Friday, January 4, 2008

Your Stories

I'm so glad to hear that Erin knows the smell I'm talking about. Because I was starting to feel a little bit... alone. And yes, if you send in the adoption papers to Cabbage Patch Kid Adoption Agency, you can change the name. They even send you a new birth certificate.

Shut up.

Things here on the bedtime front have been really dark and awful. I don't even know if I'll blog about it, since it's just so ugly. I am, however, considering changing the blog title to "Bitching About Sleep ALL THE TIME" or "We're Still Not Sleeping" or something much more wittier, you know, when I actually take the time to find my wit.

So instead of spinning more tales of our sleep issues, I'm going to ask you: What does nighttime look like at your house?

I'm especially interested to hear tales about children ending up in your bed, or sleeping on mattresses on your floor, or you sleeping in their bed b/c your own bed was too crowded etc.

I'm not looking for sleep advice. I just need to hear how other families handle these things. Though if you have any magic tricks or... you know... legal drugs I could give the children, (or even undetectable illegal drugs), please do tell. Things are a bit desperate around here, is what I'm saying.

If your kids (or pets) go to bed and stay in bed until morning each and every night, perhaps you could comment on... your Cabbage Patch Kid's name? Your favorite thing about Christmas being over? The worst stomach flu you ever had?

Because I'm looking for MISadventures at bedtime.

K?

Also, how many of you guessed that Marin had another ear infection? You guys are SO SMART! We have an appointment with ENT next week. *nervous tummy*

12 comments:

Tess said...

Listen, my kid didn't sleep through the night until she was ELEVEN MONTHS OLD and she wakes up between 5 and 6 am every day. I would be thrilled (THRILLED!) if she would come into our bed and hang out, but she will have nothing to do with our bed.

We do a bath every night (seems IMPOSSIBLE with more than one child though. HOW?) and then a complex process of holding/drinking milk/patting back until she keels over from exhaustion. So yeah, that is...not ideal. She was never a set-down-in-the-crib-and-walk-away kind of kid. Although that must be AWESOME.

Tess said...

I was so busy composing my Bitter Sleep comment that I forgot to mention the frigety-fracking ear infections.

Ever since we saw the ENT, things have been SO MUCH BETTER. We have not had ONE ISSUE, even when she was sick/teething. I hope they can do something to help.

justme said...

i am sorry to hear about the ear infection. maybe the ent will help solve some problems.

our bed/night time goes ok, i won't give the dets b/c all is ok for the most part.
if you ever want to hear about nightmare nap time - i will be honored to post some of my napping vents.

artemisia said...

I am sorry to hear about the ear infections. I hope the appointment with the ENT helps.

I don't have kids, but every morning at 5:00 a.m. one of the dogs (the 70 lb. one) jumps up on the bed and lays ON my feet. I don't have the strength to fight him at that hour, so I've just gotten used to it.

Swistle said...

You would find Paul and me with Elizabeth sprawled out between us, Elizabeth taking up at least half the bed ever since she woke up at 12:15 a.m. crying. And then she wakes up at about 5:45 a.m. with a loud verse or three of the ABC song.

Some nights you would find Elizabeth sprawled on my side of the bed, and me asleep in the recliner with baby Henry, who woke to nurse and then magicked me to sleep with his Warm Baby rays.

Or sometimes either Elizabeth or Henry is up with us ALL EVENING, perky and cheerful as we get ever closer to our own bedtime.

My CPK didn't have the baby powder smell, either. WTH? My friend's CPK did.

I can't remember my CPK's original name, but I named her Megan. I still like that name!

Anonymous said...

Sorry about the ENT but something obviously has to give. HEY! Maybe whatever the ENT has to offer will magically make bedtime a breeze!!!!

Sarah said...

Our child used to be fantastic about going to bed, because we used to be Unfit Parents and give her a bottle to go to sleep with. What can I say? We started doing it one night when she was about eight months old, sick, and not her usual charming self at bedtime. We thought, "This should help for tonight." A YEAR AND A HALF LATER we have finally gotten her to give them up, but now there is this elaborate bedtime ritual in place and if you mess up even one tiny part of it (i.e. the wrong parent attempts to read the Pajama Time book, or we try to turn on the lullaby CD BEFORE goodnight kisses instead of after) she will FLIP OUT on us, crying and whimpering and flailing around until we figure out what went wrong. If she's overly tired, she'll invariably find something to freak out about, so the whole process is an excruciating dance of possible, deadly missteps.

Black Sheeped said...

As you know, I don't have kids, but bedtime is sometimes an adventure with four very bad pets and a tiny house. Here is what happens: I get so sleepy I think I will die, so we start the get-ready-for-bed pet routine. This involves taking the dogs out, for the millionth, normally for a longer time than normal, to make sure that they get alllllll the peeing done. Usually we see a rabbit and then it takes a long time for them to calm down and pee. After we bring them back in, they are riled up and ready to play. While they thunder up and down the stairs fifty million times, I feed the cats, who are bitching and bitching and bitching and tripping us up. Move the dog beds upstairs. Yell at the dogs who have gotten so exhausted from wrestling that they have started drinking tons of water. So much water, in fact, that they will probably have to pee in an hour, or, if we are really lucky, they might THROW UP WATER. Clean up thrown up water. Swear a lot.

Cajole drooling dogs into the hallway by the bedroom, where they sleep. Put up the baby gate. Take out contacts, brush teeth, etc. Get into bed. Husband goes to watch late late show. Dogs keep walking around and panting nervously. Dogs refuse to quit shoving cold noses into my face. Dogs have really lud clicky toenails on the hardwood floor. Finally get out of bed and let dogs go downstairs to pester husband. Get back in bed. Fat cat comes upstairs, walks on my bladder while reeking of cat food, so I get out of bed again to pee.

Go back to bed, sleep for a while until husband must lure dogs back to bed. Wake up a few times to cats fighting on bed.

Four in the morning: cats start ritual morning WAKE UP THE HUMANS routine. Lots of meowing, running across our heads, biting our hands, scratching the side of bed. Dogs sigh a lot, then wake up completely and start running around and trying to wake us up. Dogs stretch on hardwood floor, dog toenails dig into floor and scratch it horribly while we groan in pain. PAIN. Cats start leaping wildly from dressers onto our heads, or climbing on to tiny nightstands and knocking things over with their fat cat butts.

Get up, take out dogs, feed cats, feed dogs, move beds, go about the day. Repeat.

Anonymous said...

Have you seen the new CPK newborns? I think some of them are pretty cute. I was looking at them near last Christmas, "just to see which one I WOULD choose," and ended up with two of them, a boy and a girl. What do I need them for?

Erin said...

Nights in our house can be summed up on one word: inconsistant.

Sometimes we all sleep well. It's awesome! Life is so good! No, it's great! And then the baby decides he doesn't want to do THAT again for a while, and we're back to being up every 2-3 hours. Only, there's no "we" involved, since my husband has not gotten up with baby Emmett one time since he was born. WTH? Ok, I am to blame for that also.

I have a funny CPK thing to tell you. Since you mentioned the yummy smell the other day, I've been thinking about mine. I was the luckiest kid in town to have IDENTICAL TWIN GIRLS (hey!) and they both had that smell. It sort of made up for the fact that I never got a Pound Puppy. But only sort of. I'm still a little resentful about that.

ANYWAY. My thing I want to tell is this: my CPKs' names were Gussy and Felicia. And it was only the other day, when you mentioned it, that I realized Felicia was pronounced "Fell-eesha" instead of "Fell-issa" which is what I called her for the past two decades.

Katie said...

Hey! I thought that was what blogging was for...the bitch about the lack of sleep as a parent! DUH! We have all been there, or in our case, we are all there currently.

Bedtime at our house is pretty consistent, but it is the naps and the waking times that SUCK SUCK SUCK. Especially the naps. God. I dread naptime now because it is all, "will she? Or won't she? And if she won't I'm going to have to jump off the back deck...."

So. You're not alone. Not at all.

Also, my CPK's name was Caty Lindy. Which is kind of cute. And also, my name is Katie. So I thought it was a miracle!

Anonymous said...

Sleep at our house usually looks like my hubby, 2 boys (ages 6 & 4) and our daughter (2) in our king-sized bed and me and the baby on the sofa. Some nights the baby and I get the bed with the 2 year old (if we get in the bed early and refuse to budge when the boys come in). Me and hubby in the same bed together? NEVER! Hhm, wonder how we got all these kids . . .

CPK - Jennifer Selma. Same name since 1980.