I'm in love with a clock. His name is MoMo.

I am in love with a monkey named MoMo. Yes, MoMo is a clock. But MoMo has rescued me from getting up for the day at 5:30 am, and for that I am forever indebted to his plastic monkey soul. 

As I’ve mentioned a bunch of times, Bee is not the best sleeper by any stretch of the imagination.  We’ve had every sleep issue you can imagine – not wanting to go to bed, frequent waking, getting up at the crack of dawn. All of this can wear a momma down, especially after almost two years of unpredictable nights.  A couple of months ago Bee starting waking up even earlier than usual. You know you’re a mom when you are begging to get to sleep until 7 am. After several weeks of getting up at 5:30 (aaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!)  I decided it was time to give the sleep trainer clock another try.

I cover up (while nursing)…but I wish I didn’t feel the need to

After yesterday’s Target nurse-ins across the U.S. and getting into some friendly but undoubtedly heated debate with some friends about the issue, thoughts about “covering up” are on my mind. 

I cover up when I nurse in public. Sometimes, I cover up when I nurse at home – like if we have guests besides my mother, my sister, or a friend I know won’t care. I am one of those people who likes to keep people happy and avoid tense situations, and I recognize that other people may be uncomfortable if I nurse uncovered and have an accidental nip-slip (which is very possible given that Bee likes to stop and take in the scenery mid-nursing). If others are uncomfortable, I feel uncomfortable. So I cover up. I’ve learned lots of tricks over the past few years. Those darn nursing covers are useless. Better to tuck a blanket under a bra strap to hold it in place. Or, my favorite trick last winter:  throw a cardigan over my shoulder and tuck in under my elbow – that’s a mom-trick for when you reach the point of being too lazy to carry an extra blanket around.

Coming off the Christmas high

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest there is no faster way off the high of Christmas than two days of incapacitating stomach bug. Uuuuuuugh!  It totally stinks being holed up in a dark bedroom, unable to move, while you can hear your family – visiting from afar – laughing and visiting down below. Although, depending on your family, I guess being confined to another room could be a good thing. And, on the upside, being unable to eat for two days is a great way to make up for a holiday weekend of excessive cookies, rum cake, and eggnog. Holiday weight gain = 0. Yippee! Now that is a Christmas miracle.
 

Three hypotheses about how I acquired the stomach-bug-from-hell:

Nurture thyself

Yesterday ended up being just one of those days. The fact it was a rough day was all the more frustrating given that I’d been looking forward to it. The boys and I were going to bake Christmas cookies, a long-standing tradition and something we’ve had a lot of fun with in the past.  But I woke up feeling grumpy and run down, and the morning went something like this:

“Zippy, stop swinging that toy at your brother’s head….We don’t stand on the furniture….We don’t jump on the furniture. Or off it. Or over it….Bee, stop eating the flour….Zippy, stop telling your brother to eat flour….ARRRRRRRRRRRGH!...Bee, I mean it, stop eating flour….Zippy, you’re 5 years old. Why are you laying on the table? And why is there cookie dough in your hair?”  A merry jingle-bell morning this was not.

To My Little Insomniac: Stop waking me up at 2 am!

I have to admit I was really happy when my friends told me that both of them were having problems with their toddlers waking up in the middle of the night.On the one hand, I know how much it sucks so of course I wish for their sakes their kids were sleeping through the night. But for my sake I was relieved to know I wasn’t the only one dealing with this problem and maybe Bee’s sleep issues were not all totally abnormal.

A few days earlier I had been searching on-line for ideas to handle toddler sleep issues. You know, hoping for that magic solution that would immediately get Bee to stop waking up at 2:00 in the morning. Apparently, toddler sleep issues fall into three categories:

1. Trouble going to bed
2. Waking up in the middle of the night
3. Rising before the sun comes up

Well, that does cover all of the possibilities, doesn't it?! And lucky us – in recent months we’ve had all three of these problems.

Elven Escapades

Last year, I heard from an acquaintance about the elf on the shelf. I mean, Elf on the Shelf - apparently, the elf is worthy of capitalization. What a fun idea! I thought, and I rushed to the nearest Hallmark store where I found our Elf waiting for us, for just $30. Huh, $30? For an 8-inch elf? What the fudge?! But of course I bought one immediately. I mean, God forbid my children be deprived the joy of an Elf. Our Elf was christened Snuggle, which is what happens when you put a 4-year-old in charge of naming, and he spent the next 3 weeks hiding all over our house, which Zippy enjoyed immensely.

Thank goodness for social media, otherwise I wouldn't have learned that an Elf is supposed to do much more than just hide. And there are all sorts of on-line resources for fun ideas - my faves being pinterest and this cheat-list at Blossom Bunkhouse. This news came to my attention right around Thanksgiving, just in time for Snuggle to get his act together. So, here is what Snug has been up to the last two weeks.

Is it time for an allowance?

These days, I got my mind on my money and my money on my mind. Yeah, I just quoted Snoop Dog circa 1995 – whatchya gonna do about it? Ahhh…but unlike Snoop I am not laid back, sipping my gin and juice. Nope, I’ve been guzzling my coffee and obsessing over the best way to handle an allowance with my 5-year-old.

A little history here...At some point in the past year, we started a reward jar for Zippy to motivate and reinforce good behavior. Whenever Zippy did something “good” we toss a few stones in his jar and, when it was full, he got to pick out a new toy. We ended up assigning a dollar value to the jar in order to keep the toy reasonable, but this soon morphed into Zippy asking to “cash out” his jar before it is full, so he can have the $2 or $3 he’s earned so far to buy some little trinket.  Money burns a hole in this kid’s pocket and, once he sees something he wants, he has to have it – NOW!!!

Things that don't belong in my house

There are certain things that just don’t belong in a home with small children, besides the obvious like antique vases on low shelves and permanent markers. 

Let’s take tile floors throughout the main living space of a home, for instance. Light colored tile floors. Now who, you may ask, would even put tile floors throughout an entire first floor? Well, apparently an American man who fancies himself European, where this is the norm in many countries. A man who did not anticipate that at some point a family with two small children and two big dogs might buy his house and be tormented by said floors, which are 100% impossible to keep clean. This same gentleman thought it would be great to install a few European electrical outlets. I actually thought this was kind of cool when we bought the house. There is even one in the garage, just in case we ever buy a power saw in Norway. But I haven’t purchased any European appliances in the four years we’ve owned this house, so now my reaction to these outlets is something like, “Huh?!” My reaction to the floor is along the lines of, “GRRR!”

Naughty or nice?

I’m not so sure I’m down with Santa’s whole “Naughty or Nice” thing. 

Like many families, ours now has an Elf on the Shelf. I had no idea what the heck an Elf on the Shelf was until last year and then, of course, I HAD to get one for the boys. Sure, the extra motivation for my kids to behave is great – your elf is watching you!  - but mostly I just love watching their joy when they get up each morning eager to discover what mischief Snuggle-The-Elf has been up to or read a note that Snuggle has delivered from Santa. A couple of days ago we discovered Snuggle had made himself an Incredibles superhero costume – Zippy was just beside himself all day, wondering if The Incredibles is Snuggle’s favorite movie, too! (In case this question is now weighing on your mind, too, Snuggle’s fave is actually Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, because it stars some of his best pals from the North Pole.)

So, back to Naughty-or-Nice…