Spin Me I Pulsate.

I can remember those mornings with my children. It took almost 5 years for my daughter to sleep thru the night on a consistent basis.

I promise, one day you will get to hear the sound of the rain on your rooftop (and nothing else). This too, will pass.

Ah, 6:30 sounds great to me. Send her over, and I'll send Max up to you. hehe

Eh, just Ehhhhhhh. I feel you. LMD has been slepping peacefully thru the night until the past couple of days, where he is waking up in the middle of the night and screaming bloody murder. He has teeth coming in, so I hope this is the cause and he starts sleeping again soon. Pass the the Pepsi bong, please.

I'm a new mom, so forgive my ignorance on the matter, but...

WTF is MAMA Elmo? I'm familiar with regular and the "tickle me, you perv", variety. But never heard of the Mama.

Clarify, please! :-p

Normally they're good til 7:30ish-I guess they were just up.

Which turned out to be a good thing anyway-I have to shave my legs to wear my new skirt with my cute shoes. :P

And mama elmo is just a name for one of the many elmo's in the house. We also have daddy elmo and baby elmo.

Believe me, I did NOT start that.

Why did she say you were annoying?

Wow, I don't think I could even PRONOUNCE "annoying" when I was three!

It's brutal. Apsley and Truman get up around 7:30, not bad, except if Apsley naps he won't go to sleep at night until on average ten and it's been as late/early as two in the morning. Kelly gets up for work at 5 or so, and even if I could ignore that, if I've been up half the night with Apsley 7:30 is still to early.

Apsley will be 28 months in October and he doesn't sleep! I swear it's killing me. No nap, then I can rock him after his bath for ten minutes at 7:30 in the evening and he's out cold until at least 7 the next morning. Any nap, he's up all night. Yesterday he passed out on my bed while I was at my desk and I left him sleep half an hour. Half an hour! He wouldn't even stay in his bed until ten.

Truman will be 7 months at the end of this month and that kid and I better come to an understanding early.

I need to make a doctor's appointment for a physical because I haven't had one in a while. Due to this sleeping situation, I don't know what to tell them when they ask if I have any health concerns. I mean, I feel awful all the time but I figure if there was really anything wrong with me I would have died by now.

Jesus san....that's insane.

We've always been rather full of ourselves on the sleep thing because we've never had any issues. This was an anomoly, as are most other sleepign blips. They like to sleep. It's weird.

We used to be the same way, completely full of ourselves. We could put Apsley in his crib and he would contentedly play with a couple toys until he put himself to sleep. It wasn't the switch to a toddler bed that did it; this started before that. He can just get out of bed and run around now when he won't sleep, instead of screaming bloody murder from his crib.

Apparently this is a common toddler problem. Not the majority but common enough. He is also not in daycare, which may be part of the problem. He wants to stay up to do things. I think a lot of daycare kids come home with the attitude that they've done everything they possibly can for the day. They see a lot of different adults and kids. Toys get rotated around, especially the favorites, so its like playing with something new every day. Play activities are rotated and stay fresh. I think it's less about the activity level -- because we've tried wearing him out and then all we get is an exhausted Apsley who won't go to sleep -- and more about the variety of activity and people. Daycare would change things. But having made the financial decision to avoid daycare, we're stuck in it. (We're trying to find a good partial-week program for Apsley. We don't want the kids in daycare not because there is anything inherently wrong with daycare but because there are things inherently wrong with the daycare available here.)

Anyway, for better or worse, I have a solution: no naps. He's out by 8 at the very latest and sleeps 12 hours, which is plenty for him. It just means I get no break from an increasingly tired and irritable/crazy toddler until the mid-evening. No books, no work, limited bathroom breaks.

that's bizarre. Have you tried the extendo bedtime routines? On the bad days, those work for us-but for our two, if they're awake, it's usually because they're hungry I've noticed.

It's hard-my first fights the nap to the end, and my second is about to give up at least one (most days she does)

I don't even know what to suggest-we've just made sure we have an even routine that rarely varies, and that worked for us, even with the transition to the big girl bed for Viv (this may all go out the window when ros gets a bed in the next few months). She knows she can play/read, but she is NOT coming out.

We also fill them with cheese to make them sleepy and full.

or maybe we're just lucky. :)

We've avoided daycare because of money, AND because we want to raise them ourselves. Although lately, we've wished for a Mom/Dad's day out thing, to give my husband a break. Vivian is at an age where she needs other kids. We tire her out good though.

Good luck-I wish I had a suggestion, I really do!

Couple half-days a week at a preschool would be great for me, and I think great for Apsley for the other-short-people exposure.

You're right about routine; this can all be tracked back there. Due to some bizarre circumstances at Kelly's job she has been working from about 1 to 11pm four or five times a week. Apsley wants his day to run along her schedule, so he wants to nap at about 5pm -- mid-day for him -- and then go to sleep at the end of his day, about midnight. I would be willing to do this temporarily -- staying up a few hours beyond him and then just sleeping in while he sleeps in -- except we have a school-age daughter who has to be up and gone, and of course Truman who gets up with baby time, at about 7:30am.

In this case I should have the job because I'm better about telling people to go to hell. She's only required to work 2 nights a week, and because of the poor result at home with this expanded night schedule, I'd insist on the requirement only. Kelly is less able to tell people to drop off, and I understand that -- it's terribly uncomfortable for people who can't just do it.

Also the work vs. home thing is often difficult to explain to anyone who's not at home with kids, especially flying late afternoon and nights solo day after day. It's not that work isn't hard, it's just hard in a very different way. Work is 10 hours of difficult, frustrating, tiring effort. Home is a 10 hour hockey match with no substitutions.

I have however learned from this that lots of stay-at-home mothers and some working mothers are depressed, sometimes to the extreme, sometimes truly disturbed, not because of any unique quirk of femininity -- or implied weakness therein -- but because they are beaten down psychologically and physically week after seven-day week. Of course our situation is different since I don't have a lazy jerk husband who could help but won't -- we're crippled by this close to abusive situation with Kelly's job. Americans talk a lot about family values but most of us ultimately don't give a damn.

Pardon me for using your blog as a psychiatrist's couch. But it was a lot less expensive. You should think about adding prescription sedatives.

You and my husband should talk-he's the one home more than me, and he talks about feeling sad/crappy from doing it. It's hard, and hard on him. So I know where you're coming from. I'm just lucky to have a boss who RULES and is fairly flexible with me. But I know I'm lucky. She's a single mom with kids though, so she gets it.

Canada isn't all that pro family either. I actually work for an American company. Many people I know however, in other positions, don't have the leeway. Things aren't consistant.

And hey, if it makes you feel better, can't be all bad.