Hopping Bullets

. . . Just because I need to justify the time I spent making those silly kangaroo "list item" bullets, and because they're kind of fun to look at even though they're dorky.


• My use of the word "wreckage" to describe my home in my last post was a slight exaggeration.
  
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  I did, however, start really tearing into the house on Monday night. I'd had it with the clutter and started in on the family room (the cleanest room in the house, comparatively, and the room I'm trying to keep babysafe since it's the room I put Baby E down in to play).
  
  Sofa pillows, toys, shoes, DH's briefcase (sorry, Dear--but you haven't used it for at least several months), scrap paper, picture frames, books, you name it--all went tumbled together into black plastic garbage bags which I stowed in the garage. I did pull out REALLY important stuff, like the checkbook and our passports (which had been sitting around since our trip to Mexico in February) and put them away, but mostly I just shoveled stuff into bags, tied them, and plopped them in a pile in the already-chaotic garage.
  
  The family had been warned many times not to leave clutter or things the baby couldn't have within Baby E's reach in that room and that anything left there would disappear. So I figured it was all fair game unless it was something extremely important or valuable (I did save out MM's Special Blanket Without Which She Cannot Survive). Actually, it was something we had discussed and agreed on (making that room essentially the playpen and keeping it neat), not just something I was imposing helter-skelter on my family.
  
  There were at least 8 garbage-can sized bags worth of stuff just in that room--the cleanest and most clutter-free room in the house.



• Plus, since my SIL The Mentor was planning to come this summer--starting next week--to help me declutter, organize and get rid of the majority of our "stuff", I figured the bags wouldn't sit in the garage for long before we dealt with them.



• DH and I have spent long evenings discussing things and doing some problem-solving about everything from Baby E's sleep issues to household and family stuff to communication issues all week. Which means that I haven't had time for blogging, but it's probably a good thing that my marriage is a higher priority than my blog--you think, just maybe? A side benefit of all that talking is that I can hardly wait for him to get home at night because I'm looking forward to spending time with him.
  
  Interesting, how spending time together can actually make you want to spend more time together, isn't it?



• We have decided that Baby E is apparently just one of those kids who needs a schedule with little to no variation. Because, with our easy-going lackadaisical attitude toward schedules, we keep messing up her sleep habits. Every time we get them established, we get lax about enforcing them, and with the slightest variation it all goes out the window. Then it takes at least two weeks of hard work to get her sleeping again.
  
  Somehow it dawned on us that banging our head against the same wall over and over again is giving us bruises on our noggins. That one or two nights of keeping her up late or getting her up 10 minutes after we lay her down because she's crying so pitifully just isn't worth it. Everyone--including Baby E--is just so much happier when she gets adequate sleep.
  
  This week I reached a point where, both physically and emotionally, I just wasn't able to keep up the hours and hours of trying everything to get her calmed down and go to sleep, and then staying up with her for 2-3 hours in the night because she doesn't want to go back to sleep after a nursing session. If we went into the room, stayed in the room, or held her until she went to sleep it only seemed to make matters worse once we left the room.
  
  Then she decided that if she cried long and hard enough, we would come back in the room or get her out of bed.
  
  So there's no more getting her up after we put her in the crib. She stays there once she's put down, period. (Unless she was obviously sick or hurt or something other than mad because she doesn't want to go to sleep, of course, but that hasn't happened yet.) As long as she's not crying hard for more than 20-30 minutes, or sporadically for more than an hour, she doesn't get up. She cried for an hour or more the first few nights.
  
  Well, not for an hour straight.
  
  It was more like this:
  
  Cry in great sobbing, painful-sounding, genuinely upset screams for 15 minutes. Pause. Listen to see if Mommy or Daddy is coming. If I see them in the room or hear their voices, scream louder and cry harder. If they try to pat me in the crib, push their hands away angrily because I do NOT want to relax.
  
  Pause. Play with toys in crib and coo to self a bit. Start to fall asleep. Remember--Oh yeah! I'm Mad because I don't want to go to sleep! Cry frantically again.
  
  Pause. Notice a toy. Scream loudly but unconvincingly a few times. Play a bit more. Yell a couple of times just in case Mom and Dad are paying attention--don't want them to think I'm giving in or anything. Because that would be Bad. They might make me go to bed more often, and I don't want to waste time sleeping--I might miss something!
  
  But that genuine-sounding crying sobbing thing is getting a little hard to muster now. Because I'm not really that upset. But I don't want Mom and Dad to know that, because I want OUT! of this CRIB! Cry a little more.
  
  Lie down and relax momentarily. Sit up and yell AAAAH! a few times, just to hear my own voice. Lie down. Bounce in the crib and hum to myself to try to stay awake. Yell some more. Fall asleep mid-holler.
  
  So now our goal is to set strict nap times and bed times and stick to them. I'm not a strict schedule person, but it seems that Baby E and our household schedule need this. We'll give it a try for a few weeks anyway.



• The older girls have been fabulous. I wish I had time to give highlights.



• SIL The Mentor fell off her roof yesterday and smashed her right foot to smithereens. She refused to have surgery (pins, reconstruction, etc.) tomorrow morning as the doctors wanted because her son is graduating from college tomorrow night. So she'll put up with the pain until next week, when she'll have surgery, and then she'll be out of commission for several months. She's a strong, brave woman.



• We'll have 3 infants, 3 preschoolers, and 7 adults (counting us--and my kids are the oldest of the bunch) staying at our house for the graduation occasion, starting tomorrow. Which will be fun, if perhaps a bit chaotic. I'm looking forward to that.



• No chicken pox. The friends' kid apparently didn't have pox after all.



• Time's up! Goodnight.