Up North (& Out There doing it)

Cripplingly tiring

Recently, I've found the bed time routine to be absolutely a TKO for me. By 7:45, I'm so dead tired I can barely keep my eyes open.

It's very frustrating and tough to manage, especially since typically, I've got a lot more things to do, once the kids go to sleep.

Something isn't scaling right.

I've forgotten what a treat that is..

G is finally getting into a routine. While he has been sleeping through the night fairly consistently over the past several months, he has not been locked into a great nap schedule, especially on the weekend.

Now the bummer part about this weekend, where he seemed to get locked in to two solid two hour naps, that seem to be safely bookending D's strong 3 hour nap is that is 7 hours of home bound napping a day, which kills your weekend.

But the good thing that I rediscovered this weekend is how nice it is to rock a baby to sleep.  G in particular only gets fussy when he is tired. And if you've met him, you know I'm not exaggerating. The kid just doesn't get upset unless he is tired.

So sitting and rocking him from a full cry to peacefully sleeping in 120 seconds is so fulfilling, it just feels so wonderful.  And at the same time, I'm realizing this won't happen for much longer, not because he'll stop taking naps but because he will soon be too big to fit into your arms easily. The guy is a bruiser and is nearly tapping out on 1 year clothes, and he just rolled over 6 mos in age just last week.

School must be in Session

Not even two weeks past Labor Day and D caught a cold with a stuff nose, an upset stomach and a good fever. Fortunately, the miracles of Children's Tylenol, when you get to stay home its not miserable and in fact can be somewhat fun (other than the work that is piling up at the office -- and yes D didn't get sick one day when I was between gigs). So we're making the best of it at the park. The one with the killer views of the Hudson river, excellent equipment and the best way to see into the Big House.

6:10

Wow. What a miracle. The littlest man slept nearly 10 hours last night. I nearly jumped out of bed with a grin ear to ear. We hadn't had an unassisted night like that since G was born.

2 years

2 years and we've come a long way with D.  I just checked in on him and managed to reach down and grab his nose in the dark while he is lying in his crib. Can you imagine being able to sleep that soundly, where someone touching your face would not even make you stir?

Its mind blowing and yet at the same time, it must feel soooo good.

D went walking

D, kind of as expected walked quite a bit today for the first time. It was awesome and going to make for an exciting weekend.

Daylight savings time saves us

D has been way off kilter for the past couple of weeks. After sleeping very strongly for nearly a year, all of the sudden, he wants to get up and get going at 3 in the AM. It’s a tough one to swallow and really a pain, in particular when he wants to be going back to bed just about the time we are supposed to be leaving for day care.

So we’ve been working pretty aggressively to get him back on track and while it’s been a good effort, I think we were fighting a battle where we were gaining ground very slightly. Enter daylight savings time and we were golden.

Kind of strange, but I think we’re over the worst of it. For all of the problems that the new DST is creating, hoorah for one good thing.

This was the worst

This was the worst week to date. Dylan had had a stomach virus and given it to Shannon, My Mom and  Shannon’s Dad. Then, just as I’m nearly at my wits end, D takes a tumble off of the laundry counter as we are walking out to the door to day care for the first time in nearly a week. *Boom*, right flat onto his back on our basement concrete floor.

It was terrible and terrifying. Picked him up and he wasn’t screaming nearly as loud as you might expect, but he promptly threw up and then was very listless for about 10 minutes. Looking back at it, he probably just had the wind knocked out of him and was a little frightened. However, off the hospital to get checked out of course and another ½ day down the drain (but time well spent).

He was A-OK and clearly a hit with the folks at the hospital. It’s been nearly 20 years (I think) since I was last in the emergency room so I’d forgotten how it works and certainly I hadn’t been in the ‘position of responsibility.’ So we get in there, get settled and things are going OK. D is being quite charming, and really his own happy self. Nurse comes in, says hello, chats with us, and leaves. Another nurse comes in, does something and leaves. Another nurse comes in does something trivial then leaves.

Then all of the sudden I figure it out. Not that in my own unbiased opinion D is super cute, but I think they are all sending each other in to check out D

Never Felt this Old before

So we came home today, on the last day of our Nanny's services to find out that she had two friends over. And even worse then that, when they heard the garage door go up, one of them ran out of the front door, across the lawn and into their car.

So Shady.

And now it calls into question, every single day that she didn't get something that wasn't Dylan specific (empty dishwasher, fold baby laundry) done was it because she had a visitor?

It's *so* disappointing & irresponsible. I've never felt so old having to deal with something like this.

It's all relative

So for the 1st time, I've actually got the feeling that I can relate 100% with how my Dad must have seen things. Don't misinterpret, my Dad and I get along great -- never been and issue and I'd be hard pressed to every think that it would be but something about Dylan has been having me thinking about it a lot, and tonight, I finally figured it out.

My Dad was 33 when I was born and I was 33 when Dylan was born. So for the first time, I'm actually living something that is as close to repeating what your parents lived through as you can.

It's funny, because you always think of your parents as older, but I don't consider myself old at all. And yet, that's exactly the way that Dylan is going to feel. And not only that, but it's the exact same number of years apart. As my Dad was starting to feel tired, noticed things didn't click as well as they once did -- it's going to be nearly the same thing for me.

Now of course, not all of the similarities are there -- one glaring one in my mind is that I'm not driving a 1999 Corvertte (to map to my Dad's 1965) but that's something that I can work on.

And for that, I'm really happy. It's great to finally 'see' it from his perspective.