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You know you’re a Tired Mommy when:

You seriously consider serving Gerber 3rd Foods Lasagna with Meat Sauce to the entire family.

You don’t think twice about picking up and eating the quesadilla that fell on the floor

You almost accidentally use your toddler’s toothbrush

The only color-coordinated outfit you can find for your child’s day time wear is her new two-piece “big girl pajamas”

You find yourself looking for some sexy undies to buy in the Wal-Mart because you don’t have the time or energy to add another store to your errand route. And you buy some.

You find yourself leaving the comfort of your home in the middle of night muttering under your breath “I will kick someone’s sorry ass in my pink pajamas if they don’t stop making that ridiculous noise!” to go yell at some kids riding super-mini, super-loud motorcycles down your street at midnight.

I am one Tired Mommy.

Please do add your own Tired Mommy’s in the comments!

It’s past my bed time. What’s new? I’ve gotten to bed on time and gotten enough sleep for two nights in a row. I guess that’s the best I can do right now. I know what’s eating at me right now and I just need to work on letting it go. No, I am not going to blog about it. It will be fine. It’s nothing mysterious or life-threatening and it’s not about The Tater Tot. Just a situation that provides an opportunity for me to practice choosing to be at peace. Something that is hard for me to do sometimes because I am always striving. Always working to make things better. Looking to help/fix whatever is wrong. But this is something I need to let fix itself. And I know it will. Cryptic enough for ya’? Sorry.

The Tater Tot and I had a good day today. Weird, but good. She napped from 9:15 to 11:15 which is highly unusual. Of course I was supposed to go have lunch at 11:30 with the Mommies Group so you know that’s why she napped weird. It always happens that way. Instead we had lunch here and then went to the Farmer’s Market. I was underwhelmed and disappointed by their selection and prices. I was looking forward to good, fresh, reasonably priced produce. But the market was small with few vendors and I just wasn’t impressed by what I saw. So I bought Tater Tot a mini-bouquet of flowers for her room and we went to play in the sand at the beach instead. She loooooves the sand at the beach. She likes to just run her hands through it over and over and over and play “Where’s Mommy’s Hand?” And she likes to walk toward the water. I think she’d walk right into it if I didn’t stop her! She tried to lick it off of her hands this time. She hasn’t done that before. We crawled, walked and slithered through the sand for a little while before heading home to get in the bath. Sand everywhere. Big ol’ handfuls of it falling out of all kinds of places it shouldn’t oughta be. But that’s to be expected. It’s the beach, after all. I love that she loves the beach. It’s my favorite place in the world. I’m gonna get one of these for the summer because I plan to spend a TON of time at the beach with her. So we splashed around in the bath tub and got all the sand off before snack time.

Of course she skipped her afternoon nap again but she didn’t have as much trouble getting to sleep tonight, which is nice. It’s getting easier to go with the flow with her and not worry so much about her sleep. We’ll figure it out sooner or later. Hopefully sooner.

Now I’m off to bed. But first, a little meditation so that I can sleep…maybe a Downward Facing Dog or two. Or three.

It looks like I’m going to have to go back to the drawing board in terms of Tater Tot’s sleep schedule. She’s still sleeping a solid 10-12 hours a night which is great but her naps are wiggy. She usually can swing a morning nap but, regardless of how early I put her down for her morning nap or how early I put her to bed, she has skipped her afternoon nap two days running. Not good. Especially since she is super-cranky by bed time which means that she has a harder time getting to sleep at night. In recent posts I have wondered if she is ready for one nap a day but thought I’d try putting her down earlier for her morning nap. That part seems to be working but maybe I need to put her down earlier for her afternoon nap as well. For example, yesterday she woke up from her morning nap at 10. I put her down for her afternoon nap at 1:30 and she decided to have “Quiet Play Time” instead of napping until 3:00. At 3:00 I decided to get her out of her crib because bed time is 6:00 and, if she napped from 3 or 3:30 to 4 or 4:30, who knows when she’d be tired enough to go to bed! In Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, Dr. Weissbluth mentions that putting them down earlier rather than later seems antithetical to getting your child to sleep but I have found that it has worked with Tater Tot in the past. I don’t know when I got away from doing it that way but, apparently, I have. So I’m going to try putting her down early for her afternoon nap to see if that helps. That’s assuming she takes a morning nap! If that doesn’t work, I’m going to try super-early bed time (another Weissbluth recommendation). And, if all else fails, I guess I’ll start pushing the two-nap-to-one-nap transition. Can you sense my reluctance?

I know that, at this age, it’s normal for their nap schedule to be weird so at least I’m prepared. I’m much less frustrated with it than I was when I was trying to get her to sleep more than 9 hours a day! Yes, you read right. There was a time when The Tater Tot only slept 9 hours in a 24 hour period. It was NOT fun. She was understandably fussy because she was sleep-deprived which made it even less fun. And I was understandably fussy because I was freakin’ exhausted! But those days are behind us now and, thankfully, we’re only having some minor napping issues.

This morning I was thinking back to a year ago when she had only been home from the ICU for two weeks. I remember the anxieties that I had about medication to regulate her breathing, breastfeeding difficulties, her immune system immaturity and, oh, just about anything else you can think of to be anxious about! And I am so grateful that we have come as far as we have. Grateful that we got through the anxious situations. Grateful that I was able to breastfeed her with supplementation until she was 9 months old. Grateful that she has done so well. The only thing that I wish I had done differently would be not to worry so much. I know that it’s normal for a first-time Mommy to worry but I would have enjoyed that time in our lives that much more if I had chosen not to worry as much. Oh well, hindsight is 20:20 as they say. What I can do is choose not to worry now and instead to enjoy this time in our lives. And, aside from my few “those days”, I am.

The Tater Tot is walking! She went from very little interest in walking to intense interest in walking with a walker to “Mommy you’d better walk with me and hold my hands or I’ll get fussy” to “Look at me!” in two weeks! Granted she is just taking tentative steps but she got most of the way across her room today all by herself. And she’s making a concerted effort to let go of the furniture and walk the 4-5 steps to the next location now instead of plopping down on her bottom and crawling. It’s so much fun to see her gain confidence. She concentrates so hard but smiles so big when I clap for her! Of course that means I need to make sure I get my rest because I’ll be running after her now.

Mommy tip: I bought Tater Tot some lovely rubber soled shoes from Stride Rite (more expensive) and Target (less expensive but still not cheap) when she started crawling alot and pulling up on the furniture. Completely useless. Don’t buy shoes until they need them to protect their feet when they’re walking outdoors unless you have money to spare/burn. I read today (I forget where) that they really should be learning to walk barefoot anyway to develop their leg muscles. I have little faux leather (in other words cheap) shoes that she wears sometimes but most of the time she is barefoot inside.

Update on the Back to Basics—Sleeping. She completely skipped her afternoon nap and was difficult to get down for bed time. I put her down after we went to the park even though it seemed a little early but she had rubbed her eyes and yawned a couple of time so I thought she was ready. It turns out that she had “quiet play time” in her crib for over an hour during the afternoon but didn’t want to sleep. When I went in there she was standing in her crib swinging Mr. Duckie back and forth and grinning. Huh. But by the time bed time rolled around, she was completely out of whack because she had been awake since 9:30am. Not good. Hopefully we’ll get back on track tomorrow.

Speaking of back on track, I’ll sign off for now so I can get the dishes done before my “on-time bed time” tonight.

See ya’!

I actually got to bed on time last night. Enough of this “I’ll just read one more blog entry” or “Wow, I’m really enjoying this TV show. I don’t want to go to bed yet”. Uh, that’s what you have Tivo for, isn’t it? Just get your Mommy Butt in bed already! So I did. And I feel better. Even though this was the goal for March, I have done abysmally at it. So I’m going to make this the goal for April as well. Because as tpareo so aptly put it in her comment on yesterday’s post “I’d say expect more, and that you can definitely feel better. For me, again, sleep is usually 90% of the problem, so you don’t even need any other excuses in my opinion to feel like crap if you’ve not had good sleep, esPEcially for the last 13 months… that’s a LONG LONG time!!!” That is a long, long time. And I know that when I sleep better I feel better. And when I feel better I have fewer of “those days”. I had two of them in a row this weekend. Blech. So I am going to get to bed on time. End of story.

I’ve gone back to basics with The Tater Tot re: sleeping as well. Her naps have been kind of all over the map lately and I wondered if she is transitioning to one nap a day. I’m not sure she’s ready for that, though because when she skips her afternoon nap, even if her morning nap has ended at 10:45 or 11:00, she is Crank Monster. So, before I tweak her routine to get to one nap a day I decided I’d try something else first. In Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child Dr. Wiessbluth recommends putting your child down for the first nap 2 to 2 1/2 hours after they wake up. I’ve been putting Tater Tot down around 3 1/2 hours after she wakes up and she’s been taking a while to fall asleep. Not crying but talking to herself and playing for a looooong time. Yesterday I don’t even think she fell asleep at all during her first nap time. So I decided that, even if she resisted at first, I would try putting her down earlier for her first nap. Well, she did resist but she fell asleep within 20 minutes (as opposed to 45 or so) and so far she’s been asleep for almost an hour. We’ll see if this continues but you can bet I’m going to do it again tomorrow. I had been waiting to put her down because she didn’t seem sleepy. But apparently she was and I just didn’t know it!

So we are officially back to our regularly scheduled programming with The Mommy feeling like she is doing a good job and The Tater Tot happy and healthy. Tune in later when you’ll hear The Mommy say “Holy Toddling, Tater Tot! You’re walking all by yourself!”

Disclaimer: I have one of “these days” every once in a while and I need to rant. Most days are good even if I am tired but today is an exception and I need to get it out of my system. I will return to regularly scheduled programming soon.

Today is one of “those days”. I am exhausted and I don’t know why. I have no job outside of the home, one child, and a supportive husband. I also have Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis which basically means that my body recognizes my thyroid gland as a foreign object and tries to destroy it, but I’m on thyroid replacement medication for that so that shouldn’t be an issue. My last test results were “within normal limits”. I don’t sleep enough but I did last night. I exercise and eat right most of the time. So why is it that I feel like my ass is dragging today? Dragging so hard that I’m leaving track marks behind me. (Attractive picture, isn’t it?) I’m still holding onto that extra weight and flab that I’ve been trying to get rid of for a year and even though I don’t eat refined carbs and eat more fruits and vegetables than I used to, I still feel like crap more days than I’d like. Is this just part of my new reality or is there something wrong? Should I expect more from life or is this the best I’m going to feel? Am I just getting old? I will be 39 in 5 1/2 months and there are days when I have never felt worse…except before I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s but that was so long ago that I don’t hardly remember what that felt like.

I recognize also that I have always set extremely high standards for myself both personally and professionally. I think that I put pressure on myself where there may not be outside pressure to do things as well as my standards dictate. Being a stay-at-home mommy and housewife is no exception to that. If I have a job, I will work hard at it. My job right now is to take care of my beautiful little girl and our house. And maybe I put too much pressure on myself to do these things perfectly. But doesn’t everyone else have it all under control with only one kid? Isn’t it supposed to be easy with only one? How do I not have enough time or energy? Nevermind that I’m always “on” even if she’s napping. That’s when the laundry gets shifted, the breakfast/lunch mess gets cleaned up and miscellaneous crap gets done. When you add exercise and diet to lose weight into the mix, it throws me over the edge. Maybe I’ve just shifted the focus of my mildly obsessive/perfectionistic tendencies from mainly on my professional life to my personal life since there isn’t a professional life to speak of. Thankfully, I have not shifted those tendencies to Tater Tot. They are squarely focused on my performance, not hers, and I intend to keep it that way. If I keep those tendencies, that is. I’d like to get rid of them. They’re not really very helpful and I suspect that they play a large role in my periodic difficulty sleeping.

Then there’s always the fact that women of the generations before me didn’t have the benefit of all the support that I have and they handled it. That makes me feel even more whiny and stupid for being so tired and frustrated and needing to “vent”. Maybe I’m just too self-indulgent and I need to “suck it up”. Maybe I just need to change my perspective, embrace my Inner Housewife, and realize that this is what the job is. It’s 24-7 so be sure you take your coffee break when you can (uh, nap when she naps, anyone?). I chose this job. Heck, I wanted this job so bad I couldn’t think about anything else. I took my temperature faithfully every morning before getting out of bed for months and peed on more sticks than I cared to count! What do you mean you’d like to go on a trip with the guys? I’m ovulating!

I sometimes have a hard time differentiating between the pressure I put on myself and the pressure society puts on mothers but I think that it’s there. I think that society does have unrealistic expectations of what mothers can/should be able to do and I think (ok, I know) that I’ve bought into them!

I’m coming to the conclusion that I am a perfectionistic wuss who needs to let go of some stuff. I don’t think I need to suck it up necessarily but I do need to change my perspective every once in a while and lower my expectations of myself. I need to realize that I can only do what I can do and that The Tater Tot will be just fine if she eats a couple of jars of Gerber 3rd Foods instead of home made baby food, wears a couple of disposable diapers, or watches the Baby Einstein DVD twice in a day every once in a while. I need to realize that I am doing a good job, heck, even an excellent job with her and that I need to cut myself some slack. I am in pretty good shape for an almost 39 year old woman who has had a child. I need to put my feet up during her naps and watch stupid TV or read a book or sleep, for heaven’s sake! I think that cutting myself some slack will help me sleep better which will help me feel better which will help me be better.

Okay, rant is over. Good timing. I hear the Tater Tot waking up from her nap. Hey, let’s go play “Lay Down On The Floor And Play With Mommy”!

Thanks for reading…I’ll be back to regularly scheduled programming tomorrow. Does anybody else ever feel this way? Slip me a comment and let me know!

That is why I haven’t posted much lately. It’s gone. Trickled right on down the side of my neck while I was playing in the sand at the beach with The Princess the other day. We had a great time! But no brain. Having no brain feels like you’re on autopilot. It doesn’t inhibit emotion or keep me from having fun but when I take the opportunity to slow down and actually sit my Mommy Butt down, there’s just no activity up there. I know there are things I want to write about but when I sit down to write them….nothing. Too freakin’ tired to think straight. Or even to think crooked. So I ramble about not having a brain instead of making the effort to actually write something coherent and funny. Sorry. I’ll make it up to you sometime soon. Just not tonight.

We did go visit The Daddy at work today and the kids in his classroom loved seeing Princess Tater Tot walk around the classroom with The Mommy’s help! And, of course all the other teachers and office staff enjoyed seeing how much she’s grown since the last time she visited. We had a good time although it was a little overwhelming for Tater Tot at first. If you had 28 fifth graders rush up to you, you may be clutching at your Mommy, too! But after the initial shock, she smiled at everyone and generally seemed to have a good time.

The Goal For March Update: My goal for March was to get to bed on time. HA! Fat chance. Let’s just say I have not done a very good job on this goal so far. I keep getting sidetracked by interesting blogs or stupid TV and getting to bed anywhere from a half hour to an hour and a half late. The interesting part is that I used to have trouble jogging on too little sleep but I’m getting much better at it! Huh. Imagine that. Now if I can just get to bed on time, I’ll be ready to run a marathon! On that note, I’m off to saw some logs!

Okay, so a week of fever and rocking Princess Tater Tot to sleep has screwed up her sleep schedule. But what else is a Mommy to do? There was no way I was going to let my sick little Princess cry her eyes out to “soothe herself to sleep”. That’s my job when she’s sick. It’s hers when she’s well. So, we’re starting at square one with training her to soothe herself to sleep again. Well, maybe square two or three, actually because she knows the drill. She’s just hoping that Mommy will be a softie and rock her anyway. Which I did today. Yeah, yeah, I know: Bad Mommy (to read the history of why I want her to soothe herself to sleep, go here , here , and here ) . But it was either that or have her skip her afternoon nap for the second day in a row and be Crank Monster from 3-6pm. That’s quite a lot of Crank Monster. Too much for this Mommy. Then, of course, she didn’t want to soothe herself to sleep at bed time tonight either and wailed like a dying elephant seal. So The Daddy took on Bedtime Rocking Duty and got her to her Happy Place (so drowsy that she couldn’t do anything but fall asleep. Thank you, The Daddy!

She’s had a lot going on in her little life between sickness, teething, learning to walk with The Mommy’s help (and pick her nose and wave hello), and liking to be with her Mommy a whole lot (so much that she doesn’t like to be away from me!) so I guess I gotta cut her a little slack. But I know that she will remember how to soothe herself to sleep. She’s able to for her morning nap. I just have to make sure I get her down soon enough after I see her “Mommy, I’m Sleepy” behaviors. I think I waited too long today because we were out running errands. That’ll teach me to try and get stuff done!

Yes, you did read correctly. Tater learned to pick her nose this week. I did not teach her that! And then she ate it. I definitely didn’t teach her that part. Really. I mean it, I didn’t! I wish I could take credit for teaching her to wave hello but The Daddy swooped in on the tail end of my efforts and got to take credit because she imitated him today as he waved to some kids in the neighborhood. D*mn! Nevermind that I wave hello to everyone we see in front of her, including the dog. She doesn’t feel the need to wave hello until the one time she sees The Daddy wave hello.

It’s so cute (and tiring) to help her practice walking. She just hasn’t been real interested until lately. She started walking behind her ride on walker recently and the past couple of days has been intensely interested in walking holding onto The Mommy’s hands. Back and forth and back and forth. This puts The Mommy in a stooped-over, will-my-back-ever-recover kind of position but she’s so happy and it’s such a hoot seeing her walk that I don’t mind. Before I know it, she’ll be walking all over the place. On that note, I’d better rest up… See ya’!

No, Princess Tater Tot isn’t sick again.  I spoke too soon when I said the long week is over, however.  She was up four times last night and I’m thrashed.  She took a two hour nap this morning but, unfortunately, that was the only time I had to do a Costco run so The Daddy got the benefit of that nap time.  So, here I am limping through the last 2 1/2 hours of Tater Tot’s day and praying that whatever woke her up last night does not tonight.

Speaking of whatever woke her up, I have no idea what it was.  She’d fall back asleep fairly quickly only to wake up crying 15 minutes later.  I did a diaper check, a snot check, gave her teething tablets and even Tylenol but she still didn’t get back to sleep until after midnight.  There’s nothing like not being able to figure out what’s wrong with your one year old to make you feel like Crappy Mommy.  I guess I figured that by the time she was one year old I should be able to figure this stuff out.  Apparently I can’t.  If you’ve got it all figured out by now, by all means, please let me know the secret!

This morning Princess Tater Tot’s fever is gone.  Hallelujah!  And she’s got little spots on her neck and tummy which suggests a virus and not a urinary tract infection.  This happened just in time for her doctor’s appointment today so we did not have to catheterize her to get a urine sample.  I am so relieved!  Her rash should get worse before it gets better and should be gone by Monday.  Yay!  Her appetite is back and she’s less fussy today.  She slept through the night and so did I.  The long week is over.