this woman’s work

To write this week

Aug 8, 2007 Parenting, Writing, work work work

1. Two book reviews
2. One proposal for a new project for an old client
3. Edits for article
4. Two short alerts
5. My sample chapter

The most urgent are the edits and the proposal. Second most urgent are the alerts (I have most of these done and the last two will be easy) and my sample chapter (because I have to finish this in the next two weeks because I just decided that). Today I have an appointment that was at 2pm and got moved to 3:30 and that may result in more work. (I’m hoping it does but if they want me to come on-site to do it, I’ll have to say no.) Tomorrow I have another meeting at 10:30 and Brett and I are having a date Friday afternoon. So. In short. Lots of work and lots of other things to do. Which should I start first this morning? Hmmm. Perhaps I shall blog more while I consider it.

We still help Madison go to sleep every night and generally that means rocking her. Rocking is to her what nursing was to Noah. 3ish is when I night weaned Noah and so lately my aching back has thought it’d be nice to also night wean Madison. What we decided to do was read to her while Brett reads to Noah and then tuck her all cozy into bed to read with her doll babies and see if she could fall asleep on her own (and also give the grown-ups some downtime with each other) and then if she still couldn’t sleep one of us (me) would go lay down with her in her little bed. That was our new bedtime routine. Only thing is, she didn’t like it and there was a lot of wailing.

Brett and I steeled ourselves for it. After all, hadn’t we listened to Noah wail during his night weaning? Only thing is Noah remembers night weaning and was angry with us next morning.

“I know how that feels,” he told me. “I felt abandoned by you. Like I didn’t even matter any more!”

Like a knife to the heart, this kid. But we’d already decided that maybe this whole new bedtime routine wasn’t such a great idea while she’s still working out what the heck she’s doing with naps. She’s not growing out of them really but she’s not really needing them so much everyday either. It’s been going on forever that if she naps, she’s up all night and if she doesn’t she’s over-tired and up all night. (Well, up and down all night.) It’s one of the reasons we’re burned out. Other times it’s fine. Day before yesterday she napped, fell right asleep and stayed asleep all night. Yesterday she didn’t nap, fell right asleep and stayed asleep all night.

Also the bed wetting. Sometimes if she sleeps hard, she wets the bed. Sometimes she wakes up and falls asleep either on the potty or on the bathroom floor. Sometimes she wakes up because she has to pee but climbs into bed with us and cries when we take her back to the bathroom to pee and then when she comes back to our bed she’s up and at ‘em.

It’s too unpredictable to fix, I think. At least that’s what we’ve decided.

No need to offer advice, I’ll add, because I probably won’t take it anyway now that I’ve decided not to fix it. She’ll grow out of it/into it. Meanwhile we’re taking bedtime in shifts. We say, “I’m tagging you in” and hand her off like a bag of sweet potatoes.

Possibly related posts

• Writing it out (20)
• So Brett and I decided we weren’t stressed enough (7)
• Noah is at Simchat Torah (3)
• Madison *is* awfully smart (10)
• I’m trying to get past 43 minutes (15)