Month: September 2011

Philip and I have been blessed to have two great sleepers in Callie and Justus. Not that I think it was all luck, we definitely established early routines and expectations that have helped, and Callie and Justus both go to bed easily and sleep through the night, getting up around 7ish. I know Eli’s arrival will blow this all apart for a while, especially since we will be moving Justus into Callie’s room to make space for the baby.

For now though, sleep routines have been great and easy, so when nights like last night come a long, it really messes with me, and reminds me how fortunate I am! Callie Grace had a hard time going to bed, due to Philip not getting home until hours after her bedtime. She really thrives on routine and both kids do better when both mom and dad are home to participate in the bedtime rituals. She finally went to sleep and I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that at least she would sleep in this morning. Around 1am, I hear her get up, open her door, come into our room, and ask for daddy. Philip immediately gets up and gets her something to drink, and tucks her back into bed. 30 minutes later she’s up again, and Philip goes back to put her in bed and comfort her. She comes out an hour or so later and I take over, causing her great distress – “Is daddy ok?”. It takes a few minutes to comfort her, tell her that daddy is fine and that we will have snacks and watch Dora in the morning (both requested and really not appropriate for 3am). She asked that the door be left open, so I go back to bed for about 20 minutes, and hear her calling for me. I go back, and she asks me if daddy is going to get her a puppy dog, and tells me that she wants to name her puppy Chocolate Chip, and that she doesn’t want to go to bed. By this time it’s 4:30am, and I haven’t seen 4:30am with Callie Grace in probably two years!

As far as I could tell, nothing was wrong. I think she must have had a bad dream and it woke her up, then she wanted to see daddy, and then she was awake and ready to start her day. The funny thing was that by the time I was certain she was back to sleep, it was after 5am and I was awake with baby Eli doing his early morning gymnastics! It’s now almost 8am and Callie is still sleeping, however Justus is up and trying to get into Callie’s room to play with her. It has the potential to be a long day!

I’ve reached that weird stage of pregnancy where you don’t physically feel like doing much due to movements being awkward, ligament pain, etc., but at the same time feeling a great need to organize and clean my entire house, top to bottom. These two desires, to sit around and do as little as possible or to do as much as I can fit in, war with each other and often leave things looking half done, mostly because they are. Today I got crazy motivated and started cleaning out my kitchen cabinets, then felt tired, hot and uncomfortable and sat down with my glass of water (another story) and my pile of current books from the library, leaving my kitchen looking like Callie and Justus got a hold of it (which really is not a good example, because when I go to find them, they are cleaning their rooms, putting up their toys, and “dusting” with a container of wipes half gone!).

I’m at 32 weeks now, and have decided that I’m really done being pregnant. That being said, I pray that baby Eli waits to make an appearance until he’s good and ready, but feel that with the amount of food I’ve been eating (I think Philip has some concern about this, probably due to the number of trips he’s made recently to Taco Bell, and the number of grilled cheese sandwiches he’s had to make me at midnight!), Eli’s going to set some kind of record for birth weight. I’ve left that cute, 2nd trimester behind, and have entered the last weeks where I can’t sleep, wear Philip’s clothes instead of mine, and can no longer get Callie and Justus in and out of their car seats without serious issues, which aren’t pretty!

These last weeks will go by fast, this I know, and there are so many wonderful things going on in the Meade household that I hate to wish the time away, but we are ready to make eye-contact with Eli, and I’m ready to get back to my Dr. Pepper diet! (Tomorrow’s story).