in a sleeping bag, especially because when Mallory come to our bed, she has to sleep right next to me and she ALWAYS kicks all the covers off her – that girl is a furnace when she sleeps!

So, back to last night. Go to bed early after putting kids to bed early.

11.30p Carson woke up screaming (for the second night in a row). It took AN HOUR of cuddling and patting and shushing (by me) to get him to fall asleep. So he ended up spending the night in our bed.

3.45a Mallory makes her almost guaranteed middle of the night run to our bed and when I told her she couldn’t sleep in the middle she got loud and needed her bear blankie. But we didn’t know where they were last night so she didn’t have one at bedtime and was fine with that. So she started to protest louder while I tried to quiet her before she woke up Carson and Rick. Then she jumped out of bed and TURNED ON THE LIGHT to look for her bear.

That woke up Rick and he took her off to her room for some polite conversation. It was better him than me since he probably just fell asleep in on the floor in her room so Mallory couldn’t lay there and kick the door in for being locked in her room. If I’d had to deal with her I would have used the always effective screaming, yelling, and threats.

I shut the door to my room, and turned on the fan to help drown out the screaming coming from down the hall. I think it finally stopped 30 minutes later (we are at 4.15a ish now). Rick comes back to bed at some point.

Fast forward to 5.15a, and Mallory comes to our room again, calmer this time, and crawls in next to me for about 20 minutes, and then declares herself ready to start the day. She somehow talks Rick into going downstairs with her, where they play until 6.30a. When I called down to tell Rick to get in the shower, Mallory tells me she doesn’t want to get ready for school, because …”isn’t it a staying home day?”

I so wish it was but then she’d be in bigger trouble for waking us all up when we should have been sleeping in!