Who's with me?

Okay. I’m done. I’m checking flights to some far-away island and I’m bringing all of you with me. Who’s coming?

Sigh.

I wish this were true. 24 hours in review. (John’s out of town on business in Vegas so thank goodness family is here to help).

Yesterday morning I ran Suls to the doctor again – his croupe-like cough had returned.  I learned that if he gets it again, it may not be croupe – it could also be that the feeding tube he had in the NICU caused some irritation and he may have scar tissue built up, in which case they would need to do a scope if he doesn’t get better soon. Fingers crossed this is over in two days. 

I get Suls home and run into the office for a meeting. Meeting prep. Meeting. Back home. Luckily, my glorious mom made dinner for us and my mother-in-law was staying with me to help me through the night (Suls on steroids is a not-so-sleepy Sully).

Fed the boys dinner, changed them, read them stories. Put Sully to bed. Put Will to bed. Started working on a work project while eating cheesecake at 8:15.

There isn’t enough cheesecake in the world that would have made me feel better about what was about to happen.

8:45: Sully wakes up. I rock him.
9:15: I get Sully back to bed.
10:00: Sully’s up again. I rock him.
10:30: I get Sully back to bed.
11:00: Will wakes up. I rock him.
11:45: I get Will back to bed.
11:55: I finally lay my head down on my pillow.
12:00: I hear Will crying again. I give in and give him a bottle.
12:30: I get Will back to bed.
12:40: I lay my head down again.
12:45: Both boys wake up. Sully’s croupe-like cough on the monitor is filling my room and I feel horrible for him, and Will must not have been able to get comfortable (he’s getting the sniffles) and he was wailing a wail I think Will reserves for moments when he knows I’m on the brink of losing my sanity.
1:00: I wake up my mother-in-law. I need help. She is my hero.
1:05: We give Sully a bottle. We watch the boys run around the living room like it’s 6 a.m. I was so out of any energy to manage the situation I plopped down on the ground and let them crawl on me like I was a jungle gym and wipe their noses on my sleeve.
1:30: They aren’t losing any steam.
1:45: Still going …
2:00: I take Sully back to his room and rock him to sleep.
2:30: I head to bed. (Thank you Diane for staying up with Will – I can’t tell you how much you saved my life).
3:00: I hear poor Diane try to get Will to bed and he screams.
4:00: Will finally goes down.
7:00: The boys are awake and ready to play. I am not-so-awake and not-so-ready to play.

Thank God I can work from home because I look beyond frightening today and think I would scare small children.

Now – who’s in for those plane tickets?

Until tomorrow …

So very sleepy

This weekend, Will caught what Sully had. It was expected, but still not welcome. We now had two little snot balls on our hands, coughing, clinging to us to be held all of the time and whining horribly if we so much as had to go to the bathroom and put them down. 

So, Sunday, on our sixth day of horrible sleep, accepting the fact that we would have to move on with life with two miserable children, we put them in their car seats and headed to Target. (Had we not run out of diapers, I will not pretend that we would have been so brave as to venture into the world).

At a stoplight just before Target John said, “I have an idea.”

“What is it?” I asked. Maybe he had an idea about a vacation!

“Dog tags.”

“Dog tags?” This was not a vacation.

“Yeah. What if we bought each of the boys dog tags – they’d have our address and contact information on them, and then we’d leave them at Target, not for long, just long enough to get a nap. And then someone would return them!”

Hmmmm. Ummm. “I don’t think so, Sweetie,” I said, only it sounded more like, “I DON’T THINK SO SWEETIE,” because the boys were now whining so horribly loudly I was wishing we were in an airplane instead of a small car.

“Oh,” John said. And I saw the wheels turning as he tried to think of another idea that would garner us two hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Oh my. It’s hard to describe sleep deprivation to someone who hasn’t been a parent before, because they say things like, “One night – I crammed for a test all night long – no sleep!” And I think, “Oh you sweet little naïve thing. Stay in school.”

Don’t get me wrong. We wouldn’t trade our boys for anything in the world. We might trade a lot of things for sleep right now though. Like dinner. Or a car. Or our house.

All right. I have to go. I’m going to try and sleep for five minutes in my car.

Until tomorrow …

You're getting very sleepy ... or not

Disclaimer: I'm getting a head cold so this may, or may not, make sense. You might want to drink a few beers and then read it.

John was out of town this weekend taking a much-needed guy's weekend in South Dakota with his buddies. I don't know why, but I don't sleep well when he's gone. It is not because I miss what he calls his "gentle purr" (this is actually a snore). But the weather was fairly bad with thunderstorms, etc. and I kept waking up, thinking "what if I don't hear a tornado warning?" or "did I leave the stove on?" or "what if the boys rolled out from under their blankets and they're cold?"

Normally I don't worry about these things, because John follows me around the house fully aware that I constantly forget to do things like turn the stove off or water a plant or clean out the lint trap. So, when he's gone, the full responsibility of being a parent falls on my shoulders and I feel incredibly inadequate.

To sum it up though, I just want to say to all of you single parents, in moments like this, when I have more than 12 hours alone with my children, I realize how amazing you must be. And how I wish that all of you would get a cake every day and a vacation every weekend because you really, really deserve it.

Okay, back to our weird household. John came back home last night and said "I missed you guys."

And then four hours later, we put the boys to bed at 8. And then we bought The Informant on Pay-per-view. And 10 minutes in to it, Sully woke up. And his screams woke up Will. And an hour-and-a-half later, we gave up rocking them back to sleep and let them crawl all over us in the living room until they got semi-tired. At 10, we put them to bed. At 11:00, Sully woke up again. At 11:50, I woke John up and said, "I can't get Sully back to sleep."

And now our poor little guys have colds (a good explanation for the horrible night last night), and I'm on my way to one, and I think I will call all of you to help me this week because I have a very good feeling John might be headed back to South Dakota right now.

Until tomorrow ...