sleep

this and that

Straw!

We leave for Galveston/Bolivar in 3 days. This time with Celeste along too. Temperatures are supposed to top out at 90F with 76F dew points. So, hot and humid as expected. My biggest concern is sun exposure for C and trying to find stuff to do other than swim on a peninsula that has practically no shade. Because 12 hours a day at the beach for 3 days in a row probably isn’t such a good idea. Maybe we’ll take some short trips to The Island, the Boardwalk, etc and find some shaded things or indoor things to do.

Celeste didn’t sleep very well last night. She woke up quite a few times crying and difficult to console. Around 2am was the worst. She cried for a while. Then asked for milk. When I brought her milk she cried because it wasn’t in the “blue cup”. When I told her she could have the blue cup in the morning, she started crying again. Eventually we ended up staring at the fan together and taking about the lights. An hour later she fell back asleep. Not sure what’s going on or really how to handle it except to continue to be patient and give her love.

I guess I found some chiggers yesterday. I think I know where and I’m glad I was holding C when I was there. I have yet to find any on her. I’ve got quite a few bites on my ankles and even one up at my hip. Of course they itch terribly.

I’d been going back and forth lately about buying another camera. Something smaller than a dSLR, but better and more capable than the pocket SD1200 I carry around now. Saturday sort of sealed the deal when I tried to hike, photograph, and carry Celeste all at once. If she was a little older it’d probably be okay. The trouble is that I have to wear a backpack since I have camera stuff, my stuff, and Celeste’s stuff. So I have no quick place to put the camera when she wants to be lifted. So, when I lift her she either gets a heavy camera in the face or I get one bashing against my elbow. I’m trying to not rush into buying anything this time, though. So, I’m going to give my big rig another shot during our trip to the coast. And Bonnie’s going to lend me her G9 at the same time so I can sort of get a feel for both since the G10 is what I’m looking at buying.

I went to bed at 9:30 last night and I’m still exhausted this morning. Not sure if I’m still a little sick or if it was due to all the waking up Celeste did. But, regardless, I’m not looking forward to going in to the office today.

Celeste got her first goose egg on Saturday. I let her do all sorts of things that many people don’t let their kids do. So, I’m sure those of you who know me and my parenting style are saying “I figured that would happen!”. But here’s the funny thing: she didn’t fall off the boardwalk I let her run on, 10 feet above the ground with no railing. She didn’t hurt herself jumping off the stool on to the living room floor all by herself. She didn’t hurt herself playing the “oh oh oh” game that she loves so much, which is basically her running in place on my chest. No. She hurt herself walking. No not on a trail, or in the sand, or in the water. She hurt herself walking on the sidewalk in front of a commercial establishment. She tripped on something (I don’t even know what), and hit her head on the large decorative rocks that adorned the place.

I’ve been going back and forth about buying a photo printer. This weekend sort of sealed that for me as well. My local CVS does just as good as my Dad’s photo printer and is much, MUCH cheaper.

And that’s all we have time for today. The end.

sleep: too much, yet not enough

Aug 16th, 2009

by Jim Reverend.

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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.