Finally!

Finally, a decent night's sleep... Yet still, here I am, up before the sun is. L is still pulling the weird sleep acts. The night before last, she did another one of those "let's act tired at the normal time, but decide not to sleep once Mom gets sleepy" things. Around midnight, I handed her off to my husband so he could take her for a car ride. Sure enough, she was asleep within minutes. I am going to start a "cry-it-out" of sorts now. I hate to do it... It's pretty much against my parenting philosophy... But what we are doing now just isn't working. Again, I wish I had written more things down with JD. I know I did eventually CIO with him, but I'm not entirely sure when I started. I've got it in my head that I started it at 10 months, but my memory is incredibly faulty these days. Co-sleeping ended when he was 7 months old. I actually wrote that one down. But I don't recall him CIO. So what did I do? His baby book says he fussed about half of the time. Was it really fussing or was it screaming like a banshee? Did I nurse him to sleep, putting him in his crib when he was a limp noodle, only to pick him up again if he woke up? I don't know. All I do know is that I stopped night nursing him at 13 months because he woke up way too many times per night, and I know that I can't handle going that long this time. So, I'm starting what I think I started at 10 months with JD, only this time the baby isn't quite 6 months old. I'll nurse her to sleep... I have no issue with that, even if the "experts" do (other than Dr. Sears, who would have you nursing and co-sleeping until the kid went off to college). I nursed JD to sleep until he was 2 years old (I weaned him at 26 months). Anyway, I'll nurse her to sleep and then leave. If she wakes up, I'll let her cry, lengthening the time of the crying bouts. Yesterday, I nursed her to sleep for her 1st nap, only to have her wake up as soon as I left. She cried for less than 2 minutes and then took an hour nap. For the 2nd nap, I nursed her, but she kept popping on and popping off, so I left. I let her cry for 5 minutes, then went in and nursed her to sleep. Once she was just suckling and not swallowing, I left, but she woke right up. She SCREAMED for about 10 minutes. I was about to go back in when she stopped, but she only slept for 30 minutes. For her 3rd nap (which I am hoping to phase out soon, in the hopes that she'll go to bed earlier at night), she nursed to sleep with no issue and slept for an hour. But when bedtime came, she, as usual, wasn't interested in sleeping. Forget that she was cranky... Forget that she was rubbing her eyes... Once we got into that bed, she was awake and happy, so I got her back up for an hour and tried putting her down again. This time, she nursed for real and fell asleep, only to wake up as soon as I dislodged myself from her mouth. She screamed for about 5 minutes (I was with her the whole time), but went right to sleep once I started nursing her again. She was finally asleep by 10:45 pm and didn't wake me up again until about 3:30 am. Yay! She woke me up with her squirming around 5:30, so I nursed her, but I couldn't fall back to sleep.

So, here I am. I've been trying to spend a little time with my painfully neglected Green-Cheek Conure. That's the one really bad thing about having kids... There's just not enough time to go around for them and everyone else... At least JD is getting old enough to pay positive attention to the pets. We've got 2 bird and 2 dogs. The birds are mine from before I got married and the dogs are from after marriage, but before kids. The one bird is an 11 year old Senegal named Ozzie and is kind of insane, so I really don't want the kids going near him. I want to pay attention to him, but there is the insane thing... He's nice as can be to me at night, but these days it's hit or miss during the day (for years, he was supremely evil during the day). But when I do get him out and try to love him, all he does is masturbate on my hand the whole time. That gets tiresome about 30 seconds into it. And if I let it go on long enough, he makes a mess on me. =\ The other bird is a 12 year old Green-Cheeked Conure named Murphy. She's my baby girl and I love her to death. But again, it's hard to give her the time that she was used to before I got married. I trust her more than Ozzie, but still not completely. I mean, she will lick my eyelids and I don't worry, but I don't trust her not to try to bite the baby if I'm holding them both at the same time. Mind you, L is now old enough to grab, so I couldn't hold both of them at the same time anymore anyway. JD likes to hold Murph. She's pretty good with him, but I don't trust that he will make wise choices while holding her and if she bit him, I'm not sure what he would do (besides cry and tell me that she's bad). So he gets a couple of minutes of supervised Murphy holding and that's it. JD used to have some trouble with the dogs. Neither of them wanted anything to do with him, really. When he was smaller, he was always good to them, but they would run away as soon as he got too close. When he got a little bigger, he got too rough so I couldn't blame them for running away. Now he's pretty good again, and I guess he's big enough to not be quite as intimidating to them (sounds weird, I know, but dogs are funny that way). Gus, my Basset Hound, will play with JD a lot now, but he'll still growl if he doesn't want to play and JD tries to start up a game. I don't think he'd ever bite, at least not intentionally, but I'm still not sure. Gandalf, my husband's Newfoundland, still has zero interest in JD, which is just as well. JD seems to have zero interest in him too. It's practically like they don't know the other exists in the same house. JD really only acknowledges him when he's occupying the space that JD needs to occupy (which is fairly often... Gandalf is massive and he always seems to be laying exactly where you need to walk).

My JD is such a sensitive soul. Yesterday, we watched "UP" for the first time. About halfway through, the phone rang, so I went into the kitchen to talk while he watched alone. I had to cut my conversation short because he started crying and calling to me. When I went out, he said, "My eyes are filling up with tears because the dogs bit the bird! I'm so sad. Sad and ANGRY!" When the movie was over, I asked him if he liked the movie. He said yes. I asked if it was kind of sad. He said, "No. It was really really REALLY sad!" Poor guy. His sensitivity makes discipline a challenge. We don't hit, ever. We were both hit as kids and vowed that we wouldn't let our kids have the kinds of memories that we have about that kind of stuff. But we do send JD to his room, and when we do, you'd think we had just beaten him, the way he carries on. If we raise our voices, his eyes fill up and he tells us that we hurt his feelings. Still, discipline HAS to happen or else chaos would reign in our house. JD is very strong-willed and very smart. He will do anything to get his way. He needs to understand that he is a member of this family and not the ruler of the homestead. If he needs to spend time in his room to understand that, even if it causes some tears, so be it. Even if it means I feel like a mean Mommy. =b