{SQT} Bleary-Eyed Mama

This SQT is belated because this week I felt like my mind nearly was lost due to stress and over-busyness.

1. Privacy

How much should go on a blog? How much shouldn't?

I don't want people, strangers and loved ones alike, to think my life is some perfect living Norman Rockwell experience with only joyful highlights, about which I like to brag and the likes of which might be memorialized on this blog. Life is messy and chaotic--and the more lives in which we are joyfully involved--number of children, community members, friends, relatives--the more messy and entangled it becomes. However, how much of that goes into a public forum? Sometimes it's very valuable to talk through struggles conquered, most of the time not.

Anyway, I increasingly worry that my blog is a fake-o Norman Rockwell as I deal with continued  grief left private, discipline issues (every kid comes with his or her own), endless legal paperwork (when are we supposed to have time to do that?), home construction tasks (dust, boxes, projects everywhere), home negotiations (that fell apart), physical failures (if I can't ever find time to exercise again, I can live on cookies and cheese, right?), multiple family dramas that suck energy, and lack of time/energy.

Suffice it to say, life is not Norman Rockwell. Many blessings, much chaos.

2. Reduced Television

You know I'm about five months postpartum when my husband and I have the resumed energy to further cut back on television-as-babysitter. For the last couple of weeks, we've re-introduced the General Guideline that the television doesn't get turned on during the school week. Are there exceptions? Yes, things like emergencies or planned appointments when I need the preschoolers occupied, so they might get to watch a Mr. Rogers kind of show, but the older set is now old enough to occupy themselves with more worthwhile activities, and the TV is going days without ever being turned on.

Even with exceptions, it's really helping to have a General Guideline that the television does not come on during the school week. I especially like the increased reading of books, and of projects, and of siblings playing together.

Of course, this change is not without its added stress as well, as the onus falls on me to break up more fights, fend off more television requests, and deal with more bored kids.

You can thank Mr. Rogers and Leap Frog for the ability for Mama to write this blog. Thank you, Saturday cartoons at 6:00 a.m.

A Rubik's Cube becomes a lot more interesting when TV isn't available.

2. Sleep Training

It's not working.

Shall I just type that and let that suffice?

I don't mind nursing my baby at all, and I don't mind quick wakings in the night to nurse. What I mind is that this baby wakes up every day around 5:00 a.m. If it's a bad night, he's up by 4:00 or 4:30. On Friday this week (yesterday, when I almost lost my mind), he was up for the day at 3:00 a.m. There is only so long I can ignore him crowing because there are five other children and a hard-working husband needing to keep sleeping.

I pulled out numerous of my sleep training books and reviewed various philosophies. It really seemed like one could get a baby to sleep later in the morning by making sure he's not oversleeping and that his sleep is consolidated properly.

The Books say that he should only be getting 12.5-13.5 cumulative hours of sleep at the ripe old age of 5.5 months, and that he should be down to two naps. That seems too little sleep and one too few naps to this old mama, but I tried it for more than a week.

What I found was that David was miserable (which means I was miserable). I could no longer ever wear him on my back, as he'd fall asleep back there, so my productivity went back down to newborn days (near zero). I can put him in his bouncer or a sibling's arms for a few minutes, but that's it. Otherwise David cries unless I'm holding him, which means he cries a lot because I'm a mother of six with a lot of duties involving my hands. You'd think after all these months, a baby would stop crying and happily occupy himself--like "THEY" say--but I don't see that.

Because I was consolidating David's sleep, I'd only let him nap at 9:00 and 2:00 on the dot, and I'd wake him after 90 minutes, which meant that most of the day he was falling asleep, nodding off, while I gently shook him awake, until I finally let him to go sleep (after the last hour of crying for me to put him to bed) at 8:00 p.m.

Misery.

By Friday he woke at 3:00 a.m. for the day, by today, he woke at 5:00 for the day.

It's just really good that God makes babies so cute because I feel half dead.

I have no idea how to continue. There is great tension in a large family: On one hand, I would greatly benefit to having a baby on an extremely regular sleep schedule because I could plan our activities, our homeschooling, our outings. On the other hand, with so many "players" in a large family, we're constantly having to shift with the timing of our activities, so there is no perfect schedule that would protect this baby's naps anyway. (FYI, I did cancel all appointments and stay home so he could have perfectly protected naps during this more-than-week of sleep training and it still didn't work, except I had to stay home and miss everything.)

If our daytimes are going to be this miserable and there is no change to our early wakings, should I just put David back on my back (in the Ergo) and let him ride along like a clinging koala, napping when he wants, happy all the time?

3. Scenes of School

If only executing school were as neat and pretty as planning it.

Mary reading to Thomas

Margaret reading to Joseph

Devouring "An Introduction to the First and Second World Wars"

4. Ryan Grant

The older children got to enjoy author-speaker events this week. Chris arranged for Ryan Grant, Managing Editor of Mediatrix Press, to come to our parish and give a talk on the Reformation. For our family, this meant three busier-than-usual nights.

On Tuesday night, Mr. Grant came for a visit: the children made him a welcome sign and gave him a piano-and-violin concert, and then he and Chris enjoyed late-night conversation over a fancy Catholic beer.

On Wednesday night, Chris and the two oldest attended the talk at church. John and Mary really liked learning how to apply price tags to Mr. Grant's books and then sell them using his iPad app. They also found the densely academic talk fascinating, and I heard all about it the next morning. The talk went too long, so Mama thought the family was dead in a ditch until they got home at 11:00 p.m.

On Thursday night, Chris and John went to dinner at a restaurant with Mr. Grant.

Lots of excitement, and now Mary has first dibbs on reading one of Mr. Grant's books, with John eagerly in line behind her.

5. Creations

Thomas (2-1/2) has discovered counting bears and is leaving them all over the house in mise-en-scène.

At the top of the stairs: assassination by counting bears?

In fact, it's enjoyable finding all manner of creations around the house.

Church by the boys

Church by Mary

Dollies by Margaret

6. Mischief

But not all kinds of creations, such as this one that occurred in a 30-second window when I stepped out of the kitchen to do a task and Thomas climbed a kitchen counter and two shelves to retrieve the markers.

Pen all over the wall

Thomas is so full of energy, as all my toddlers have been. I don't understand these sweet, quiet toddlers who stand still watching or sit and play a puzzle. This Friday, I substituted in the K/1st classroom at CCE, so I left Thomas in Nursery with a 1:2 ratio (2 teachers, 4 tots), and the two teachers separately reported to me that Thomas is a whirling dervish, a "tornado of energy," and that they "don't know how I do it." Well, him climbing furniture, drawing on walls, dumping things in the fish bowl, climbing to the shelf at the level of the ceiling to steal candy, and escaping is "how I do it." Each action followed by a consequence, behavior doesn't change (or maybe I have no idea how bad it would be if I weren't giving consequences).

Thomas seems to be entering a whole new level of bad acting and this fat, tired Mama can't stay alert enough or run fast enough to keep up. Literally--he's running again. He went through a terrible stage around 18 months old in which he'd escape the house and run down the road, over and over again. (We then set the alarm and kept deadbolts locked at all times.) That behavior disappeared entirely until it reared its ugly head this week. After Mass, after CCE, and in our own neighborhood, Thomas ran away repeatedly. Either he'd disappear, or I'd see him and be running and screaming, "Come back! Stop!" Thomas would shout back, "NO!" while he kept running. One time he disappeared quietly and made it all the way to the intersection of the busy road, and a tearful stranger brought him back to me--reminding me of the time twenty years ago that I almost hit a toddler who had escaped into the middle of a fast road, whereupon I stopped my car, began crying, scooped her up, and found her unaware mom in a nearby back yard, peacefully hanging laundry. At church, he's already been in the car for half an hour, then forced to sit still in Mass for 90 minutes, and he can finally run around with his friends, and I can see other adult women for the only time in a whole week, but he runs off, so I guess I will have to quit ever talking to anyone.

Over and over again, Thomas then gets locked in his stroller, where he throws a tantrum the whole time, thereby ruining any conversation or human contact I could have.

Maybe he'll grow out of this in another six or twelve or eighteen months?

7. Prayer Request

Please pray for Margaret, who is having her First Confession today!


For more 7 Quick Take Fridays, check out This Ain't the Lyceum.