Bedtime Battles

Confession time here - I'm crap about putting my kids to bed.  I like to cuddle them to bed.  I just do.  I nursed Sam until he was almost three and a half, and Jessie liked me to sing and read her to sleep.  I just never got in the habit of shoving then into bed, flicking out the lights and dancing out into the living room for grownup time.  But I'm working on it - because at eight years old, my daughter has developed a serious aversion to falling asleep.

Mornings have been impossible with Jessie lately, because she's so overtired.  Yesterday, we had a long conversation about ways that we could improve, and since her health teacher (God bless her health teacher) had recently done a class on how much sleep the average third grader should get (which is at least ten hours), Jessie was completely on board with the fact that she needed to go to bed and get more sleep.  We decided that if she slept from 9:00-7:00, that would be a solid ten hours and life would be lovely.  We also agreed that going to bed at 8:30 would give her enough time to doze off on her own, to ensure that she was actually asleep by nine.

Last night was the first night - and she fought it bitterly.  Just bitterly.  She wasn't angry or weeping, but resigned and resentful that I was enforcing the rules.  She listened to her Sound of Music CD, and was asleep by nine.  And this morning was, as promised, lovely.  This afternoon, I went to the library and got her books on CD, so she has other options to listen to as she drifts off.

Sam is still a work in progress.  He's always been such a good sleeper, so I'm probably going to stick with what works with him - which is for him to fall asleep next to me in my bed and then trek him into his own bed.  Most of the time.  Sometimes, I'm sure he'll just end up crashing in my bed still... and Julianna still nurses at night, and since we've co-slept from the beginning with her (as we did with Sam), I'm in no rush to kick her out of my bed.

Ugh

We're moving.  Again.  Not happy about it.  Our landlord, who is lovely and kind and a truly nice man, is moving back up from FL and we need to find another place to live.  He's giving us tons of notice, and is apologetic and sweet, but bottom line is that nine months after moving in, we're moving out.

I've moved a lot, I like moving.  I do.  Up until I started school at age six, I moved pretty much every year, and I've always liked settling into a new place.  Once my parents split up, we were pretty stable, and though we still moved every three or four years, my mother made sure that we stayed in the same town so we didn't have to change schools.

But this move - I don't WANT to move.  I like this house, I like this neighborhood and I really don't want to.  Marc and I have moved five times since we got together, and every single move has been my idea.  I've pushed it, wanted it, but this time, I don't want to.

I am, though.  And I'll be sunshiney happy thru it, because if I'm unhappy about it, it's nothing compared to Marc.  Nobody, and I mean, nobody hates moving as much as my husband does.  I don't know of anything that bothers him as much - he's flat out awful about.  So I know that all the packing and deciding what to keep, what to throw away, unpacking, etc is all on me.  It's enough that Marc will actually do it.  I can't even get mad at him (or at least, I try not to - I'm sure I'll end up screaming at him eventually for not helping me enough), because you can tell that moving is that hard for him.  He'd be much happier if we could just get keys to a new, empty place and then get all new stuff.  It's odd because he's more than happy to help other people move, it's just us that he hates moving.

In other news... Julianna had her first temper tantrum yesterday.  It was adorable.  If you could get past the fact that she was really, really furious.  She had been woken up too early from her nap - generally she naps for at least three, sometimes four hours in the middle of the day, but Jess and Sam had come screaming down the hall and woken her up.  She had had just enough sleep to want to get up, and since I'm not a fan of clubbing them to make them fall back asleep, I just let her get up.   I carried her into the living room and plopped her on the floor and she was devastated.  Went from happy baby to screaming disaster.  Jessie tried to pick her up and she crawled screaming to hide behind the rocking chair.  Then she crawled, still screaming, in a circle around the table and then into the dining room.  Wouldn't come to me, was furious at even the prospect of me.  I let her scream, because really, what else could do, for a few minutes and then finally just picked her up, ignored the thrashing and screaming and laid her head on my shoulder.  I took her into the bedroom, nursed her for a few minutes and rubbed her back.  Thank goodness for nursing, because it calmed her down immediately, and she was sunshiney happy soon after.

Second Wife Survival Tips

Marc has two daughters from his first marriage, and we see his ex frequently at family functions.  It's... an odd situation, because while it's lovely and great for the kids that it's so amicable, it's a confusing place for me to be.  I don't know quite where I fit in sometimes.  This has gotten better as time goes on, Marc and I have been together almost ten years now, so there's little doubt that I'm there as his wife, but I still feel awkward and uncomfortable at parties that we both attend.

So I've developed some tricks to get thru it.  Number one, I always make sure to reward myself every single time.  Either the day of the function or the day afterwards, I get to take the afternoon off, no kids, and indulge myself somehow.  Sometimes it's a pedicure, sometimes it's a movie, sometimes it's an ice cream cone or take out chinese and a good book.  But I always make sure to indulge myself in something just for me.  It's gotten a lot easier over the years, but it's never easy going anywhere where I'm primarily known as the second wife.

Number two, I'm not afraid to discreetly disappear during the party if I need some space.  Granted, it helps a lot that I've got an eight year old with dramatic tendencies and a slight persecution complex,  five year old who hates parties, and I've got a toddler who's still a nursing girl.  I bring a book and if I need to go chill out in the car for a while, I just pick up a kid and head out.  Oddly enough, my kids love just hanging in the car, I plop them in the front seat and just relax for a bit.  Nobody questions it, and I'm able to regroup.

Number three - I fake it well.  Stick a smile on my face, and remain relentlessly pleasant.  Sometimes it's easier than others - but mostly, I try to make it look as though I LOVE hanging out with someone who used to have sex with my husband.  Someone who's his partner in raising children, and someone that we'll be involved with, to one extent or another, for the rest of our lives.   Being a stepmother is complicated and hard, but on the upside, were I not a stepmother - I wouldn't be a wife or mother either, and honestly, having my stepdaughters is well worth the awkwardness.

Sleep issues

There aren't that many actual parenting rules that I live by - I think I'm pretty flexible about most things, but one thing I know for certain - it's never a good idea to get used to anything your child does, because as soon as you do, they'll switch it all up.  Case in point, my tiny little Esmerelda baby.  She used to be the easiest child to put to bed.  She'd even gratefully agree that it was bedtime and snuggle up next to me while I nursed her and watched Grey's Anatomy repeats.  It was lovely... but now - now, it's a whole different story.  She fights it, climbs all over the place and fusses.  I have to keep laying her down until she eventually gives up and just drifts off.  She's developed an attachment to receiving blankets (after three kids, I have a ridiculous number of them) and likes to have many, many of them draped around her.  She's got one in particular that she loves, with little fat fairies all over it.

She just woke up from her nap, she slept for almost three hours and is so cute.  She's munching on some hot dogs and water, I tried to give her tuna fish and she was horrified.  Sam is outside playing with Glennys in the pool and eating popsicles and Jessie is out to the movies and chinese food with Marc's mother.

All in all, a pretty perfect kind of summer day ;-)