Gratitude day #25

I am grateful to have reached the end of the first week. The first week of any term is always frenetic - term 3 more so because not only are we setting things up and in place for the term, but we are still doing reports from the previous term.

So I am grateful it is weekend and I have a chance to rest.

Gratitude day #13

It's often the small things in life that make a difference. I am grateful for my bed. Whenever I go away it always takes me a day or so to become accustomed to the bed, often resulting in poor sleep for at least a night. Sometimes I'm fortunate that the bed is similar to my own, and then I sleep like a baby. Coming back from holiday though, I was very grateful for my own bed. It's not that the bed we were sleeping in was uncomfortable, it's just that it was too hard. With my back issues, that meant that by the morning I was in pain.

And if you aren't sleeping well because you're in pain, and you spend the first part of the day in pain, it does not make for a happy camper... #justsaying...

Gratitude day #12

Sleep. I am grateful for sleep. Following on with the theme of the last post, until something has been taken from you, you don't really know who wonderful it is.

From time to time I suffer with insomnia. I am a light sleeper at the best of times, and most nights I wake up at least once. Fortunately, most of the time I am also incredibly good at falling asleep.

(I have a secret weapon though... Prayer. Not that prayer puts me to sleep, but rather, God is the one who knocks me out so that I can sleep, for I doubt that without his intervention my insomnia would be 1000x worse.)

The other night I woke up, as usual, but when I wanted to fall asleep again, I couldn't. I got up again, and put some stuff down on paper to try to clear my head, then headed back to bed. I eventually managed to fall asleep again, but I was reminded how precious sleep is.

Sleep deprivation ultimately leads to death, but before then it leads to irritability, disorientation, even hallucinations.

My hubbie regularly suffers with insomnia. The impacts of his sleep deprivation affects not just him, but me, and the kids. I reckon the same must be true when I lack sleep. Sleep, the sweet welcome of sleep. How I do appreciate it!

All I want is a room somewhere..

...far away from the cold night's air...

and how cold it has been! Snow on the Langeberg mountains around Cape Town this weekend... maybe we should take a drive up and play in it before it melts. Hmmm...

But why am I singing about a room somewhere? Because right now, all I want is a quiet place, with no-one else around, where I can read, sleep and relax, with no thought about work. Ek is uitgeput en gedaan. Work has been good, mostly (although I've had a few crises this week that have left me drained and demotivated), but between work and the freelancing I'm doing, and Expo, I am feeling very thinly spread.

So just say no, right? That's that answer, right? Sadly, it isn't. We are seriously cash strapped - these petrol increases and poor Rand: Dollar/ Pound rates are taking their toll, in addition to all the unexpected medical and car bills we've had. Rather than live off the credit card, which is never an option, I've taken on additional work. Not heaps, but enough to help us with our day to day expenses so that we can begin to pay off the credit card.

With this long weekend, I would love nothing more than to spend the weekend relaxing with my family, but I have Expo work to do, and school work to do, and freelance work to do. But I also need time off.

And so the tussle begins. Where do I draw the line? Don't get me wrong - I love my job (except for marking!), I love my freelance stuff, I love Expo, but I do not love the amount of time it takes to do all of these things. When I die, my last thoughts are not going to be how I should have spent more time working. Rather, they will be that I should have spent more time with my kids, with my hubbie, with my family, with my friends.

So - against my better judgement, this weekend, I am going to TAKE TIME OFF. I am going to lie in bed and read. I am going to play with my kids. I am going to go for a run and go to gym and walk the dogs. I am going to look after the introverted part of me that just needs some peace and quiet.

Because if I don't, I might just kill someone.

Adult bed time story (warning: PG 18L)

I know I've blogged about this before, but it needs saying again.

This evening, while trying to get our kids to sleep so that the adults could get on with playing their games, I was reminded of the adult bed time story 'Go the fuck to sleep'. You can read the text on http://poetry.rapgenius.com/adam-mansbach-go-the-fuck-to-sleep-lyrics.

Every time I read the lyrics I can so clearly recall the hours and hours I have spent feeling exactly those sentiments with at least #1 (not so much with #2) who, in her younger years, simply would not. I wept with laughter when reading it again this evening. 

Yes, it uses the swear words and so, theoretically, is not very Christian, but I'm afraid that sometimes you can't express the gut emotion without using swear words. I confess that there are times when i think swearing is funny. This is one of them. If that offends you, then I'm sorry. If that makes you think less of me, then I'm sorry. In that case, can we just agree to disagree?

I love the sense of the rising ire, the exhausted defeat, then elated triumph, then despairing defeat. That roller-coaster is so true to life, to my own experiences when I was a new parent battling to work out how to get my kid to JUST. GO. TO. SLEEP.

So, if you have kids, and have battled at one point or another to get them to sleep, go and read this. Bookmark it, and return to it every now and then when you need the reminder that:

you are not alone 

this is a common problem

Gina Ford/ Dr. Spock / whoever the latest guru is does not have all the answers

the Pinterest/ yummy mummies with the perfect kids aren't the only valid experience of parenting

it is better to laugh at yourself than weep at your predicament

life goes on

and, that this too shall pass.

You owe it to yourself to get real.

What's it feel like to be a hamster?

Two weeks into school, and already it feels like I'm a hamster on a wheel, running and running and running, but getting nowhere. This is NOT the way life is meant to be. I've already got sick - a cold and laryngitis. Looking ahead, life continues to be busy right through to June. Something has to change. I can't have another year like last year.

If you've read my previous posts, you'll be aware that I have two new year's resolutions - firstly, to get 7 hours of sleep a night, and secondly, to lose weight (both to avoid developing diabetes and to just feel better about myself) by changing my diet and exercising more.

To be honest, my determination to stick to them is being tested to the limit. I have so much work to do that it's tempting to give up on exercise and stay up late to have enough time to finish everything. As my stress levels rise, my desire to comfort eat and to eat easy-to-cook meals (that contain wheat or sugar) rise too.

I'm proud of myself though - I've lost 3kgs already in about 3 weeks. Only 7 more to go to reach my goal. I know the closer to my goal I get, the more difficult it will be to lose them. I can't give up now. If there's nothing I can do about the busy-ness of my life, then I have to protect both my diet and my rest (exercise) time, or I will burn out.

I'm learning an important lesson here. While I'm exercising, I'm tempted to give up, or not to push too hard. Yet, I'm learning how to focus on small goals - the next tree, or light pole, or street corner, or bench - to keep running and not to give up just yet. I've learnt that I can run further than I thought I could, if I focus on small goals.

In this season of hamster living, I need to focus on the small things. To stick to my plan, I can't focus on the end goal. I need to focus on the next small step. What is that step? It's a day and a week at a time.

TONIGHT: I will get 7 hours sleep.
TOMORROW: I will eat heathily. I will try to walk my 10 000 steps, I will drink lots of water and I will NOT, I repeat: I will NOT feel guilty if the work cannot be completed in the hours that God has given for work to be done.

Stay with me

Every evening Nellie asks one of us to "stay with" her. What she means by this is that she doesn't want to be left alone. She's ok with us just standing outside her door, or being in our bedroom next door. Sometimes she's even ok if we "stay with" her in the lounge, although she prefers us nearer. It's not about where we are so much as it is that she hates feeling abandoned or isolated.

Last night I realised afresh how that feels. When G & I tag team around Nate, I sleep in the bedroom while G sleeps in the lounge. He will often close the bedroom door to try and prevent me being disturbed by noise from the lounge. While I really appreciate the gesture, I usually hate that. A closed door makes me feel cut off from the rest of the house. I hate feeling I can't hear what's going on. I hate feeling isolated or disconnected. When I asked G not to close the door last night, and he asked why, I suddenly had to give voice to something I'd only felt intuitively till then.

Now I realise afresh how Nellie feels. It's an awful feeling. Maybe now I will be a little bit more compassionate towards her at bed time....

Paying it forwards, or upwards?

It's every mother's nightmare - a baby that just won't stop crying. I never thought it would be mine. I guess I should have anticipated it. After all, one doesn't get to give one's own mother hell and then expect not to receive payment in kind. This must be a weird kid of paying it forward scheme.

Yup, I apparently gave my poor mother so much grief with my colic that not only did she wind up drinking my gripe water (which in those days contained alcohol), but she also threatened to throw me out of the first floor window. Sorry, Mom!! I still love you - you know that, right?

And now it's my turn. Again. I thought Nellie's colic was pay-back enough. Apparently not. Apparently both my children have seen fit to give me hell as pay-back for what I did to my mother. But, unfortunately for Nate, this time around I am older and wiser. I gave him 7 weeks to get over himself. I held him upright during feeding, slept with him on my chest, rocked him, patted him, sang to him, shushed him, bounced him, jiggled him, pushed him in his pram, drove him around in the car. Nothing worked. So, I gave him drugs. No joy. Then I gave him alcohol. That worked, as a short term solution. Then I gave him more drugs (since the first ones weren't working)... which also didn't really help.

After being awake for 8 hours (2.30am - noon, bar 2 hrs from 5-7am), I eventually decided to pull out the big guns, the mother-load cure-all. I took him to see a chiropractor.

Now some people don't do 'alternative therapies'. Me? I love them, but only after I've tried the conventional stuff. I actually wanted to take him to BSR (Body Stress Release), but hubby has a generous dose of scepticism. Of course, the fact that BSR has helped (and continues to help) me prevent my sciatica from returning when physio, chiropractics and acupuncture failed, doesn't seem to feature in his decision. Anyway!

Of course, being me, once I've decided that this is what I'm going to do, I want an appointment YESTERDAY already. And of course, no-one can accommodate me. Eventually, I turn on the waterworks (or rather, I couldn't stop myself from crying out of desperation, if truth be told) and basically beg for one. It works, and we got an appointment yesterday... but it's all the way past the Boerewors curtain, so the trip there and back is about 3 times the length of the actual treatment itself. The things we do for love ...

... and peace and sanity and sleep... let's not kid ourselves that this is entirely for Nate. Oh no! This is for me too. I want to sleep again. I NEEEED to sleep again.

So off we go to the chiropractor. I was worried that Nate would suddenly become an angel, and she would think I was imagining it. I needed have worried. Nope. The poor kid screamed his way through the entire session. Well done, my boy! Protect your mother's image!

Apparently, his spine is 'very tight'. As a biologist, I thought it was a good thing that your vertebrae held on tightly to one another. You know - protect the spinal cord and spinal nerves, and all that. But there is tight, and 'very tight', apparently. The former is good. The latter, not so much.

So has it worked, I hear you ask? Hmm... if you call sleeping an improvement, then yes, I think it has. Of course, we have at least one more session to go. (I'm thinking about how Jesus healed the blind man in stages...) But at least he's sleeping. He is still vomiting up milk, he still has reflux, he's still a bit constipated - but at least he's now sleeping again, and not just sleeping, but actually sleeping in his own bed (and not on my chest/ in the sling/ on Priscilla's back).

If we've gone from no sleep to sleep in one session, what, I wonder, will tomorrow's session hold for us????