Limbo land

When you first get pregnant everyone talks about a whole host of things that will certainly change in your life. Probably one of the biggest "hot topics" is sleep. No matter how you handled sleep before, you are forced to adapt. I have always been a night owl. Never once have I cared about getting up early. Come to think of it, I can't think of a single time where I actually wanted to get up early (aside from Christmas of course).

Anyway, baby arrives and you go through the typical first few months of no sleep. If it's your first you sleep when baby sleeps. This is key to survival. Baby may sleep all day and stay up all night. Or, you may be blessed with a good sleeper. Even with a good sleeper, you are never getting the long stretches of quality sleep. Then, one day baby figures it out and you get more and more sleep. Things slowly creep back to some sense of normalcy until one day you realize you feel pretty good! Baby is taking regular naps and you are actually getting things done. It's glorious.

As with everything involving having children, you tackle one hurdle only to take on the next. No one said it would be easy right? The sheer joy of just having this perfect little angel keeps the momentum going through growth spurts, dropping naps, and toddlerhood. With every age and stage you feel more and more like you could move mountains. That's how smart you feel.

Then, you have baby number two. You think, I've got this. You know in the depths of your mind that baby number two will not be a repeat of baby number one. But you also know that you are much more prepared this time. Chances are good baby number two is so unlike baby number one you begin to question EVERYTHING. A new crop of questions start reveal themselves. Did I do it wrong the first time and now I'm doing it right? Or vice versa? If I change this to suit this baby will it backfire or work even better?

Unfortunately, I think maybe you never figure it out. You just adapt yourself to death and breathe a sigh of relief when the stars align and things go well consistently for a little while.

There are spaces of time that I unaffectionately call "limbo land". Typically, this is in reference to sleep.  Let me paint a picture...

As I've mentioned in the past, bedtime for a long time was a nightmare. Evie's sleeping in general was just awful and Lila decided that going to bed just wasn't for her. More and more Lila was going to sleep around 10:30 or 11 pm. So, these days Lila is no longer taking naps. Evie finally got into a three naps a day schedule right around the time she probably only needed two. That leaves her now at sometimes two, sometimes three.

Anyway, we are in limbo land as we speak. And when I say we I mean everyone. I'm trying to figure out how to go to bed earlier and start training for a sprint triathlon. Seth is trying to figure out how to get up earlier and get home earlier from work. Lila is trying to figure out how to hold herself together all day with no nap. Evie is trying to figure out that naps need to be longer if you're going to get anything out of them. Today I actually felt well rested. Lila and Evie, however, were like puddles on the floor I kept trying to clean up all day.

This was my really long winded way of showing you this video. Parenting lesson #1,245: When times get tough and the drama is high, make 'em go in circles, give it a fancy name like obstacle course, and cross your fingers!



But even at the end of a wreck of a day, sleepy heads can equal an adorable kind of delirious...