Adventures in putting an infant to sleep at bed time

I just reread my last blog post and realized it captured everything but wasn’t very entertaining or funny.  Rest assured that I haven’t lost my mojo or my abundance of material.  Please read below. 

Adventures in putting an infant to sleep at bed time:

So you’ve worked all day, strained to keep inappropriate comments in your head instead of spewing them at your coworkers, picked up all the kidlets from their various childcare arrangements, kept your patience in public while dealing with said kidlets, made dinner while your pants are literally being pulled off your body and demands are being shouted from the couch for refreshments (multiple), ate said dinner while attempting normal conversation while reminding said kidlets that they need to actually sit at the table every 15 seconds, scrubbed infinite germs of the bodies of the babes,  and it is now the challenge you’ve been waiting for all day! Oh, it isn’t?

 A true competition of wills, a scorecard of your parenting skills, an ego booster or failure reminder: Bed time. 

Let me preface the rest of this post by saying that Corinna has been the best “sleeper” we’ve had so far.  And that ain’t saying much.  She did start sleeping through the night around 6/7 months which is way earlier than either of the other two infant non-sleepers who I will not name.  The problem with little miss Coco is that getting her down seems to be quite a challenge these days (it used to be easier, dammit!).

 Now, this is a story all about how my life got flipped - turned upside down…

So it’s 7:30 pm and I’ve already been through the experience I outlined above previously in the day.  I’ve got a cute and clean babers in my arms, relaxed in the glider, lights off and it’s go time.  I peacefully begin to feed her and this, my friends, is the exact moment when she starts faking me out.  She closes those perfect little baby eyelids and nuzzles in all warm and cozy while quietly nursing away.  This continues for a good 10 minutes and right about then, I’m thinking to myself:  good job self, tonight’s the night she’s going to go to sleep quickly and easily.

Sucka! 

Coco decides it’s time to start flailing her arms and smacking, and I mean smacking, me as hard as she can on the chest.  She loves that loud “whack!” sound. I do not love that loud whack sound.  So I restrain her arms so that I don’t have to explain bruises and scratches to others and this is when she begins her little wiggle dancing.  It’s a cross between bucking her body back and forth and wiggling side to side.  It’s cute, but not when you are thinking she’s going to sleep or when she has her teeth on one of your sensitive body parts.  Okay so the dancing is slowing down and now she pretends to close her eyes drift off to sleep again.  This is when the 4 year old busts in the room and announces that she “needs” me to come look at her bowel movement that looks like a big stick!   The baby’s eyes fly open and she listens very closely to the conversation.  I kid you not.  No laughing going on here.   Ok, so we take care of that situation and it’s back to rocking and nursing.  Baby eyes close again and approximately 10 seconds later, the cat starts meowing and pushes the door open.  Baby eyes fly open again.  I kick the cat out and mutter a few things under my breath and back to the glider I go.  Pretend sleep starts again and it has now been about 30 consecutive seconds of eyes being closed.  This is when the neighbor lets out his two very large, very fluffy, very white, very annoying dogs.  They begin to bark, baby eyes are open again.  I mentally rip neighbor a new one.  At this point, I attempt to sing as to drown out the barking but seeing as though I have zero musical talent I think this is doing more harm than good.  Ok, I’ll get out of the glider this time and try walking the room or swaying to lull her back to sleep land.  This is when the hubs arrives home from softball and opens the garage doors which can be heard all the way in Canada.  This is just a brief interruption and I continue on my way walking around the room.  The moment comes when I’m pretty sure the baby is asleep and it’s time to put her in the crib.  Of course, the second that tiny little head touches the mattress, the eyes fly open and the wailing begins.  I take deep breathes and try to calm myself.  You see, the wailing was coming from me, not from the baby.  Ok, I’ve given myself a new pep talk and pick the baby back up and she goes back to sleep in my arms.  I wait minutes and attempt the crib again.  This time, it appears that my stealth baby putting down skills have worked!  I go to take one step away from the crib, and wouldn’t you know it, my dang ankle cracks so loudly that it wakes the baby back up!    I am not making this up.  I search the room for the hidden camera because surely, I’m on that show Candid Camera.  This time I do not pick her up out of the crib because even though she woke back up, she’s still very drowsy. I spend the next 5 minutes rubbing her back in a robotic motion as to not break the pattern and cause her to wake up again. I roll my ankles to insure they won’t crack as I sneak away again and muster up the courage to try the exit again.  I make it out of the room and the door is closed – I did it!   One hour and 15 minutes later.  Whew.  And now I’m so exhausted that I put myself to bed.  And all the barking, meowing, children and garage doors couldn’t make enough noise to wake me up. 

The end.

Did you catch the Fresh Prince reference up above?    

 

 

 

T & K 7/11/14

The Zappia clan had the honor of being in Tommy and Karis' wedding this past July.  I'm just now getting around to writing about it because I've just now finally recovered.  While the wedding preparations surely took more time in the lives of Tommy, Karis, and Mimi, it also took a serious amount of planning and prep on our part as well.  Considering that I'm the only one, of five people who dresses herself, (appropriately, at least) the outfit coordination alone was no small feat.  Five people, 3 days, multiple outfits per day, for all weather types, activity types, and comfort types.  And shoes, don't forget shoes!  Don't forget the camera, the sippy cups, the necklace to go with the grey dress, the infant tylenol, the swim vest, the black socks, baby monitor, the phone chargers, the card, the actual baby...you get the idea.

So the months of prep are finished and the wedding weekend is finally here.  We take half days from work on Thursday, pull the kids out of camp/daycare early, feed the cat and head off to Corning.  

And then the real wedding prep began.

And by "begins," I mean the last 10% of turning the 80 acre farm into a ceremony and reception site.  There were signs and lanterns to be hung, table decor to be placed, chairs to be setup,  and lights to be strung to name a few tasks.  I tried to keep the kids out of the way as much as possible while trying to help at the same time.  That was next to impossible.  Friday was more of the same all day until we had to get our hair done.  Even so, I was still making the seating assignment display with my bridesmaid dress on while the first guests were arriving. We used every possible minute.    

We also had to fit in practice being the ring bearer, the flower girl and jr. flower girl so that we didn't have any runaway wagons, guests with flower pedals flung in their faces or untimely swims in the pond.  

So the moment of truth arrives and it's time to walk down the aisle.  I'm the first one to go down and as I'm standing there, I realize Matt is standing next to me.  He was supposed to be with the groomsmen but he claims no one told him where to go.  Like this is the first wedding he's ever been to.  So we go down the aisle together and it works out fine.  The rest of the wedding party proceeds and then it's Luke's turn with Coco.  He did a very nice job of pulling her in the wagon slowly and and an even nicer job of conveniently parking the wagon in front of Matt instead of me.  Hallelujah! Ade comes down with her petals next and also does a great job. I expected her to come stand by me but instead she chose to stand with Karis' sister Libby.  Maybe I smelled bad?  Anyway, next came our beautiful blushing bride and the ceremony commenced.  I'll have you know that my kid was not the first one to melt down.  She may have been the second one but she wasn't first and she wasn't the loudest - I was so proud.  Actually, Corinna wasn't that bad but she did cause Matt to exit the groomsmen line for a short jaunt as quickly as he could exit stage left and as far as he could get - "stage left" being out into the middle of the field away from the ceremony.   

Tom and Karis had a really nice and brief (!) ceremony just as they had planned.   They could not have looked any more perfect and all of the hard worked paid off.  

Day 2 of the wedding was the "reception."  And there were quite a few people receiving and receiving pretty hard.   The weather cooperated and there was lots of fun happening left and right.  This included our own little maniac Luke on the golf carts.  Note to self: do not ride with Luke on anything with a motor.  It is scary and life threatening changing.   And it is now September and we hear about the golf carts every single day without fail.  Luke might actually be let down by Santa this year.

Anyway, we all had the best time that we never want to have again (kind of like college spring break in Mexico) - you're glad you did it and had a blast but it was exhausting and a lot of hard work having that much fun.