The Twinkies

Poker has a post up bemoaning the fact that his daughter still doesn’t sleep through the night. God, how I sympathize.

J not only doesn’t sleep through the night, he isn’t night weaned. That’s right, he’s almost two and he still gets up and demands to nurse at night. Oh, you are thinking, smugly to yourself (and don’t you deny it) just wean him and everything will be better. HAH. He screamed for TWO HOURS last night. That’s right. No, he wasn’t alone, crying in his crib, sadly waiting for his cruel mother to come to him. Oh no. His father was with him patting and soothing and loving and it didn’t matter because that kid wanted to nurse and he was going to scream until he got to nurse and nothing was going to stop him.

I mean, you do kind of have to admire his persistence. It would be an admirable trait if it weren’t so directly connected to everyone else’s lack of sufficient sleep.

It took ten minutes when I finally just gave him the boob. And ten more minutes for his sister who had been woken up by his endless shrieking - go figure - and figured if she had to be awake she wanted tissy too.

“I want tissy too.”

In our house the sentence “I want _____ too” comes out of her mouth a lot. Fill whatever J has in the blank.

“I want to get up and get attention showered on me as I keep everyone awake and ensure that no one will have energy the next day too.”

This wasn’t, I confess, typical. In a typical night he gets up three times, nurses, and goes back to sleep.

“I want sleep too.”

Today was our first excursion to Wolcott Park for this summer. The swings were popular, as was the sandbox. The slide was deemed “hot” but the fountains were immensely popular, especially with F. After she came out of the fountain area shivering I changed her back into her dress. Later, I found her back in the fountains, soaked to the skin in her dress. This DID manage to clean off the raspberry stains. She had been eating raspberries by the handful and she is NOT a tidy eater. When I changed her into dry clothes to go home for nap she ran right back into the fountains.

We’re on TV pushing cloth diapers on the local news “Going Green” segment. I look like an idiot. Sigh.

On Saturday we went to the annual town festival which had a pony ride. It was a big hit and each kid took three turns. Note the rare photos of me.

There was also a snake to pet.

But they were scared of the lizard.

I clearly needed a day to help me work on my patience and to remind me that my kids are really really good most of the time. Thank you for ensuring that today I did indeed get to do lots of deep breathing and calming exercises while in the midst of chaos rather than in a mediation class and for providing a sharp contrast between my usual good children and today’s children so that I might appreciate the former more.