Thursday, November 26, 2009
It's good to be with family
Success. Great family, good food, and the house hasn't looked this cleaned up in a long time! D had a great time at his first Thanksgiving feast, and J helped us sing the turkey song to his uncles, aunts and cousins on our phone calls back and forth. The turkey turned out perfectly, and although I forgot the rolls until the end, we definitely weren't short of food! This was a very good day.
Swedish turkey?
Is mine the only husband who thinks that Thanksgiving cooking should be done while blasting "Dancing Queen"? I don't think that the Swedes are particularly into Thanksgiving, or turkey. I blame it on a childhood devoted to the annual Eurovision competition.
Though we do have lefse, which is Scandinavian . . . but Mr. Al bought it, so it is more likely Norwegian lefse. (He says they were out of Danish lefse - Thanksgiving is ruined.)
Though we do have lefse, which is Scandinavian . . . but Mr. Al bought it, so it is more likely Norwegian lefse. (He says they were out of Danish lefse - Thanksgiving is ruined.)
Preparations are in the early stages:
Friday, November 13, 2009
Getting chilly around here
The weather has set its pattern for the darker months - cold, damp-to-soggy, and all around bleakness. I actually like this type of weather in small doses. Perfect for knitting in front of the (gas) fire, hot chocolate excuses, and without all that blinding sunshine my house looks less dusty. But it is making the boys suffer from cabin fever already. J wants to be out there digging and running and jumping and tricycle riding - drawing letters just doesn't cut it for him. We try indoor dancing and how-many-can-you-run laps around the living room/kitchen/hall circle, but that gets old quicker, and unfortunately Mom can be really unreasonable about long distance couch bouncing. D doesn't mind as much, he's content to follow J around and copy him (shirt off? me too! hopping on one foot? me too! crying because he can't eat Halloween candy for breakfast? me too!) but that can be dangerous for him. If he gets too close or bumps some important J project, D is liable to be punched. We're working on that, but it would be a lot easier to work on it if the sun was shining!
D has started daycare for real this week, after visiting multiple times over the last couple weeks. Three days a week, same as J, and overall it is going as well as can be expected for such a big change in his days. He is very sad when being left, and cries when Roni shows up to pick him up, but phone calls during the day have assured us that he's playing and eating and napping with everyone else in a generally happy manner. Roni picks the two of them up earlier than when it was just J. We'd both like to have him home longer before starting daycare, but Roni has no other options if he is going to go to job fairs and interviews, and we really need Roni to have a job!
Belated Halloween pics for the grandmas:
Saturday, October 31, 2009
These shots better work!
Today was one of the few days that the H1N1 vaccine was available in our county. They were going with high risk populations first - pregnant women and very small children, health care workers, people 6-24, and teachers/day care workers. Three out of four of us fit those categories, so we left Dad at home and headed off to one of the clinics offering the shots.
I went early, because in the only other shot day I'd heard about, my cousin waited for 1 1/2 hours to get his daughter the vaccine, and they ran out of shots by the time their turn came (luckily they had flu mist left, so his daughter got that). But apparently, not early enough!
I should have realized when I couldn't get through the intersection without waiting through several lights that we needed to get up a lot earlier, but I thought maybe there was an accident. when we passed the clinic, we could see that the line was very long, but it wasn't until we parked quite a ways away and hiked over that I realized that the line was many, many lines that snaked and doubled back and twisted all around the building. They'd used yellow "caution" tape to create the Disney rollercoaster type paths to keep everyone in order. There were hundreds of people.
Three hours and 45 minutes later (!) the three of us got through the doors and then soon after were rubbing our sore arms/thighs.
Next plaue scare, I come more prepared - lawn chairs, a lot more toys than the wimpy two I had, the stroller for napping and a food cooler. We were lucky that the woman in front of us had family to call to bring snacks and she shared the goldfish with us. Then Joey found left-over grapes from yesterday's lunch in my bag, which kept us from full meltdown.
The kids did really well for a very long time, and it wasn't until the last hour that I had to threaten to take away Halloween or switch carrying them on a five minute rotation. And we were even luckier that it didn't rain until we were coming out of the building!
And now we won't die, so that's good too.
I went early, because in the only other shot day I'd heard about, my cousin waited for 1 1/2 hours to get his daughter the vaccine, and they ran out of shots by the time their turn came (luckily they had flu mist left, so his daughter got that). But apparently, not early enough!
I should have realized when I couldn't get through the intersection without waiting through several lights that we needed to get up a lot earlier, but I thought maybe there was an accident. when we passed the clinic, we could see that the line was very long, but it wasn't until we parked quite a ways away and hiked over that I realized that the line was many, many lines that snaked and doubled back and twisted all around the building. They'd used yellow "caution" tape to create the Disney rollercoaster type paths to keep everyone in order. There were hundreds of people.
Three hours and 45 minutes later (!) the three of us got through the doors and then soon after were rubbing our sore arms/thighs.
Next plaue scare, I come more prepared - lawn chairs, a lot more toys than the wimpy two I had, the stroller for napping and a food cooler. We were lucky that the woman in front of us had family to call to bring snacks and she shared the goldfish with us. Then Joey found left-over grapes from yesterday's lunch in my bag, which kept us from full meltdown.
The kids did really well for a very long time, and it wasn't until the last hour that I had to threaten to take away Halloween or switch carrying them on a five minute rotation. And we were even luckier that it didn't rain until we were coming out of the building!
And now we won't die, so that's good too.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
The dream of sleep
A full eight hours of sleep has become rather mythological around here. Something like the golden age of Greece, with stories of how it used to be in that long ago time. The Greeks had their minotaurs and sun chariots, we had sleeping until 10:00 on Saturdays and ear-plug free ears. It is all lost in the hazy, distant past.
I don't know when I last had eight hours of uninterrupted sleep - or even eight hours of interrupted sleep - but it wasn't recently, and the people around me are starting to suffer because of it.
There was a brief stretch of time - about four nights in a row until I ruined it by saying out loud how great it was - when younger son slept much of the night. However, older son makes up for it by waking up each morning at 5:00-5:30 and insisting that it is time to go downstairs. Attempts to use logic - "It is still dark, everyone else is asleep, therefore it is still night and you don't get cornflakes now" - were worthless, as were threats, bribes, begging, and tears (mine). When J is awake, he's awake and that isn't going to change. And no, he doesn't want to watch cartoons downstairs by himself, or play with blocks, or get a yogurt or anything else that lets us sleep. He will stand by the bed and stare at me in a really loud way (until I had J, I didn't know staring could be loud) and if I manage to persist in my stubbornness after that, the poking and pleading starts until his dad drags out of bed and down the stairs where they are really loud and perky directly under our room, so I am awake anyway.
Not that I'm bitter.
When J is asleep, he sleeps very soundly! Which is a good thing, because he insists on sleeping in the hall outside our room and we make a lot of trips past his little sleep cocoon - he's always been a floor sleeper, but the hall is new since bringing home D. A couple of times we've almost stepped on him, but now we're used to keeping strictly away from the closet side of the hall as we come and go. When I come up for bed I find him contorted like a pretzel, twisted around a pile of things he accumulated from various rooms as he was settling in after his stories and good-night kisses: extra pillows and books and bears and motorcycles. For a while he was putting on a sweater of Roni's over his pjs but lately he's switched to clutching a scarf of mine or a pair of my big woolen socks over his footie pajamas. He just likes to have something of ours with him.
On the rare days that older son sleeps until 6:00, or the heaven that is 6:15, younger son has been up three, four, eight times during the night. He sleeps very well from 8:00 to about 10-11:00 and then usually wakes up crying about every 45 (or 15) minutes for a couple hours. On lucky nights it is enough to go in and turn him on his side, retrieve his hand towel and panda from where ever they have landed, and he'll settle back to sleep for awhile. On unlucky nights, the only thing that soothes him is if I climb in bed with him and he can sleep plastered on top of me. Which is great for his bonding and his sleep, but I can't sleep that way. He squirms and likes to have his head jammed up against my chin and I'm a side-sleeper anyway. So I doze on and off, my thoughts drifting randomly between absolute warm fuzzies that this amazing, adorable little boy is actually mine, and counting exactly how many minutes of sleep I'm losing with every fifteen minute chime of the clock downstairs.
Sometimes bringing him into bed with us helps him sleep, but then there is still the squirming and kicking and plastering, so both Roni and I aren't getting sleep, so it is better to keep it to one awake adult in his room.
Roni does his share, but D often wants nothing to do with him at night so takes longer to go back to sleep, and I can't sleep through the crying, so then we're just both awake. (Another aside: much as I love him, it just makes me crazy with jealousy that Roni can fall back asleep again in about 4.3 seconds after getting up while it takes me 15-20 minutes to get back to sleep.) Lately, a few nights I've resorted to earplugs which gives me sore ears the next day but works really well! On Saturdays, Roni will often take the boys to the pool in the morning and I crawl back in bed. (Have I mentioned what a great husband he is!)
I know this is just a stage in our lives, but I am a sleeper by nature. Nine hours is about what I need to be a happy, patient, organized person. Right now, I'm a bit . . . we'll say short tempered and weepy and leave it at that.
I don't know when I last had eight hours of uninterrupted sleep - or even eight hours of interrupted sleep - but it wasn't recently, and the people around me are starting to suffer because of it.
There was a brief stretch of time - about four nights in a row until I ruined it by saying out loud how great it was - when younger son slept much of the night. However, older son makes up for it by waking up each morning at 5:00-5:30 and insisting that it is time to go downstairs. Attempts to use logic - "It is still dark, everyone else is asleep, therefore it is still night and you don't get cornflakes now" - were worthless, as were threats, bribes, begging, and tears (mine). When J is awake, he's awake and that isn't going to change. And no, he doesn't want to watch cartoons downstairs by himself, or play with blocks, or get a yogurt or anything else that lets us sleep. He will stand by the bed and stare at me in a really loud way (until I had J, I didn't know staring could be loud) and if I manage to persist in my stubbornness after that, the poking and pleading starts until his dad drags out of bed and down the stairs where they are really loud and perky directly under our room, so I am awake anyway.
Not that I'm bitter.
When J is asleep, he sleeps very soundly! Which is a good thing, because he insists on sleeping in the hall outside our room and we make a lot of trips past his little sleep cocoon - he's always been a floor sleeper, but the hall is new since bringing home D. A couple of times we've almost stepped on him, but now we're used to keeping strictly away from the closet side of the hall as we come and go. When I come up for bed I find him contorted like a pretzel, twisted around a pile of things he accumulated from various rooms as he was settling in after his stories and good-night kisses: extra pillows and books and bears and motorcycles. For a while he was putting on a sweater of Roni's over his pjs but lately he's switched to clutching a scarf of mine or a pair of my big woolen socks over his footie pajamas. He just likes to have something of ours with him.
On the rare days that older son sleeps until 6:00, or the heaven that is 6:15, younger son has been up three, four, eight times during the night. He sleeps very well from 8:00 to about 10-11:00 and then usually wakes up crying about every 45 (or 15) minutes for a couple hours. On lucky nights it is enough to go in and turn him on his side, retrieve his hand towel and panda from where ever they have landed, and he'll settle back to sleep for awhile. On unlucky nights, the only thing that soothes him is if I climb in bed with him and he can sleep plastered on top of me. Which is great for his bonding and his sleep, but I can't sleep that way. He squirms and likes to have his head jammed up against my chin and I'm a side-sleeper anyway. So I doze on and off, my thoughts drifting randomly between absolute warm fuzzies that this amazing, adorable little boy is actually mine, and counting exactly how many minutes of sleep I'm losing with every fifteen minute chime of the clock downstairs.
Sometimes bringing him into bed with us helps him sleep, but then there is still the squirming and kicking and plastering, so both Roni and I aren't getting sleep, so it is better to keep it to one awake adult in his room.
Roni does his share, but D often wants nothing to do with him at night so takes longer to go back to sleep, and I can't sleep through the crying, so then we're just both awake. (Another aside: much as I love him, it just makes me crazy with jealousy that Roni can fall back asleep again in about 4.3 seconds after getting up while it takes me 15-20 minutes to get back to sleep.) Lately, a few nights I've resorted to earplugs which gives me sore ears the next day but works really well! On Saturdays, Roni will often take the boys to the pool in the morning and I crawl back in bed. (Have I mentioned what a great husband he is!)
I know this is just a stage in our lives, but I am a sleeper by nature. Nine hours is about what I need to be a happy, patient, organized person. Right now, I'm a bit . . . we'll say short tempered and weepy and leave it at that.
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