Aargh!

Wow- we have really been smacked with the "not sleeping" stick here. I can't even begin to describe our last couple of days- mainly because the sleep deprivation has blessedly caused me to forget them. Ol' Chuffy has been waking up multiple times and staying up, not napping, or napping only 45 minutes a day. He has been clingy, and wow, downright naughty at times. By naughty I guess I mean adventurous in a dangerous kind of way by trying to climb up the shelves on a desk, tipping over chairs on top of himself, climbing onto chairs and then standing up, climbing on the futon and then walking across it, trying to climb from the futon to the top of the filing cabinet with eyes on getting to the windowsill, and generally biting everything in his path when he is told no or redirected. Teething, you say? Probably but this has been an agonizingly slow, drawn out process if that is the case. My mistakes have been in trying to regroup after a long day by staying up to watch my shows like Top Chef, Work Out or the guilty pleasure of wasting time by watching The Hills. This puts we wake until 11pm and when the nighttime follies begin at 2 am and last until 4 am, I am wrecked the next day.

How many days until Andy is done for the summer? Too many. He says he is beginning to dread the double ring of his office phone, knowing that it will likely be me calling to say Bright hasn't taken his nap yet again and we really need to do something about this, blah blah blah. Not too much he can do about it though.

I went to a meeting last night- a volunteer thing for the United Way. People went around and introduced themselves and said where they worked. I felt totally lame when my turn came and I said "Rachael, Stay At Home Mom". Everyone just cooed about how noble that was and how unusual it is these days and how they wished that they could have done it. Of course my ever skeptical side was thinking "They think I have never done anything with myself". Although I may have had more education than most of them there. Really after yesterday and today I find myself thinking it would be really nice to have a job and get some space every now and then. Bright would probably love the kids at daycare. Now, I just need to find a place that will carry my 24 pound bundle of joy to sleep twice a day. Oh, and maybe a job too.

On a more positive note, Bright continues to work on saying things, although you really have to know the context because there are still lots of substitutions. He is crazy about trucks- and says "Uck, uck" at EVERY one that he sees or hears. Our previous sessions of labeling things have caused him to say "Dat!" and point to anything that he sees and wants to know the name of. He said "Pancake" with many substitutions two days ago. too. Bright has been giving nice kisses over the last couple of days and was quite pleased with himself when he figured out how to do them with a smooch sound afterwards. Obviously the lack of sleep isn't really bothering him too much.