The Night Shift

8:15 pm. Both boys are asleep. It's a Christmas miracle.

8:59 pm. Truman is awake, shouting and disoriented. Lie down next to him for a few minutes until he's calmed down.

10:00 pm. Pat yourself on the back for getting to bed at a decent hour.

10:17 pm. Truman is awake again, whimpering and calling for Mommy. Lie down next to him for a few minutes.

10:20 pm. Return to bed.

12:45 am. Baby is awake. Feed him and put him back to bed. Emerge from the nursery to find Truman coming out of his room, having peed out the side of his diaper (they're a little too big, but the size smaller is too small!). Change Truman's diaper and pants, lay a towel in his bed. Lie down next to him for a few minutes.

1:09 am. Return to bed.

1:22 am. Truman is opening and closing his door over and over again. Lie down with him for one minute, give a big hug and tell him to go back to sleep.

1:25 am. Return to bed.

1:30 am. Truman climbs into bed with you, a fact of which you are only vaguely aware and too tired to refuse.

2:45 am. Baby is awake and may think he's hungry; try to feed him and receive angry wails of protest along with little bursts of him passing gas, which seems to help ease the wailing. Coax him back to sleep.

3:01 am. Return to bed, sliding Truman a little to one side and Matt to the other so you can sleep in the middle, right where they want you.

3:56 am. Baby is awake again, not hungry, just angry. He doesn't need changing. More gas passed. More soothing.

4:10 am. Return to bed and find that Truman and Matt have effectively taken up all the room on the bed, even with your shoving them around. Carefully remove Truman back to his own bed.

4:11 am. Return to bed.

4:12 am. Husband is snoring lightly.

4:13 am. Gently wake husband and tell him to roll over.

4:22 am. Still can't get back to sleep. Start dozing and commence dreams about 1) being naked in front of masses of people gathered in your parents' basement, and 2) being forced to enter an amusement park where you have to purchase a cow or face death AND watch an interactive movie about people who are severely disfigured, complete with movie-goers throwing cooked spaghetti.

5 am. Husband's alarm goes off for what feels like a long time. Husband must turn it off and get out of bed at some point, but you are too tired to notice when.

5:30 am. Husband turns on shower.

5:39 am. Baby awake again and actually hungry this time. Feed him. Emerge from nursery to find Truman peeking out the crack in his door. He won't let you in his room. Shrug and make your way to the lighted kitchen to give husband a kiss goodbye and complain bitterly about your night before trying Truman's door again. This time he lets you in. "Want to come sleep in mommy's bed?" "Um...yeah!"

5:53 am. Return to bed. Pray Truman goes back to sleep. Let him rip your hair from your scalp as he winds it around his hands trying to get back to sleep. Commence dreams about your children being kidnapped from the BYU library and being thrown off of high places. Awake in a panic. Doze until the blessed hour of 7:22 am, and awake amazed that Truman has done the same. Decide it wasn't such a bad night after all.

"I'm in love, I'm in love..."

"...and I don't care who knows it!"

Truman likes to be swaddled now, just like "baby guy."

World's cutest elf.

He begs to have his picture taken these days. I think he looks so grown-up here. (And boy, he needs a haircut!)

One of Caleb's first "real" smiles. My heart may burst.

Conundrums...or Conundra

Even a king-sized bed is big enough for only two people if one of them is a two-year-old.

I have enough "alone time" in my day to either exercise OR take a shower, not both.

Christmas can't get here fast enough, but I don't want it to be over!

I spent several minutes trying to find out the correct plural of "conundrum" and encountered only heated arguments between scholars on the subject. Is it ironic to anyone else that the pluralization of a word meaning "a difficult problem" turns out to be...a difficult problem? Or is that just my grammar geek showing?

On my mind

I think about blogging all the time, I just never make it down to the basement for anything except laundry. But I've been wondering...

...why is it that my baby wakes up 15 minutes after I go to bed every night, whether he's been asleep three minutes or three hours?

...am I a bad mom if I don't really feel bad for my two-year-old when he hurts himself doing something he's been told ten thousand times NOT to do?

...will I ever have time to clean my bathrooms? Or, perhaps better stated, will I ever WANT to clean my bathrooms enough to use my precious free time to do it?

...am I totally lame because most of my posts don't include pictures?

These are the questions.

I've also been thinking...

...about Christmas and what mine was like four years ago when Matt surprised me by driving to Denver on Christmas day to propose. And then the thrill I got for the next few months every time I looked at my ring and remembered I was going to spend forever with my favorite person in the world. And that maybe I should have considered then how difficult it would be to clean spit-up out of that ring now. I might have stuck with a simple band.

...that setting some goals would be a good idea. I'm setting a goal to set some goals.

...how lucky my family has been to not get sick at all recently. Then I woke up with a sore throat this morning.

...about a friend I had growing up who was born with only one arm. Since I'm almost always holding a baby in one arm, I'm realizing how tough it is to do just about everything with only one arm. Tying shoes? Wrapping presents? Making a PB & J? Tough.

...that I am afraid that you, Dear Reader, won't know how grateful I am for my life right now, because it sounds like I'm complaining a lot. The truth is that I am blessed beyond belief and spend a good deal of time looking around in wonder that my life is turning out better than I ever could have hoped -- and certainly better than I deserve.

Thanatopsis

That's the name of a poem by William Cullen Bryant.

I read it. Once. A decade ago, in high school. But my brain has been replaying the word "thanatopsis" over and over again at all hours of the day and night since about last Friday.

I think it's the product of sleep deprivation.

As a side note, this poem is about death.

I do not think you can die from sleep deprivation. But it feels like you can.

P.S. I have a really, really good baby. He just likes to eat a lot.

Comparison

Caleb vs his cousin Chad (who is six weeks older):

Someday these two will be good friends. Maybe not teeter-totter buddies or wrestling competitors, but good friends.

Announcing...

Caleb Rais
November 2, 2009
2:35 am
7 lbs. 15 oz.
19 1/2 inches long

I thought it was appropriate that he came on a Monday. :)

I have only one hand for typing, but suffice it to say that after roughly four hours of active labor and five pushes, we welcomed sweet Caleb to the family. We think he looks a little more like my side than Truman did. Truman thinks he looks like a fun thing to squeeze, poke, and lay on top of. I am feeling really good (tired, of course) and thrilled to have two little boys. More pics soon, as the baby changes hourly.