The Family Bed

For some, this phrase conjures up images of soothing sleep, deep, connected breathing between children and parents, snuggles warm and cozy in the king size bed. Not in this house. It's more like torture. Dan actually has a bad neck, for the second day in the row.
It starts innocently enough. Someone is up crying. I go to get Reese, bring her to bed for a snuggle. I may or may not be on Tylenol PM. I warn Dan of this fact. He replies with a mumble about a foyer's plaster. Then, a heavy breathing baby falls asleep on my neck. I lay there motionless. I finally heave my body off of the bed and return the babe to her crib. No lie, I return to the bed and not ten minutes later, Riley comes in telling me about a bad dream. These dreams usually revolve around bad horses. We are investigating. She insists on sleeping only on my side, stabbing her foot into my lady town and her elbow into my ribs. She may or may not sleep there all night, it depends on how tired or bruised I am. Inevitably, she ends up laying sideways in the king-sized bed and Dan and I are both left clinging onto the edges of the bed for dear life. What a good nights sleep.

What not to do.

I once read a list of parent mistakes that we should never make with our children. Out of the usual suspects, I read one that said you should never tell your child to "hurry up." Evidently, this conveys to the child that their time is not valuable and that rushing our children makes them feel like a failure...or some crap like that. If I never told Riley to hurry up, we honestly would never leave the house. We would be stuck in limbo - in that dangerous place where the garage seems really exciting and the car seat takes 57 minutes to maneuver any possible entrance.

On the list, I didn't see anything about vacuuming your children. I am almost sure they will have suction or cleanliness obsessions as adults, but, hey, you gotta do what you gotta do. This is especially true after an almost 15 month old enjoys a messy cupcake. Little did I know she would like it so much....and so did big sister.

Where is my family?

Riley loves to make up songs and then subsequently sing them in this deep, man-voice around the house. One of her favorites is to sing, "Where is my family?" song. A joy to a mother's ears. After grilling her during our pony-unicorn play therapy session, (Me, as the cheetah: I get grumpy when I don't get enough sleep. Riley, playing the Mommy Unicorn: Where is my baby?) we figured out that her "bird" is looking for his Mommy and Daddy. In her world, everyone of her animals is looking for their Mommy or Daddy. This excuse also comes in handy when she wants to pick up a baby lizard or stray cat. I say to her, "Now, we don't want to take them home, they might miss their Mommy and Daddy," of course I follow this up with, "Sometimes people have two Mommies or two Daddies or..." Dan then reminds me that after all, she is only three. Don't even get me started on the stranger danger talk.

While this video is long, it just makes me laugh. So enjoy, Mom.

Thursday night funny

Feel better Mimi!