Hi, I'm Helmet Head

I'm really not one to get involved in the whole to co-sleep or not to co-sleep debate. Frankly, I don't care whether or not you sleep with your infant. I would prefer that you don't come crying to me when he or she is 6 and still won't leave your bed, because in my mind there's a high probability of that side effect. Just do whatever works for you, and for the love of all things insane, please don't use some silly book as your justification for doing it. Do it because it works for you. If it does, then great!

Co-sleeping does not work for us. Mostly it doesn't because of me. In my perfect little imaginary world, we would have a seven bedroom house. Every human and four-legged creature would have his or her own bed to roll around in, sprawl across, and throw the blankets from. I would, of course, have a very serious lock or two on the door to my own personal bedroom to keep out any wandering souls. It would be essential because, dude, EVERYBODY likes sleeping on me. On any given night, you will find me huddled into a tiny little corner of the bed, trying desperately to get an inch or two to myself. I never succeed.

The last two nights have been worse than usual. Somehow, someway, The Toddler has managed to invade my sleeping quarters. The first time it happened because she was listening to music with Daddy, dancing on our bed and having a generally fantabulous time. It was well past my bedtime, let alone hers, so I went for the path of least resistance and just laid down and went to sleep. Eventually she stopped with the cabbage patching and two-stepping and laid down as well. Last night she thought we would fight about going to bed and wound up in Daddy's arms, then in our bed. Both times I was very quickly reminded why that child should not sleep with me. EVER.

Alexis agrees with everyone else that the most comfortable place to sleep is on top of me. But since two dogs, a husband, and a couple of cats have already laid claim to nearly every square inch of my body, she's left with just my head. That works just fine for her because it means that she will have easy access to my hair. Whether she's awake or asleep, if that child can reach my hair, she has her nubby little fingers intertwined in it, creating what can only be described as matted knots. Really tangled, matted knots.

To achieve maximum Zen with my hair, Alexis wraps herself around my head like a helmet. Her legs act as the strap, her feet as the buckle. Did I mention that my helmet gets put on backwards? Of course it does. I lie awake for hours, staring at baby belly, gasping for air as I am suffocated by 30 pounds of human flesh. I can't move the human flesh because it's wrapped so tightly that a mere shake of my head will not dislodge it. What of my hands, you wonder . . . they are weighted down by the 50-pound snoring bulldog. I would kick them both off me, but my feet are restricted by the furry little thing we call Jasmine. She may only weigh 15-pounds, and 13-pounds of it is surely fur, but that dog can make herself weigh 200-pounds if it means staying right where she is. So I just lay there, silently praying for someone to put me out of my misery.

In the morning, the insult is piled on top of the injury. A full night of nubby fingers twirling and tangling leaves me looking pretty much like this:

I would show you a real picture of just how big and bad the hair can get, but I can't seem to find a camera with that wide of an angle. It's that bad. I'm left to wonder, where was Alexis in the early 90's when big hair was a good thing and I was left flat and out-of-style?

You Guys!

Somebody, somewhere must have thought it was about time I drug myself out of this pity party I've been throwing, and decided to make my day by nominating me for Hot Stuff of the Week over at GNMParents! I don't know who you were, but thanks! (And feel free to out yourself so I can thank you proper and stuff. I promise I won't bite.)

(If you happen to be even slightly interested, you can go vote here. But don't feel like you have to because it's all about what makes you happy. If you want to, great! If you don't, great! Just be happy!)

So back to that pity party . . . I'll have you know that it is continuing. I do fully realize that the current situation will work out for the best, but that doesn't change that it sucks harder than a three-month old while breastfeeding. It totally sucks. It sucky, suck, sucks. Even though I know that I did absolutely nothing wrong, and there is nothing that I could have done differently to alter the outcome, I still keep replaying the past few months in my mind, looking for some sort of way that I could have prevented the bizarreness that occurred last week. I keep coming up empty. I suppose that is because there is nothing there to find, but I can't help but to keep searching.

(Sorry that I continue to be so cryptic about what exactly happened. But, you see, I have seen multiple IP addresses from a certain server on this here blog the past few days and there really is no reason to provide any ammunition for anything. Just goes to show that no matter how anonymous a blog is, it's never truly anonymous. Or maybe it is. I have no way of knowing.)

Really the problem is that I am a worker. I like to work. I especially like the stress of working. Actually, I shouldn't say "like", I should say that I THRIVE on the stress that only a corporate environment can bring. Need fifty things done in the next ten minutes? I'm your person! Need somebody to calm a pissed off customer? I'll do it! Want somebody to be in two places at once? OK! I love that kind of drama. The longer my To Do List gets, the happier I am. The more people are counting on me, the better.

Let's be honest here, being a stay-at-home Mom can certainly be stressful and by no means is a walk in the park, but there are plenty of things that can always wait. There will be no angry people screaming in my face if I don't put away laundry for a few weeks. That dirty diaper? It can wait a minute. Dinner? Y'all will survive if I toss some leftovers onto the table. I mean, I started painting the murals in Alexis' room over two years ago. The only person that is even slightly bothered by the fact that they're still not done is me. And I ain't losing sleep over it.

Of course, there's probably a solution to the moderately stressful situation. I'm sure the addition of a few more kids would heat things up considerably. But, alas, Daddy said something last night to ensure that won't be happening anytime soon. It was something about him seeing no reason why any other kids we have wouldn't turn out to be just as easygoing as Alexis. No reason except for the fact that he SAID THAT OUT LOUD.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go create some stress for myself. Maybe I'll bust out the paint and see if Alexis wants to finish her own murals. Watching her paint Humpty Dumpty's face black will most certainly get my blood flowing.

Oh yeah, go vote (if you want)!

Better Than I Expected

As Alexis and I try to adjust to this strange new journey where I am home with her ALL DAY, I am finding that we are not quite on the same page when it comes to how things will be.

First example, I am of the opinion that we will be waking up at something that resembles a decent hour of the day. If you were to ask Alexis her opinion on this topic, she would most certainly say, "Awake by 6:00, please!" I'm willing to compromise on this one. I won't expect her to stay in bed until 10:00 (which would totally ROCK), but only if she will just expect that I WILL be in bed until 7:00. Seems to me I'm doing the most compromising there, so I don't fully understand what the problem is.

I suppose part of the problem might be that she came out of her package programmed to wake up around 6:00. She has always done it, no matter what time she goes to bed or what activities I force her into in hopes of extending sleeping time. There has been exactly one day when she waited until 8:30 to wake up (a day in which I probably checked on her 400 times in one hour thinking she must have died in her sleep), and then there was the beautiful thing that was our Disney vacation. I think Disney does things to your kids to make them easier to deal with, like drugging them so that they sleep late. She achieved greatness all through our fun family vacation, but morphed back into her early bird self upon our return. Boo.

Our second point of contention involves the activities in which she will participate as the day goes by. She says all Signing Time, all day long. I say no Signing Time, don't even bother to ask. Frankly, I don't think she needs to be sitting in front of a television any more than she does on the weekends hanging out with Daddy. It hasn't escaped my attention that she has started to sing the songs from the DVDs all. the. time. I have heard her singing/humming "Oh, oh, look at my hands, they're dirty" at least 572 times in the past few days. As much as I'm sure she would really like to learn the rest of the words so that she doesn't have to hum parts of it, I'd really like her to try doing a little coloring, playing in the yard, building with Lego's, setting dogs on fire, whatever. Anything that does not involve a TV.

Despite these little disagreements, I know that we are going to be able to make this situation work. I started to think that a little bit after she stole my Kit Kat and tried to give me back the empty package. I told her to go throw the paper in the trash because if you are going to steal my food, then you should at least get rid of the evidence. Guess what--she did! Well, OK, so she put it in the recyclables bin, but that was probably because the trash bin was, as always, full. After that, I started cleaning the living room and sent her to the trash with all sorts of items. She may have a future as a waste engineer, because she did a fabulous job.

After the living room, we moved to the kitchen where she was quite literally helpful by handing me clean things out of the dishwasher so that I could put them away. Then I put her in charge of putting the dirty, disgusting silverware in the dishwasher (mostly because I CAN'T STAND THAT CRAP). And would you know, she actually did a better job than Daddy. She put all the sharp parts of the forks and knives downward, and I do believe I have nagged Daddy about that at least 1,056,982 times (to no avail). Why anyone would prefer to get stabbed every time they reach into the dishwasher, I don't know.

What I do know is that I officially believe that having a kid is WAY more fun than a having a helper monkey, even if the kid does have a habit of rolling her eyes at me for no apparent reason.