So Tired

I should load some pictures and do some real blogging, but I’m too tired. So I’ll just babble a little until I’m sure I’ve lost all your attention. (Sorry, Grandpa, maybe some pictures next time.)

Phaedra had a bad night last night. I think it was a combination of things. Yesterday morning, she got up at 6am, so I let her snooze with me in my bed until Grant had to leave for work. Apparently, even a short amount of time in Mommy and Daddy’s bed can give her a serious sense of entitlement. She got up around 1am this morning. We did our usual routine: wrapped her back up in her blanket, turned on the sound machine, and held her for a bit before putting her back in her bed. Usually, this works; no problem. Last night, she would not let me put her back in her bed. She would scream like a banshee every time I tried to put her down.

I let her cry for a good long while, the whole time feeling guilty. I hate making her cry it out. I know she’s teething: getting two of her 2 year molars at once. So she might need extra comfort. But the comfort she wants is sleeping in my bed which means I get no sleep. And she might never let me get away with doing it just once. When I get no sleep, I just don’t function. It’s that simple. So to save her from an irrational, crying, screaming mommy the entire next day, I have to let her do some screaming. That doesn’t mean I don’t hate it.

After she’d been screaming for a while, we thought if I went and comforted her, she would be tired enough that she would calm down and be done with it a little sooner. This has worked in the past. It didn’t work last night. She was insisting that instead of wrapping her in her blanket, her blanket should be left behind in her crib. And when I talked to her about how I was going to hold her and then put her in her bed, she kept saying, “Phaedra come too. Me come too,” over and over. So I was forced to let her cry again. It didn’t last as long that time. She finally went to sleep around 2am. Eleanor slept through all of it, or at least she stayed in her bed. Bless her!

I scrambled around town today to get Eleanor’s birthday party invitations printed so we could deliver some of them tonight. I have some great ideas for the party, but I’ve had a hard time committing to doing it. I love how excited Eleanor gets, and I love seeing all the kids enjoy themselves. But I still get a lot of anxiety about the whole thing. I worry over too many kids showing up or not enough. I fret about everyone having a good time, keeping the kids entertained, keeping the house from being destroyed, trying not to embarrass myself. Hosting a group of young children is just a whole different feeling from hosting adults. I just don’t know if I’m cut out for this birthday party stuff. That’s probably too much sharing, but like I said, I’m tired.

We delivered some of the invitations tonight. I let Eleanor walk up to the door at each house to hand it to her friend. She was so excited. She was hopping up and down some of the time. When people said they would come, she was so happy. It made me feel good to see her so excited. It made all that stress I just blabbed about feel totally worth it. I just hope the party lives up to its expectations.

And on a completely unrelated note, I’ve been wanting to write this down or blog about it. Phaedra doesn’t do this as much now as she did about a month or so ago. Whenever we would try to tell her something and she was feeling contrary, she would yell, “I . . . just . . . me!” I think she learned part of it from Eleanor, because sometimes when we ask Eleanor to do something, she argues by saying, “I’m just (fill in the blank).” But every time Phaedra does it, she doesn’t have a legitimate excuse, she just, well, she just me!

Okay. That’s probably enough for one night.