Full Disclosure-my baby's not sleeping and I'm losing my mind!

Don't let that cuteness fool you-he's a sleep evading mastermind!

In the interest of full disclosure, and the fact that I can't abide bragging about a "perfect" baby, I'm telling anyone and everyone that my baby has decided sleep is for suckers.

Remember my post a couple weeks back where I extolled the virtues of the Baby Whisperer?? Well, I've been (mostly) following her guidelines with little baby numero quatro, aka Max, for the past 5 months since he's been born. And he's been a great sleeper since birth-going to bed for the night around 9, waking up once during the night to nurse, waking at about 5 when I would just capitulate and nurse him in bed until I woke up for the other bambinos about 3 hours later! I know full well that this 5 am nursing in bed till I feel like rolling out of bed because its easy stuff is going to get me into lots of trouble. I'm also starting to hit the wall I hit with each of my kids: this only getting a max of 4 consecutive hours of sleep stuff is growing old and I'm growing cranky. So I thought we'd start sleep training a little more attentively.

My goal was to encourage a little more sleeping before he would wake to nurse during the night in hopes that he would then sleep a little later than 5 which would then let me dial back the breakfast in bed. Now, I swear he knows what I'm doing and has now adjusted his schedule to wake every. 2. hours.

Not only every. 2. hours. but every. 2. hours. with screaming involved! Its very unlike him, and while I think some of it can be attributed to teething I can't help but think he's trying to foil my elaborate sleep training plans! So I've gone a couple nights now waking every. 2. hours. and not getting much sleep. What little mental equilibrium I had has now been shattered. I'm totally freaking out, crying, raging, swearing at all hours of the night because of no sleep. I can't believe I'm still freaking out, raging, etc. when this has been my least frustrating sleeper, and my fourth kid for crying out loud!?! Aren't mothers of lots of kids holy by this point??

So I know each of my kids has gone through a really crappy sleep stage, where I literally think I'm going to throw myself out of a window, and that with a little consistency and less freaking out on my part my baby gradually mellows and things get better. Its just the process that sucks. The Baby Whisperer has great tips, and I know they work, but getting there and implementing them sucks.

I've also come to the conclusion that there is no patron saint of getting your kids to sleep through the night, because no one has made it through unscathed and in a need of a confessor the next morning!

Some inspiration for me this morning...

“I think the world today is upside down. Everybody seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater development and greater riches and so on. There is much suffering because there is so very little love in homes and in family life. We have no time for our children, we have no time for each other; there is no time to enjoy each other. In the home begins the disruption of the peace of the world.”

~Blessed Teresa of Calcutta~

(Blessed Teresa of Calcutta pray for us-and me who has a child who wants me to make time for him every two hours during the night for upwards of an hour and a half at a time, who thinks its daytime at 4:30 am because thats when the sun starts coming up! Blessed Teresa drank a lot of coffee right?? Very caffeinated Indian tea??)

Date night at home and a small visitor

Saturday evening was beautiful. It was a gorgeous spring night, the breeze of the day had died down and all that was left was a gorgeous orange sun going down and the sweet smells of spring. We had to take advantage of this not-so-frequent evening perfection. So after we had all the kidlets tucked in the husband decided to start up a little campfire in the fire pit behind our house and I would bring the alcohol.

Just as we were lighting up the fire I look across the fence separating our "yard" from a cow pasture and see a small furry rodent gambling along. My first thought was it was another wood chuck who made a surprise visit around this time last year, but then my astute husband ventured the guess of beaver which at first I completely couldn't believe, as we live nowhere near a large enough body of water to support such a creature. But here he was! 

I've never seen a beaver this close before. And for a rodent I have to say he wasn't too revolting. 

His movement on dry land is seriously limited. He basically waddled. It was kinda hilarious to follow a beaver down the road.

Check out those bizarre feet?! 

He also slapped his tail on the ground as my husband approached for this picture. Not as loud as when they do it on water, but still fairly intimidating.

And here he is walking off into the sunset. Or down the hill behind my parents house to a small pond. He was still there yesterday, but we assume he'll move on to greener pastures...er...bigger bodies of water soon.

Having your little outdoor date night interrupted by a beaver is totally normal right??!!

7 Quick Takes vol. 15

Make sure to head to the lovely Jen's for the real thing!

{one}

Yesterday was one of my favourite days of spring; buying flowers day!

Seriously, its the last weekend of May, and we can barely put plants outside, but it feels so good to go out and pick lots of fun pretty flowers. Luckily for my husband we only have some pots and containers for the deck. Once we have our own house and I can go crazy on making some flower beds he'll really regret the old greenhouse bill.

{two}

It makes me laugh every year at just how ridiculous we Canadians are. At least up here in Alberta, we have about a three month window where we can keep flowers alive outdoors. 3 Months!! But greenhouses are consistently swamped come the first of May. We will not spare any expense in finding just a little bit of flowering plant life to brighten a quarter of our year! It seems both sad and hilarious.

{three}

So although the three amigos had fun at the greenhouse, and remained pretty well behaved through all the errands I had to run, I can't help but feel when I'm out in public as if I'm constantly telling the kids what to do. I feel that way, well, because that's pretty much what I'm doing when we go into a store. I probably say, "Don't touch that please!" about 30 times per minute. But then when I think about their ages, and the fact there is three of them, I'm probably only telling each child to not touch things a couple times, which is probably totally normal right?? I have this fear of becoming a giant nag.

{four}

In the category of going out with your offspring, please go read Brianna's beautiful post of moms witnessing to others when out with their children. This is a great post that, as usual with Brianna, I wish I could have written. I love how she writes that sometimes she doesn't want to tell everyone that she's living a total counter-cultural life. I have to admit that yesterday I didn't tell several people who commented on the closeness of age between my kids that I had a 4 month old baby at Grandma's. 

{five}

I've been ruminating a little this week on kids stages again. This time in regards to my little Dominic who is 3 and a half, an undisputed age of rebellion and general crotchetiness. I'm scared that this may be his personality! And although I know his personality definitely has leanings towards control, determination, and keeping ones toys to oneselfness, I also know that these child stages influence their crazy behaviour a lot. So I feel like I'm beginning to get the hang of understanding how a kid's personality comes out in good and bad ways during their different stages. 

Then of course I thought, gee whiz-is that how God sees us as we're (hopefully) growing in holiness? Do we go through stages where our personalities tend to drag us towards particular sins? Do we outgrow things spiritually as we mature in prayer and grace? I'm sure God the Father is much more merciful in understanding than I am towards my kids even when I try really hard. But I find it a nice picture to think of God seeing us in different stages and knowing our personalties inside out and trying to help us grow. Maybe one day I'll actually write up a decent post about this.

{six}

So I'm going to be gleefully planting my flowers this weekend and upholstering some toddler beds the hubby built. He doubts very much my ability to even upholster a rectangular box, but I countered with the  clever retort of "Hey, I've read loads of blogs where they upholster s***!!"

{seven}

And watch out for some instagrams of rhubarb! We've got tons and I've gotta start baking! Rhubarb. You kinda have to love it because its so strange, no?

Happy Weekend!

cute dress moment everyone!

Just wanted to publicly profess my love for this dress! 

Yes, we can all thank J.Crew for another perfect specimen of cuteness. 

And should I start a countdown clock till June 7 and the opening of a J.Crew a mere 2 hours from my house??

rainy day

via

We're having a  rainy day over here. Not just metaphorically either. Real honest-to-goodness rain is falling from the sky, even though it feels cold enough for it to be coming down as snowflakes! But rainy days usually make me happy as they're a rarity here in (mostly)sunny Alberta. 

Of course it looks neither so romantic or urban out my window-but green and dampish. 

Our birthday weekend extravaganza was a success! Gemma got loads of prezzies which in turn caused Dominic to become almost catatonic with jealousy, which in turn made Paul and I a bit miserable from constantly trying to stop him from taking out the jealousies out on other party-goers. You know what's a hard thing to do? Teaching people to have joy in other people's joy. I'm sure God deals with that problem a lot. 

And now today, after several pots of coffee, and being named official chief search and rescue consultant over each and every toy ever owned by 3 different whining people, I decided that coffee was not enough and extra long naps were in order. So I'm blissfully enjoying me few minutes of whine-free goodness blogging away when I should be finding something for my husband to eat should he decide to come home to casa whine. Why don't men like goat cheese and crackers as their main meal of the day??

its a birthday weekend around here...

Its my first little baby's 5th birthday tomorrow! How did this happen so fast?! How did that little peanut grow up to be 5 in a blink of an eye?

I feel so old. I've been a mom for 5 years? It seems hard to believe, it feels like I haven't been a mom for more than two days and on the other hand I can't remember a time when I wasn't! 

So tomorrow we'll have cupcakes and watch her sweet little face light up as she opens presents. She has a great love of prezzies, and life, and dancing, and singing, and running, and basically is a swell person to be around, she deserves a fun 5th birthday!

 Then Sunday is my birthday...thats right...for my 22nd birthday I decided the best gift I could give myself would be to go into 34 hours of labor two days earlier...luckily a really cute baby came of it or else I woulda sued to get my birthday money back! Man, its been 5 years, you'd think I'd be over THAT labor story by now...