What do you think about in the middle of the night?

When your up with children and crickets, what do you think about? Its funny but I playout frustrating times. It seems like the frustrating times are when there were unpleasant circumstances that I didn't feel like I could properly communicate to help myself out of them. Last night I remembered when I was pregnant, working full-time 8-5 and living in student housing.

Our neighbors through the wall had a baby that would scream from 1 or 2 am until 6 am everynight. Our ciderblock walls reverberated the sound and the child might as well have been in our bed crying in my ear. The only difference is I could go and comfort the baby, rock it, sing to it and feed it and put it back to sleep. I felt it would be rude to the poor parents I didn't know how to bring it up without being presumptious. I don't think the parents once got up with that child. Maybe they were nieve parents who expected babies to sleep through the night right away and let her cry it out, maybe they were deep sleepers and didn't even hear her cry, maybe they had no idea how miserable it was for us, maybe the baby was teething. I'll never know because I never talked to them about it the cloest thing was with sympathy in my voice I asked if their baby was teething, I just wanted to know why, why why???

I wished I had talked to them, maybe offered to come rock the baby or feed her a bottle, or at least know that they were trying to comfort her or had done what they could. I used almost all my sick time at my job to catch up on sleep during those months, on those nights I only got 2-3 hours of sleep calling in and letting my supervisor know I'd be a little late so I could just get a few more hours of sleep so I could function.

Of course I don't know if this is related or not, but the baby I was pregnant with turned out to be colic, and we would spend countless hours up with our daughter as she screamed, bright red, standing stiff as a standing board during the ungodly hours of the night. I'd rock her for 6-8 hours a day, luckily she was my first and I could do that and sleep when she finally slept. I'd often lay on the floor with one hand on her bouncy seat at night so I could bounce it for her when she started up again. My husband and I worked it out that on week days when he had work I'd only wake him up if it was the fifth time up with the baby and on weekends he'd be up everyother time.

I had a sweet lady who lived in the apartment above me who was like a second mom, Sister Preito from Brazil. She would give me lunch and give me tips and help hold my baby and show me little tricks of the trade everyday. Always build me up and tell me I was a wonderful mother helping me so much when I was feeling discouraged and down. She will always have a place in heaven in my book, an angel. Of course I had wonderful family too and my sweet husband, maybe I won't judge after all that poor couple through the cinderblock walls in our student apartments.

Another GIrls night

Last night I had a bit of spontaneous night out with my neighbor. We went to her sisters and help move furniture and redecorate her house and shelves in preparation for selling the home. My husband thought it was a weird night out, but it was fun to drive in the car and talk, redecorate someone elses house and be creative. Also it's nice to do a project finish it and leave and not see it all messed up, like with housework at home.

It's been a little crazy at home and I've felt like I've been so busy and working hard, but it doesn't always show. Like I've been organizing and sorting through papers and finances, actually saw the bottom of the laundry floor (actually got through my whole mountain of laundry) and deep cleaned the whole room. I've been waking up early and going to bed late with the help of the birds, allergies and children. So it was so nice to get away and do something different and new. We did pick up some ice cream sandwiches and juice as a treat.

So today the focus is making the rest of the house look clean and organized now that I have some underlying things done like laundry and filiing. I have to get the kids to help me pick up and clean the guest room downstairs. Sometimes the kids use it as their crazy room, I let them jump on that bed and it is where the dress -up is stored and all our extra bedding so you can imagine sometimes I'll wander into that remote part of the house and have to stiffle a scream. I have family coming in and it is amazing how fast you can get things done when you have a deadline when someone is coming over. Anyways, it was nice to have a get away doing something new.