Taking the Bad With the Good

If you haven't had small children or don't understand the glory of achieving a full night of sleep after weeks on end of miserable nights, then please stop reading. I promise, this will be the most boring thing ever, and you should go back to your Facebook feed immediately. Otherwise, I know you feel me, so read on.

The bad news? (And it's not that bad in the grand scheme of things...but certainly not pleasant.) A stomach virus took hold of me and left me feeling like I was hit by a freight train. Again. It was an UGLY one. I'm still getting aftershocks, but overall, it was pretty short-lived. If anybody's had the absolute displeasure of caring for your kids when you are, or should be, bed-ridden (and I know many of you have), then you feel my pain. When Dylan had to leave last minute for an important meeting, I put both boys in bed with me and set Gavin up with YouTube on the iPad. We all stayed in the dark bedroom for a couple of hours. Not the most enriching morning for the boys, but we survived it, and luckily it was only for three hours. By the late afternoon I was feeling a little better, and we decided to head into town for ice cream. On the way home, with both boys screaming like hyenas in the backseat and the setting sun in my eyes, I developed the worst headache I've ever had. My self-diagnosis was meningitis. But obviously I'm a drama queen, and I was able to restore my fluid status and get some sleep. I came out on the other end a fully functional human.

A horse is a horse, of course of course

Helping me clean the car

Why does anyone buy their kids nice toys? This box has provided endless entertainment.

My sweet guy.

Drinking on the job. It doesn't happen often, but when it does it's very necessary.

But why don't we get on to the good news? Graham decided to SLEEP at night. I'm sure I'll jinx it by writing about it, but for three nights in a row I've gotten more than a few hours of rest at a time. The difference was incorporating Dylan into the nighttime routine. As Dylan put it, he really "prefers the backseat position" that he has taken when it comes to nighttime with the baby. However, we decided as a family to move him up to the passenger seat because something had to give. It was either that or hire a professional sleep coach (Dylan's idea...I wasn't having it). It was really so simple. After I nursed Graham at bedtime, I then passed him off to Dylan who topped off his tank with another 3-4 oz in a bottle. And when he woke up at night I fed him, and then when he kept crying I bailed to the guest room. He was in Dylan's comforting arms but cried for 45 minutes before falling back to sleep. And just like that, we've only dealt with a couple night wakings ever since, just as long as we do the additional nighttime bottle. An unfortunate situation for Dylan, but since he's only dealt with 2 of the last 450-500 (quite literally) night wakings, he is handling it okay. And really, it's not so bad. This means I'll have to become better acquainted with my non-friend, the breast pump, but it's completely worth it to make the 9:30, 10:45, midnight, 1:30, etc, etc, schedule a thing of our past. After 5 weeks of this sleep regression, I was fairly convinced my body was about to shut-down, die and crumble apart at any moment if I couldn't get some sleep soon. (Drama queen. Again. But good grief, I don't think I could ever endure that again.)

Graham's a good sport

Everyone gets a turn trying on his shades

Life of the party at mom's group

A little bit of everything

Family outing for ice cream!

He got out of his chair and said "Sit here, Graham, and watch Blaze with me."

Mother's Day flowers came a couple days early

Prettiest flowers I've ever gotten! Thanks D and the Gs!

In news unrelated to me and my health, Gavin's making great strides with potty training. He's been an absolute champ at Dawn's, but we still have to be super diligent at home when we see him squatting in his sandbox. The whole #2 situation still needs some tweaking, to say the least. Also, my mom, Kristin and me got out for a night to see the movie Mother's Day and have dinner at White Chocolate Grill. It was such a treat...thanks Mom! Also, the guys finally collected on their Father's Day gift from 11 months ago and went to Octane Racing, which we followed with dinner at 5 and Diner. With five boys aged 6 and under, it was the most chaos that has ever happened at a restaurant. And golly, I can't think of anything else. Like I always say, I need to get out more, but until I do I'll continue to report back on all things related to my family. Thanks for sticking with me, and if I've lost you by now, I definitely don't blame you.