Success x2!

I sat down to write last night and had a very hard time getting into it -- I'd left off smack in the middle of major changes to my big story and I'm so out of routine and practice that I don't think I wrote more than maybe two hundred words before I petered out and wasn't sure where to go.

But instead of calling it a night and giving up, I flipped through my "ideas" file until something struck me, and then I opened a new document and wrote about four hundred words on that.

Which still isn't much, but I'm calling it a victory, given that it's the better part of a month since I've written more than a few lines, and that my brain has been stuck heavily in Edit Mode for the last couple of weeks.

***

I stayed up later than I expected last night. Matt's been watching back seasons of Burn Notice for the last month or so, and I admit to a visceral thrill for that moment in any episode when Michael flashes his bland, charming, "I am going to destroy you" smile. And also a complete adoration for his mom. It's not a show I'm going to plan my schedule around, and I've walked away from it to go to bed before.

But last night, as I was doing what I thought was a final email check before going to bed, Matt started up what immediately turned into a very exciting and cliffhanger-y episode. (The season finale, it turned out, and if I was understanding right, the last of the episodes available on Netflix streaming.) So I did kind of get sucked into staying up to watch it, and didn't get to bed until nearly 11:30.

So, naturally, Alex woke me up at 5:50.

But I didn't wake up to, "Mommy? I had an accident."

Nope. I woke to the sound of him singing to his toys in bed. I got up and went to check on him. "Hey, buddy. Did you have an accident?"

"Uh.... Nope!"

Holy cow. He did it! A whole night without an accident! Whoo!

"That's great! Give me five! Yeah! Okay, now, why don't you go sit on the potty."

"I don't want to!"

"Alex..."

"I don't want to!"

I'd had just about six hours of sleep. I am not a six-hours-of-sleep kind of person. I didn't have the energy to fight it. "Okay. But no accidents, okay?"

"Okay."

"And you need to go potty before you come snuggle with Daddy and me."

"Why?"

"...Because I don't want you to have an accident in my bed. I'm gonna go get some more rest. Play quiet until you hear the music, okay?"

"Okay."

Five minutes later, our alarms went off, and like magic, a little blond head appeared at my elbow. "Mommy I want to snuggle you."

"Go potty first, kiddo."

"Okay!"

And that was that. I'm not foolish enough to think we're done (especially since I suspect his success had something to do with his extremely minimal dinner last night), but that was a much-appreciated glimpse of the light at the end of the diaper tunnel.

We can postpone or even do without his nap from time to time. We're nearing the end of diapers and pullups altogether. And I realized this morning that he can reach the light switch in his room all by himself, now. (A table by the door puts that switch further out of reach than the other switches in the house.) I may very shortly have an honest-to-gosh Big Boy on my hands.

Washed Out

Have I mentioned that we're trying to get Alex out of pull-ups at night? We decided to take the same tack we'd taken for his daytime training, which was to just get rid of them and let him have however many accidents it takes for his brain to key in.

Which, for the last two mornings, has meant that he goes to bed and is fine right up until about 5:45 in the morning, when he comes into our room and says, "Mommy...? I had an accident."

We're double-sheeting his bed, so it only takes a couple of minutes to get him into clean pajamas and strip the wet sheets off the bed and put him back down... but by then it's almost 6 and the boy is Awake.

And Matt and I, manifestly, are Not.

He willingly lies down and is mostly quiet for the ten minutes it takes for our alarms to start going off, at which point he appears back in our room. "Mommy? I heard the music. I wanna snuggle."

Which is code for, "I want to play with Daddy and possibly lean my elbow on your boob," so you can imagine that it means we're pretty much done sleeping.

So far, he's gone to bed in underpants three times. So far, we've had to wash four sets of sheets. I may need to start going to bed at 9:30 again and just getting up when he has his accident at 5:45, if it goes on like this. Or possibly, set an alarm to wake him up and take him to the potty at 3, when it's still late enough that we can all go back to sleep afterward.

***

I had my day off from the Day Job yesterday. I try to use my days off as writing days (by preference) or to run errands and do chores. I'd wanted to get together with Lynn to talk about a book we want to work on together, but her daughter turned up sick with what turned out to be strep throat, so that was out. So I figured I'd just take my iPad over to Panera and have a regular writing day.

Except that as I took the kids to school, I was yawning obsessively. And my eyelids were heavy. After I'd dropped Alex off and was on the way to Penny's school, I twice had lights change fortuitously quickly, so I didn't even have to stop -- and was frustrated by that (usual) good luck, because I desperately wanted to be able to bring the car to a complete stop so I could close my eyes and doze for a minute.

(It's probably a good thing that Lynn couldn't meet me, because the hour-ish drive down to her place would've been unreasonably dangerous, and I doubt I'd have been in any shape to focus on the topic at hand once I got there.)

When I'd dropped Penny off and gotten back home, I thought about making myself a cup of coffee so I could buck up and get on with my writing, and then I decided that I had the day off, and rather than settle for the quick patch that would get me through, I should take the actual fix and get some extra sleep. So I changed back into my jammies and crawled into bed, thinking I'd nap for an hour or so and then get up and just write through lunchtime instead of breakfast. No sweat.

Except that I didn't wake up until 12:30. Well, I do fuzzily recall opening my eyes at 11, thinking I should probably get up, and then going back to sleep. I'm pretty sure that doesn't count.

That's easily a three and a half hour nap. Maybe more. Apparently, my tank was running emptier than I'd thought. It's entirely possible that I could've slept another hour or so if I'd really tried, but by then I was starving. So I got up and ate lunch, and then decided the day was a wash for writing. Instead, I purged the clothes and toys in Alex's room, filling two trash bags with clothes to donate, one with stuffies he hasn't so much as looked at in a year, and another with a Little People set he hasn't played with since about two weeks after I took it out of the box, all of which I took to the CHKD thrift store near us while Matt was picking Penny up from school.

My next day off, I may tackle Penny's room. She actually plays up there, though, so it'll be harder to figure out what to keep and what to junk.

Under Where?

For those of you who may have seen Matt's comment on yesterday's post -- I am planning to do a post about my Christmas Legos. But I only just finished building the big set last night, and I want to do some dorky pictures with my nice camera that I didn't have the energy for last night. So sometime soon -- possibly next week -- I'll talk about my Very Lego Christmas, with pictures. But not today.

Today, I'm talking about Operation Underwear.


Matt and I had decided that after the holidays, we'd transition Alex to wearing underwear to bed instead of a pullup diaper. He's four now, and it's high time we were done with diapers of any sort. We had to go with this "endure multiple accidents" approach with him for daytime as well, so I suspect the kid may just not get it until we let him deal with it.

Matt's sister, who is currently potty-training her eldest, had a brilliant suggestion for us (that I have no idea why we hadn't encountered it or thought of it before): instead of changing the sheets in the middle of the night, just make the bed in layers to begin with: mattress pad, sheet, mattress pad, sheet. So when there's an accident, you just strip off the top layer and you're ready to go.

So last night, Matt double-made Alex's bed and put undies on him under his pajamas. We both reminded him that he could get up and go potty whenever he felt like it.

We both checked him before we went to bed, and he was dry.

At 3:45, he came into our room to report an accident. I sent him to sit on the potty while I stripped the top layer off his bed. Matt got up and retrieved the wet pajamas, and I got him dressed again and tucked him back into bed. Matt decided to go ahead and wash the wet sheets right away -- that way they'd be ready to put in the dryer when we got up in the morning, and ready to put back on his bed after work.

Which is pretty smart thinking for 3:45am.

Now, Alex almost never has accidents during his nap anymore, so I felt pretty good about his going back to sleep at 4, because we get up for the day around 6. Surely he could make it that long.

Nope, apparently not. When my alarm went off at 6, Alex came in (as he usually does) and I said, "Are your pants still dry, buddy?"

"I changed into shorts."

"You did? Why?"

"My pants were wet."

I got up and checked his bed and yep, sure enough, he'd had another accident.

We may need to invest in another set or two of mattress pads and sheets...

Things Fall Down

For a variety of reasons, I'm considering putting this blog on hiatus.

It hurts to consider, because I've been writing it nearly daily (in one location or another) for more than 10 years. (Coming up on 13, really, if I've done my math right.) It feels very awkward to start a workday without spending a half-hour rambling into the blog first.

But it seems like all I do anymore is throw out a laundry list of activities, or (increasingly, distressingly, and boringly) whine about stuff. I don't really talk anymore. I'm not funny, or interesting, or insightful. I don't have amusing anecdotes or thoughtful critiques or fascinating links. And thanks to an assortment of unpleasant experiences, I can't talk about many of the things that are really on my mind, because those things involve other people who would be excessively unhappy to see them aired.

I'm not fully decided yet. It's hard to give up such a long-held habit. And I know a lot of my "real-life" friends use this as a way to keep track of what we're up to.

But the whining and the laundry lists are boring even me.

This is very much a one-way communication most of the time, but I'm really hoping for responses this time. Give me some ideas or strategies for keeping this going without turning it into the whinefest it's been for the last few months. Or tell me that yes, it's time to hang up the keyboard. I want to know what you're here to read about!

Back!

I'm back! Did you miss me? I missed you!

My holiday was mostly pretty good, barring the usual stresses and frustrations of travel and trying to live in someone else's space. But it was great to see everyone, and I got to hold multiple adorable little babies, and my kids were mostly really well-behaved (barring a couple of utter breakdowns, but if your kids can get through 9 days of complete routine upset without any breakdowns at all, then I suspect you have automatons rather than children). I'm only about halfway through processing my pictures, but I promise I'll post a link to the Flickr set when I get them all done and uploaded -- we did some really fun stuff even aside from visiting people, like going to the zoo (which I'd love to see again, though possibly in warmer weather) and a really nifty display of models of famous Chicago buildings build entirely out of plantstuff (and model trains to keep the kids interested) at the Chicago Botanical Gardens.

New Year's Eve was great -- We had our family Christmas that morning, and then brunch and presents with my family at John and Sam's house (instead of Mom and Dad's because they hadn't even bothered to decorate this year). Then we went over to Braz and Adin's for their New Year's Eve party, which was awesome: Rock Band and champagne and counting down to midnight and an epic 9-player game of Cards Against Humanity after we sent Penny (the last child standing) to bed. (We'd told Penny and Ripley they could try for midnight; Ripley gave up the ghost and conked out at 9:30 or so, but by gosh, Penny made it!)
New Year's day was a little hangovery (note to self: one glass of champagne, and stick to more familiar liquors the rest of the night) but it was lovely and calm.

I'd meant to start taking down our Christmas decorations on the 2nd, but after Penny and I went to Target and bought a bunch of stuff (I spent some of my Christmas money on a very pretty and nice enameled cast iron dutch oven to replace my old pathetic soup pot) I kind of ran out of steam and spent most of the rest of the day just sitting around.

But I'll be moving on it soon, I think; I did spent the last couple of days wandering around the house and developing that twitch that means I'm about to do some serious purging. I cleaned out some drawers in my dresser that were filled with sweatshirts left over from when I was nearly 100 pounds heavier that for some reason didn't go in the initial clothing purge. I kept my favorite two -- sometimes you just need a hugely baggy sweatshirt day -- and dumped the rest in my "clothes to donate" pile. So once the Christmas stuff is packed away and back in storage, it looks like I'll be making a run to the thrift store to donate a bunch of bags of clothes and old toys and random crap I don't want anymore. And another one to the bookstore, as well, as I have a couple of boxes of those ready to go.

As of today, I'm back on the diet, too. I'm embarrassed to say how much weight I gained this past year -- most of it in the final quarter -- so I'm going to be using SparkPeople religiously for a while. (Email me if you're a member, too, and I'll add you to my friends!) My first new big goal is 25 pounds. I'd like to get there before my anniversary in April, but that's a little bit ambitious, so we'll see.

That's my only big resolution for this year, though I'd also like to make some more headway on the writing, and possibly do some (digital) scrapbooking.

And of course, having been away from work for nearly two weeks, things are utterly insane, so I'd better get to it...

Unboxed

Went over to Braz and Adin's last night so the kids could exchange their Christmas gifts.

Ripley tore into her with enthusiasm, and as soon as she got the paper off, she looked at the brown shipping box I'd put her presents into and gleefully exclaimed, "A box! It's what I always wanted!"

DUDE. The girl is six, but she delivered that line with perfect nuance. If it hadn't been, you know, a brown shipping box, I might have actually thought that she'd been jonesing for something just like it. Someone has either taught her very well how to act pleased even at disappointing results, or else she's going to be a Grand Master of sarcasm and the dry retort. (...Who am I kidding? It's the sarcasm one, of course.)

(She was eventually very happy with the FurReal toys Penny had picked out for her.)

Henry did not lose his mind over the draw-your-own-puzzle kits we got him, but he seemed happy enough. I think he'll like it better when he can actually, y'know, open them up and use them. Alex was likewise happy with the Imaginext airplane set he received. (Imaginext is apparently a theme for Alex this year; he also got a dinosaur set from our next-door neighbors, and there are another couple of sets waiting under the tree.)

Penny was a little nonplussed at first to find that her package contained CDs instead of toys. She tried to hide her disappointment, but it wasn't until she showed them to Ripley and Ripley got excited that Penny realized that these were a gift worth having. And then I put a nail in disappointment's coffin by Ooohing and Aaahing over the Selena Gomez CD and saying, "Oh, this is big girl music." The two girls all but raced up for Ripley's CD player to give it a listen. (They also gave her the Muppets soundtrack and a Disney songs CD. She was a little more "meh" about them last night, but this morning was excitedly telling me what songs were on all the discs.)

Success!

Tonight: a quiet (please o merciful gods) evening at home and with any luck, an early bedtime.

Fourish

I had a lovely day off on Friday. I spent the morning at Panera, writing, and then Adin joined me for lunch, and after that we went shopping and got pedicures. We all met up again at Plaza Azteca for dinner, and then we went back to Adin's place so Alex could open his birthday present from them, which turned out to be an "I Spy" bingo game. (Like regular bingo, but with objects and letters of the alphabet, with a number of variations suggested by the rules, depending on how advanced the players are.) We played a few rounds of that, and then I went to my book club party.

For the first time this year, we decided to hold it at a restaurant instead of burdening anyone with the job of cleaning up and providing snacks. That turned out to be an awesome idea. We went to Food For Thought and had a fantastic time. As a clever holiday promotion, the manager was handing out what he called "Secret Santa cards" -- little envelopes that contained a surprise gift, ranging from a free glass of wine to a complete dinner for two on Valentine's Day. The catch was that we couldn't open them ourselves; we have to bring them in sometime in January and have a manager open them. So of course we decided that we have to have our January book club there, too!

Saturday was calmer -- we ran some errands in the morning (like taking a box of stuff to the post office so we can hope it gets to his mom's before we do), and Matt went to his monthly D&D game that evening. I took the kids out to dinner, and they were surprisingly good.

Sunday was a little crazier. We had the usual chores, and we exchanged presents with our next-door neighbors, and then Matt and Penny went to see a production of the Nutcracker ballet while Alex napped. After Alex woke up, I took him down to my parents', where Matt and Penny met up with us (they'd had a good time at the ballet, though as Matt said, it was a children's dance troupe, so the performances were a little uneven) for the family birthday party for Alex. Mom made her homemade mac-and-cheese, and Sam brought a gorgeous salad, and Alex seemed quite happy with all his presents. We all had big pieces of cake (except John and Sam, who were being good and making the rest of us look bad) and HOLY CRAP MY BABY IS (nearly) FOUR.

Who let that happen?

Speaking of crazier...

My office Christmas party holiday luncheon annual morale event is today. (Catered lunch, yum!) Tonight we're swapping gifts with the Hegemony. No plans yet for Tuesday, but I expect I'll spend a chunk of it packing, because. Wednesday morning has a doctor's appointment of some sort for everyone in the house except Matt, Penny has a half-day of school (if she goes at all, depending on how long her doctor appointment goes) and that evening, the Hickses are coming up to do the Christmas thing (and also so KT can give me my thirty-one gear and we can sequester ourselves in a corner and talk writer-stuff for a bit).

And then Thursday, we're off to Chicago for the holidays.

In the meantime, one of the gifts I ordered for Matt still hasn't come in, and I have to figure out a way to wrap another one. Details that I had thought long since established (like whether Santa wraps gifts) are being called into question, and since I haven't really been thinking past the Chicago trip, I was blindsided by the need to plan the events for New Year's Eve. I feel like my head isn't screwed on quite right; I'm dropping details right and left, and my body has reacted by making me drop into a drowse every time I stop moving for more than ten minutes.

But at least I finally remembered to load my holiday music onto my iPad!

WHEE!