Not my best

That is how I feel today, not my best.  So I'm blogging during my scheduled writing time in an attempt to get out of my funk.  Why am I in a funk?  It's been a difficult few days for lots of reasons.

Bear's sleeping habits have improved (as in he is no longer waking up every 2 hours), but he still wakes up incredibly early.  This morning, for example, he woke up at 4:30.  He doesn't want to be awake this early, but he won't go back to sleep without help.  And that help, it seems, must come from me.  This is a fairly recent thing, since the move.  Until then, Archer and I had worked out a really great schedule for dealing with Bear.  We simply alternated mornings and nights.  If it was my night to get up with Bear, Archer got up with him in the morning and vice versa.  This meant that we both got enough sleep.  Mind you, we were both tired, but neither of us was exhausted.  At some point following the move, however, Bear has refused to let Archer soothe him in the night.  This means that Archer tries, and Bear screams bloody murder at the top of his lungs.  I can't sleep through this, and to avoid both of us being completely exhausted, I've gotten in the habit of just getting up with Bear.  As I said, most nights this is fine, and most mornings it is as well since he's gotten into the habit of sleeping until 6:00.  This morning, though, it wasn't.  Wednesday night I'd been up twice with Wild Man, who first wanted a drink and then needed to go pee.  Each time I was woken up it took me about 30 minutes to go back to sleep.  Then I was up early with Bear as it was my morning to do so.  Thus, this morning I was hoping to get some extra sleep.  It didn't happen.

After struggling to get Bear to go back to sleep for about 15 minutes, I finally brought him into our bed, as I didn't want him to wake up Wild Man (they are now sharing a bedroom).  After another 15 minutes, most of which Archer slept through (although he says he was awake, I argue that his snoring indicated otherwise), I got up to take Bear downstairs to see if he'd relax on the couch.  Archer woke up and asked me if I wanted him to take over.  Now, I hate this question.  Hate it.  And Archer and I have talked about this.  If he can see I'm struggling and at my wit's end, I'd rather he just take over.  I don't want him to ask me that question because in such a moment I'm not going to respond nicely.  As much as I mean to say, "Yes, please, thank you.  I really need a break," in such a moment, when I'm tired and frustrated and unhappy with my own behavior, I'm going to say something like, "Of course I want you to take over.  Do you really have to ask that question?"  That's what I said at 5:30 this morning.  And it didn't go over well.  Understandably, Archer doesn't like to be snapped at when he's offering to help.  I get that.  He said something like, "You don't have to be such a martyr, M.  Just ask for help."  That, of course, made it worse.  So I grabbed Bear and went downstairs, telling Archer I'd take care of it.  So I was now annoyed and frustrated and tired. 

I finally got Bear back to sleep at 5:30, and he slept until 6:30.  Between his wiggles and the cat deciding 5:45 was the perfect time for a snuggle, I didn't get much sleep.  When Bear woke up at 6:30, I woke up Archer and asked him if I could have a break.  He happily took over, and I lied down.  He forgot, however, to close our bedroom door all the way, which meant that I heard him turn on the coffee grinder 5 minutes later, just as I was dropping off to sleep.  So I got up and closed the door all the way, and that annoyed me more.  To be fair to Archer, our house is old.  Unless you close the door all the way, it will fall open again.  Neither of us is used to this yet, as we've only been in the house for 3 weeks.  I know he didn't do that on purpose, but again, in that moment, it really irritated me.

When I woke up at 7:10 I went downstairs, still tired and annoyed and frustrated.  I expected that Archer would have finished packing Wild Man's lunch, which I'd started packing the night before.  But no.  He'd hung out with Bear.  So I started doing the 45 things that are part of our morning routine.  He came into the kitchen to say good morning, and I rolled my eyes at him.  He knew why I was upset, so he said, "I was coming to do all of those things now that you're awake.  I know you can hear all the activity from the kitchen in our room.  Since you'd been up since 4:30 I wanted to give you a bit more time to sleep.  Let me do that."  To which I said, "Well you could have had all this stuff done if you'd just take the time to close the bedroom door all the way."  Archer walked away, understandably so, and left me to finish everything. 

We managed the rest of the morning routine without speaking to each other, which sucks.  It sucks even more because Bear is knee-deep in the terrible twos, and we normally get through his crankiness by laughing together.  This morning we were barely looking at each other.  On the way to school, I apologized.  I said, "I'm really sorry I snapped and that I was being so unreasonable.  I know you were trying to help me.  I now you probably feel like I treat you as though you never do anything right, and I'm sorry for that.  I'm really sorry I make you feel that way."  He nodded, but he didn't really respond.  I know he needs more time to process everything, and I know everything will be fine by this afternoon.  I'm just so tired of feeling tired and frustrated, and I feel like crap for taking those feelings out on Archer.

I'm tired

I need a break from real life, just for a day or so.  I want to lie on a beach and drink margaritas.  I want to watch Archer, Wild Man, and Bear build sand castles and play in the water, all the while knowing we don't have to be anywhere or do anything.  I want to throw the clock and the calendar out of the window and just be for a few days.

Random Stuff

Both Z and Wild Man are napping, and C and his mom are grocery shopping. I should be napping too, but I can't seem to turn my brain off. A lot has happened in the past two weeks, and I'm not certain I've begun to process it all. My emotions are all over the place, so I thought writing might help.

• Wild Man is doing well adjusting to his brother's presence. He's not doing so well sharing me. Saturday morning he had his first major meltdown. Z had cluster fed throughout the night, which meant I was up about every 2 hours. On top of that Wild Man had a rough night himself. He woke up once and took about 30 minutes to go back to sleep, and then he woke up for the day at 6, which is about an hour earlier than he usually wakes up. So C and I were both exhausted. When Wild Man woke up, C woke up his mom, and she watched a movie with Wild Man, so C and I could go back to sleep. At 8, Z woke up, and Wild Man heard him. He came right up the stairs to see me, and he wanted a hug. I was trying to nurse Z, so I told Wild Man to sit on the bed with us and I'd hug him while I nursed Z. Not ideal, I know, but I thought it would make Wild Man happy. I was wrong, and Wild Man had a total global meltdown. He wanted me right at that moment, and I couldn't hold him the way he wanted to be held. I felt horrible. I had to feed Z, but I really wanted to take care of Wild Man, who was clearly not feeling like himself and was exhausted. C, who is inifintely patient with newborns, has little patience for toddlers' temper tantrums, and he wasn't as helpful as he could have been. Really, Wild Man just needed to cry, but going on lack of sleep, C put him in time out. That made things worse. Thankfully Z is already an effiecient nurser, and he was done in about 15 minutes. I was able to give Z to C and comfort Wild Man, but even then it took him about 15 more minutes to calm down. He was off for the rest of the day (which, frankly, wasn't helped by the fact that Yetta insisted on having an elaborate lunch for the 4th and we didn't eat until 1:00, which means Wild Man had been up for 7 hours by the time he went down for a nap.).
• I'm tired, which seems obvious, but it isn't the same tired to the bone I experienced with Wild Man. Thus far, Z is a calmer baby than Wild Man was. He is routinely up for 2 hours in the middle of the night, but as he isn't fussy, he is easier to deal with. In fact, last night was his first real fussy night, and he was having a hard time pooping. Once he relaxed and pooped, he nursed and went right to sleep.
• I have a million things to do to get ready for the semester, and I don't want to do any of them.
• I'm anxiously waiting for Z's birth certificate to come in so we can get him a Canadian passport. Since we couldn't get an appointment at the U.S. Consulate until the end of the month, we weren't sure his U.S. passport would come in by the time of our trip to Southwest College Town in August. Thus, we've decided to get him a Canadian passport. I've been told this will only take about 3 weeks once we get the paper work in, but since the Canadian post is notoriously slow, I'm still worried.
• We have to get the car registered, which will likely be a tedious process.
• C has started installing our new kitchen cabinets (I swear the man must be occupied at all times). They look great, but frankly, I'm tired of talking about home improvement.
• Yetta is wonderful, but she isn't my mom. I miss my mom.
• Yetta hates hanging out around the house, and I'm not really feeling like getting out right now. C, however, wants to make sure his mom has a good visit, so he is giving in to her. I don't want to eat out, I don't want to go shopping, and I really don't want to leave my house except to take Wild Man to the park (which is too far for Yetta to walk to even though it is only 2 blocks away). I told C last night that I need him to remember that I just had a baby, and I'd like to lay low for a few more weeks.
• My sister is being an ass to our mom. I don't want to elaborated at this point, but I will say that my sister is using her recent diagnosis of bi-polar 2 as a means to blame every horrible thing that happened in our childhood (and for the record, we had a pretty good childhood) on our mom.
• C's sister, Pita, has made several comments about Z being a boy. C says they come across as jokes, but she is expressing her disappointment at having another nephew. So far she hasn't said anything to me, and I have already warned both Yetta and C that if she does say anything to me about Z's sex I will not be kind.
  
• I had no idea that having a second child would make me love my oldest child so much more. Despite his clinginess to me, Wild Man clearly loves his baby brother. He constantly kisses Z and tells him how much he loves him. He hates for him to cry, and he gets very upset if we let Z cry for a minute longer than Wild Man thinks is necessary.
• I still need to type up Z's birth story (which, in retrospect, was quite comedic), but I haven't managed to do that yet.
• I have a bunch of corrections to do to my dissertation, per the ubiquitous thesis office, and I have to finish those this week.
• I'm actually looking forward to this coming weekend. Yetta leaves on Wednesday, and it will be the four of us until the end of the month, when Pita comes for a visit. It will be stressful in some ways, but I also think it will be good for us to be on our own so we can start to figure these things out for ourselves.
• I want to give Z a bottle sometime this week. He's nursing great, and I don't want to wait much longer. With my teaching schedule this fall (I'll be on campus 4 days a week), I need him to take a bottle easily. Wild Man never really took the bottle, but I really need Z to be comfortable getting breast milk from a bottle.
• I figure I have another 30 minutes before Wild Man wakes up, so I'm going to try to get through some of those revisions now.
  

At My Wit's End

Tomorrow Wild Man goes back to school, and frankly after almost 3 weeks of uninterrupted togetherness, I am very ready for a bit of a break. I'm ready for a variety of reasons, including that I want to get back to work, but mainly I'm ready because Wild Man is going through a serious Mommy-phase. Almost everything C does elicits cries of "Mommy, I need my Mommy" from Wild Man. And his latest mantra is "Hug, Mommy, hug," which he repeats incessantly. I know that given our recent travels and the number of people he saw in the two weeks we were out of town has caused some anxiety. On top of that, he had four cousins of varying ages to play with during those 2 weeks, and for the past week, because our neighbor Blue-Eyed Girl, has been sick, he's had no one but me and C to amuse him. Add to that one horrific cold that both he and I have suffered from, and it's been a rough week. I honestly think he needs a break from us as much as we need a break from him, a fact that was reinforced when he announced yesterday "I miss Shell and Cole," his nicknames for his teachers.

*And here's a note to myself when Wild Man and Z are adults with children and come to visit me and C: offer to babysit at least one night so that they and their respective partners can have a night off, especially if they aren't able to afford to hire a babysitter often. Seriously, in the 2 weeks we were with family, no one offered to babysit Wild Man so C and I could have some alone time. I get that they weren't willing to put him to bed as no one but me or C has ever put him to bed, but really, someone could have offered to watch him so we could have gone out to lunch or something. And given that no one offered in the first day or so, we didn't feel comfortable asking.

I'm tired

That sums it up. The last week has been a blur of unpacking, running errands, and filling out paper work. I said it before: moving to another country is a pain. We've filled out so many forms at various places that it is ridiculous. On top of everything that I'm trying to remember (new address, new phone number, new email, new directions) I now have to remember the Canadian equivalent of a Social Security number. Oh, and the room in the house that is now my office is tan with a weird pink stripe down one wall. Have I mentioned that I can't wait to paint it?

I'm tired, plain and simple

I've been neglecting lots of things lately, my blog included, and the reason is in the title of this post: I'm tired, plain and simple. I'm not just the "I'm a dissertating-mom-of-a-toddler-tired" either. I'm tired physically, emotionally, and intellectually. It seems that the reason for my tiredness can be traced to one reason, the same reason incidentally that is currently the cause of every single source of stress in my life right now: C's job search.

In all honesty, I may as well have gone on the market myself as much time and energy as I've invested in this damn search. I remember thinking this past fall when C was sending out applications how much easier that whole process was when he did it in 2006. He had all the materials drafted this time; he just needed to revise them to address specific job ads. Thus, our fall was relatively stress free. We had lots of family time, and I even managed to find time to work on my dissertation on most Sunday afternoons. The spring, however, has been a different issue. C has been absorbed with conference interviews and on-campus interviews, which, aside from taking him to all end of the country, take an inordinate amount of time to prep for. He has been consumed by all of this stuff to the extent that it is impossible for us to have a conversation that somehow doesn't include a discussion of an upcoming interview. On top of that, we also enjoy stressing ourselves out further and having the conversation that starts "What happens if after all of this C doesn't get an offer?" When he is home, C is trying to keep up with his classes because he is, in fact, still teaching 4 classes this semester and prepping for future interviews. Every school has asked him to do something different, so his prep for every interview is different. Needless to say it has been hard to get a lot of work done, but I am trying my best to get through another chapter.

The thing that is stressing us both out the most is Wild Man's reaction to everything. C and I have been much snippier with each other than usual--we're both tired, we're both frustrated, we're both missing each other. We've had several pointless conversations which go something like "I'm tired, M." "Well, C, I'm tired too." "No, I'm tired." "No, I'm tired." In other words we have pissing contests on a semi-regular basis. Wild Man has picked up on the tension in the house, and he has also started having trouble sleeping again. This one isn't a surprise. My kid is not a good sleeper, but in the past few months we've had major break throughs. Despite the fact that he consistently wakes up between 6 & 6:30, he generally sleeps through the night. If he does wake up, he does so because he has misplaced his puppy, his favorite stuffed animal that he has taken to sleeping with. Once one of us gives him puppy, he goes right back to sleep. For the past 3 weeks, however, he has had what I can only describe as insomnia. At least twice a week, he wakes up around 11 and is awake for several hours, sometimes 1 but more often 2 or 3. Last night he was up from 11 until 1 and then from 3 until 4. He isn't fussy either; in fact, he only cries when he is alone. As long as one of us is in his room with him he is content to lie in his crib and hold our hands. Sleeping on the floor next to Wild Man's crib isn't the ideal place to get a restful night's sleep, however. We're both hoping that he will begin sleeping through the night again as soon as we able to get back to our regular schedule. Unfortunately there are three more weeks of travel ahead of us: 1 trip for me and 2 for C. It looks like I will continue to be tired for a while.