Here I Am!

Sorry it has been so long. I have been feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information I need to cover, and that has been the driving force behind my procrastination. I have no other good reason, unfortunately.

So in this post, I'll try to chip away at the What's Going On With The Kids side of the story.
And, you know, try as I might, I can't jump into that without mentioning our construction project (which will be fully updated in my next post), but here's all I'll say about that right now: We've gutted Judah's room (and by We, I mean Abe and Tim). Do you know what that means? It means Judah can't sleep in there any more until it's done (three months? six months? a year?), so we've moved his crib into Charis' room. They share a room now. Which also means that they share a sleep cycle at night, and must be separated for naps during the day--which in turn means that Charis is napping in our room, which means I have been getting exactly nothing done, since I'm trying to be quiet and not wake her. Whew. I wasn't sure I'd get that out.

Yes. I've been dreading this sharing-a-room thing for a while, so I'm afraid I haven't been very encouraging of Abe and his progress ("How about windows and doors? Can you do those first? Pour the basement floor? How about that?") in an attempt to postpone the inevitable. But there was only so much Abe could do to put it off, and finally, last Wednesday, it was Time. While the kids and I were at church, Abe moved the rest of the stuff out of Judah's room, including Judah's crib, and he removed the carpet and most of the trim. So we had to leap.

The bedtime routine went remarkably well, better than we had imagined; the kids chatted a little bit, but nothing too raucous, and they were asleep in no time. Huh! All that worry for nothing! we said. This will be a breeze!

Round about 2 am, when Judah woke up for no apparent reason, we weren't so giddy. Ditto that for 3 am. And at 4:15, when Charis turned on the hallway light and started to come downstairs, we weren't even cracking a smile. I took her back to her bed, tucked her in, and went back downstairs. But maybe I shouldn't have been surprised when, at 4:30, Charis turned on the hall light and began calling for me.

"This is going very well. I don't know what we were worried about," Abe moaned.

I raced upstairs, hoping to at least preserve Judah's slumber (since the rest of us were wide awake), and brought Charis in bed with us. She tossed and turned and talked and kept us awake until Abe's alarm went off. Then she promptly went to sleep.

On account of their bad night of sleep, the children slept until 10 am, and needless to say, naps that day were a breeze--for all of us. But you can imagine the dread I felt when bedtime approached the next night.

It was dread well felt: Judah was still up twice. And Charis came to sleep with us again, but not until 5:30.

"Maybe this will just take a couple of weeks for them to get used to," Abe suggested. I shot him my best withering look, which, considering my fatigue, may have looked a lot like drowsiness or a drooping eye.

But Ford was in his flivver and all was right with the world the next night--both children slept all the way through. No one cried. No one drooled on my pillow. And, while they have been getting up earlier than usual, Charis and Judah have settled well into this new arrangement, even better than we had hoped.

Okay, so nap time is still a little rough. Yesterday, out of boredom, Charis dumped a fragrant sachet of lavender and rice onto my bed and the floor. When I went to get her up from her nap, I found her lying prostrate on the floor outside my bedroom, her torso and head covered with her Blue Blanket like she was an ostrich hiding in the sand. Presumably, she found it uncomfortable sleeping on a couple hundred grains of rice. Princess? Perhaps.


















In other news, we've got another shiner in our house. This time, it's on Judah. And, like Charis' black eye, his was bug-related. Why must bugs munch on my children's faces? Judah got bitten or stung by something about half an inch from his right eye, and it turned black and blue more or less immediately. To add insult to injury, while we were outside dismantling scaffolding yesterday, Judah got stung again in exactly the same place. What are the odds of that? Poor kid.

Well, there's more to say, but as you're probably already bored to tears (if, indeed, you made it this far.), the rest will wait for another post. I'm off to take the kids for the walk I promised them. Have a great day!