Month: June 2005

This morning, after Alice’s breakfast at the unforgivable hour of 6:30, Jerry took her downstairs. I think it was around 7ish when they left.

I slept until the delicious hour of TEN. Helen and Jerry came upstairs (Alice was napping), and Helen was giggly — extra giggly. It was so fun to be awakened that way. We made Helen sandwiches on the bed and squished her in between us and she just thought that was the funniest thing EVER. I love my family.

My goodness, I needed that. I haven’t slept that late in… uh… three years?!

I have a lifestyle pattern that is going to have to change, and soon.

Since September 2001, I have been either pregnant or nursing a baby, with the exception of two months in 2003.

This has meant that I have been a calorie burning machine. Well, kinda. Even the machine couldn’t keep up with the food intake while I was pregnant with Helen, and I gained fifty pounds.

Anyway. Alice is down to two, maybe three feedings a day. Within the past two weeks or so, I have seen a difference in how much I can eat without keeping the calories in storage… on my butt.

A challenge is in my future… I have to reteach myself how to eat reasonably. I’ve gotten all of my baby weight off, plus almost all of the weight I gained teaching, and I don’t want to gain ANY of it back. I suppose I should probably exercise, too, huh? Yeah, I know I should. Chasing around two little girls just isn’t enough and I know it. But it’s just hard to find the time when one doesn’t particularly enjoy the phenomenon known as “sweating.” Bleah.

I can’t just have a candy bar whenever I want it anymore. I can’t have a larger serving for dinner than Jerry does (which I have done for over 3 years now).

Rats. Eating’s fun, and now I have to be… restrained. Not my strong point.

I’m sorry I posted that entry about my relative that stalks comments, because people aren’t commenting as much anymore. I didn’t mean for that to happen. I’m a comments whore. Please comment.

I am not a morning person. I’m more of a morning person than my mother-in-law, but she’s the kind of person that gets stressed out by meetings scheduled for 9am. I’m more of a morning person than Jerry. But I’m still not a morning person.

Alice, however, is a morning person. This is probably the only thing I actively dislike about her personality. I also recognize that it is her wiring, and will likely never change.

I was the only night owl in a house full of morning people growing up, and I made them just as miserable as they made me. And I’m *still* not a morning person, and they *still* don’t understand how I can stay up so late.

Helen is a morning person right now, but I know that this is temporary. She takes a while to wake up — the sign of a night owl — so I know that once I get *her* room-darkening shades installed (this weekend, probably), we might get some more sleep out of her in the mornings. It’s working for Alice — she’s now sleeping until 6:15ish, which is probably about the best we can hope for… But Helen? Helen could probably sleep until 7:30 or even later if her room stayed dark. So I’m going to do what I can.

This morning my night-owl tendencies are torturing me. Alice woke us up heinously early, as is her custom, so I fed her and once Helen was up, we all went downstairs to watch cartoons (mostly so I can lounge on the sofa and catnap while Helen eats breakfast and Alice totters around the room). Helen kept coming to sit ON me (she’s been kind of clingy lately), so my catnaps were interrupted. Plus, I pretty much have to sleep with one eye open to make sure Alice isn’t putting foreign objects into her mouth. I swear, if it fits IN her mouth, she’ll put it in there and then walk around, looking like a gerbil with full pouches. Helen didn’t do this, so it’s a strange new world.

Now Helen is at playschool and Alice is napping, and I’m torn. I could go take my shower, which is what I *should* do. Or I could go get a decent nap until she wakes up. And then just let her scream in her crib while I take a shower. Would that make me a bad person?

I’m SO tired. Why do I stay up so late? I *KNOW* better. Every day I tell myself I’m going to go to bed at a reasonable hour. Every night, as it gets later and later, I’m thinking, “I. Am. An. Idiot.” And yet I stay up. Again and again and again. And then try to catch up with a single nap on the weekends. Am I *stupid*?

Okay, then. I’m going to go nap now. And then tonight? TONIGHT I’m going to go to bed at a REASONABLE HOUR. This means BEFORE 11pm. Really. I mean it this time.