As the title says, I had a morning from hell.
Sunday, I slept. And slept. Woke up very late (too embarrassed to say when), and just when I thought I was getting up to walk the dogs, etc., I slept some more. Alex had already gone to her parents’ place for a planned dinner that evening, so only the dogs were around to make sure I got out of bed at a reasonable hour. They failed in their duty.
It made for a good Sunday, but as you can imagine, I didn’t even bother trying to go to bed until the wee hours of the morning.
Ah, the morning.
So, after only a few hours’ sleep, Cole woke up and his mom did her usual morning “shift.” It looked like he was going to fall asleep again, allowing me to go back to bed after only being up for 10 short minutes to care for him while Alie showered. And in fact, he DID go back to sleep.
For 20 whole minutes.
Ugh.
That extra 20 minute nap made me even more tired than I would have been. I launched myself out of bed, yelling skyward at the gods (ok, I didn’t yell… but I MIMED yelling), took a deep breath, and picked up Cole for some hanging out.
Thing is, he wasn’t really awake. Oh sure, his eyes were open, but his brain wasn’t fully engaged. So I had to decide whether to wake him all the way up, or try to get him to sleep. Exhausted myself, I tried the latter. And boy did he fight it. I had to call Grammy to advise her that sleep schedule was broken and she should just wait for my phone call before coming over (early arrival would startle the dogs, who would bark, which would wake up Cole whom I knew would be sleeping on my chest again).
Too much fighting for sleep meant: unscheduled bottle of milk. unscheduled letting out of dogs (mainly Moby) many times. unscheduled diaper change.
Unscheduled diaper change happened while I was so zonked, I had become careless. The net result was that instead of having merely to change his diaper, I also had to change his whole outfit and take the cover off the change pad, for I had let him piss all over it. One saving grace is that he did not manage to urinate on ME.
Finally he went down at around 10:30… about an hour and three quarters past when his original naptime was due. I suppose this was really his 2nd nap of the day, but it just felt like the 1st had been delayed. And maybe that’s how he felt, too, because he mercifully slept until 12:40, missing a Gymboree date, but letting us both gain some valuable sleep.
Called Grammy to let her know it was safe, and before long she was at our house. She basically entertained him and cared for him in the afternoon while I did a bit of laundry and relaxing.
Speaking of my mother…
This woman is the Monkey-Whisperer. It’s not that every single nap has been absolutely painless for her, but she bats a pretty good average. When she was trying to put him down, I hid in the basement. After a while, I hadn’t heard her return to the main floor so I assumed she was still at it and went upstairs to offer help. But there she was in the living room. Monkey had been asleep for 5-10 minutes already.
It’s good to know people other than Alex and I can put him to sleep (well, we already knew that… his aunts and other grandparents have also had success), since this is my last week of daddy daycare. Tomorrow we drop him off for a “test run” at the new caregivers, where he will be for 3 days of the week as of right now. Hope it goes well. Hope he doesn’t scare her off because we don’t have much of a contingency plan.
