Doing Less and Sleeping More
From the outside, most people would say that I do A LOT. But from my perspective, it seems like I’m doing less and less with each passing day. The time I spend at home, especially on nights without C, is almost completely wasted. When C is here, I have a lot more motivation to actually do something — go the park, mop the floor, dance to Beatles songs, whatever. But since I didn’t take measurements regarding how much I was doing at any time in the past — which is a hard thing to measure anyway — I have no point of comparison to today.
I can say with certainty that I am sleeping more and missing my alarm more often. Last night C went to bed at 9:45. I fell asleep putting her down and woke up again at 10:45. Then I went to bed at 11:30 and couldn’t get to sleep — just tossed and turned for a while. So I got about 45 minutes of “me time”. I set my alarm for 6:00, trying to give myself enough sleep and yet get myself back to a reasonable amount of time. When the alarm rang at 6:00, I shut it off and fell back asleep until 6:30.
I’ve never needed 8 hours of sleep before now. Between 5 and 6 used to be plenty. But maybe I need 8 hours these days. Since Celeste gets up at 7:00 almost every day, I may need to just start going to bed at 10:00 so that I can still have an hour or so to myself in the mornings. Otherwise, I’d never get any writing or photo editing done.
Yesterday and Lack of Sleep
Yesterday was a pretty good day, once Celeste and I agreed not to be so cranky with one another.
She’d had a really screwed up sleep schedule the past few days and it was all coming out. Thursday night, her mom said that at 7:00 she she asked to go to bed. That’s an hour and a half earlier than she usually goes down over there. Then she didn’t wake up until 8:00. And she took a 1.5 hour nap that following day. That’s 14.5 hours of total sleep. With me, she usually gets about 12. So Friday night she went to bed around 10:00 and popped up at 6:30.
So she was cranky. Actually woke up demanding something and crying because she didn’t have it right that moment. This is not typical behavior for her.
I was cranky too, because I hadn’t gotten out of bed yet. Her crying woke me up, which means that I didn’t get any “me time”, or even a few minutes to wake up before having to figure out why she was so cranky.
Eventually, we ironed everything out. We stayed at the house for far too long. I was trying to get a few things done and she was making that difficult. I lost sight of what is important and put too much stress on things that could wait. Eventually, we left the house and things got much better.
We went for a nice walk by Lake Ray Roberts. C gathered fist-fills of pine needles (which she calls pine NOODLES) and walked with them, bundling as many of them in her arms as she could fit. When she ran out of room she started making a giant pile of them on a bench. She was still a little cranky, demanding snacks along the way and, eventually getting the point where she only wanted to be carried. It was hot and that made the walk difficult, but thankfully I had the foresight to wear a hip bag instead of a shoulder bag.
We stopped for a quick lunch along the way. She made a huge mess, but at least she was smiling and laughing. On the way home she fell asleep and took a 2 hour nap. When she woke up, she was my little angel again.
The Best Sleeping Schedule
I believe that if you are a parent who has a schedule to stick to because of work or something similar, the best way to get a child used to that schedule is to wake them up at the same time every day. With some exceptions (of course), this should be done no matter what time they went to bed, how many hours they napped, or how much they woke up in the night. It’s much easier on the child (and the parent) to wake them up in the morning than it is to force them to go to sleep at night. And they will find themselves tired earlier if their sleep the night before was cut short thereby eventually finding equalibrium.
If I didn’t have a schedule to keep (ha ha ha ha ha), I’d get them up at a time that was about 30 minutes or an hour past when they would probably wake up on their own. That way there’s some room for them to not have to be woken up.
But Not For Me
Getting her up at the same time every day, however, is not a good option for me because I only wake up with her half the time and the schedule she is on when she’s away from me doesn’t work for me.
See, her mom has to be at work at 8:30 which means she leaves her place around 8:15 every day. She gets C up at 7:45, puts clothes on her, puts her in the car, and lets her eat breakfast at school. She’s out the door in less than 30 minutes. I could do the same and would end up getting C at school 15-30 minutes later than she does with her mom since I have farther to drive, but Celeste and I really enjoy our morning times. We usually take a bath or a shower in the morning. We have breakfast together. We water the plant and feed that cats. It’s really nice. But, it takes me about an hour to get out of the house, if not longer.
I’d prefer to get her up at 6:00. That way we’d leave the house by 7:30, she’d be in school by 8:00 and I’d be to work by 8:30. But I’m not sure how well that would go over with her mom if she was getting up almost 2 hours before her mom wanted her up. But 7:45 is just too late. So, I am for between 7:00 and 7:30 each day and just try to go as fast as we can on school dats. Which means she doesn’t get to school until 9:00 or 9:30 and I don’t get to work until 9:30 or 10:00.
And there you have it. An entire post on sleep. And now it’s almost 7:30. Time to wake up the kiddo.
