Sleepless in...our house.

Zoë is about at the end of a sleep strike (I think, I hope) which is good. The nice (I guess) thing about sleep strikes is that they can only last so long before they can't continue, at least from my experience. I recently (like two minutes ago) read a blog post by a friend who said that sleepless nights is a phase that simply doesn't last long, but I'd beg to differ with that because sometimes those sleepless nights last for years, not months.

That said, our older kids are pretty good sleepers. Our babies? Not so much. Zoë is no exception to the norm (Miriam, however, blessedly was).

I can't even remember when she slept and when she didn't.

Last night we went to bed around midnight, which was miraculous.

The night before we curled up together around 2 AM.

On Tuesday night we didn't sleep a wink until 6:45 AM. No matter what I did that baby would not settle down. I nursed her (several times), I rocked her, I lay down with her, I let her try to fall asleep on her own, I paced the halls. We watched a show. She pooped at some point and I changed her diaper. I took her for a walk at five o'clock in the dark, cold morning. Nothing would put this child to sleep.

So then you'd think she'd nap during the day, right? Wrong.

Snow Day #3

We went for a walk this afternoon in order to make a better prediction about whether we'd have school tomorrow. I'm guessing we'll be on a delayed schedule, which is funny because Wednesday was supposed to be an early out day (but they took that away from us for obvious reasons (or perhaps not so obvious reasons since going a full day on Wednesday doesn't make up for one of the three snow days we've taken (except that if it was another early-release day and they made us go into school late then going to school would be pointless)). Let's not even talk about how there's snow in the forecast for Thursday.

Anyway, Miriam promptly got the stroller "stuck" in the snow and had to do some maneuvering to get Zoë moving again. Because treacherous.

The things they say

I don't remember if I ever wrote this down, but one day Rachel was playing with Zoë when she noticed her soft spot pulsating. "Ew!" she said with disgust. "You can actually see her brain thinking!"

And also because it's cute (and I don't feel like I've been writing much (or well) lately—but with Andrew being sick and then Zoë, Benjamin, and I coming down with a cold, I seem to have run out of time for much of anything lately)...

Andrew was divvying up jobs the other day and he told Miriam to go and clean her room, which wasn't fair because she shares that room with Benjamin.

"Well, is Benjamin going to help me?" she wanted to know.

"No, that's your mess," Andrew explained. "He didn't play with the pet shops."

"Well he wanted to," Miriam sassed.

"Yes, but you wouldn't let him," Andrew pointed out.

Miriam threw her hands up in the air all dramatically and pouted, "So?!"

Why we even try to reason with these people some days is beyond me. She ended up grudgingly cleaning her room while Benjamin tidied the living room. All was equitable and no one was happy about it. That's parenting done right.

Snow Day #2

Technically we've only missed two days of school—Friday and today—but church was also cancelled, so we've basically been "snowed in" all winter and now they've gone and cancelled school tomorrow as well. I don't really mind snow days; I just don't want to have to make them up later.

We only had three inclement weather days written into our calendar this year, anyway, which means we've spent them all on this one storm. I want to know whose brilliant idea that was, considering last year they called nine snow days.

Also, considering tomorrow's high is forecast to be 56°F (14°C, so basically a Canadian summer (okay, maybe not summer but definitely spring)). Actually, I really don't mean to whine about the weather too much because over all it's quite lovely. After all, who can complain about an average low of 0°C in January when one grew up in a place where January saw an average high of -1°C?

I love winter in the south.

source

Benjamin Barber

I cut Benjamin's hair on Thursday, which made Andrew jealous, so on Saturday he let Benjamin play barber (and then had me even things out). Benjamin had a blast! With any luck we may have even cured his fear of the clippers. He started crying (wailing) while I was cutting his hair on Thursday so I told him that if he didn't stop he'd get in trouble. Instead he laughed the whole time I was cutting his hair, very over-the-top. It was a "Hahahahahaha! Aaahhh! Hahahaha!" but it was better than the screaming he was doing earlier.

Snow play

So, um, BINGO!

They've cancelled church tomorrow and that's the last one I needed to get a BINGO. That game was much shorter lived than I imagined it would be. We've been having a lot of fun in the snow and it chances are we'll be getting another storm or two (or more) so perhaps I'll go for a whiteout (I'd call it a blackout but it's winter...so...). I don't really want to use up all our snow days though.

The kids spent the entire day out in the snow today. They went out in the morning and came in for lunch around 1:00, informing us that they were just coming in to eat before heading back outside (which was fine with us). Rachel said the prayer for lunch and said, "and please help us remember to go back outside after lunch." As if they'd forget.

(What we forgot was the playdate at Sadie's house...oops).

We went for a walk to the park this afternoon. Andrew and Rachel rode their bikes. And I will not write very much more because I have a screaming baby on my lap...

Eye, yai, yai!

Rachel came inside crying because she had something stuck in her eye. I helped her strip out of her winter gear and then examined her eye.

"Look up, look down, look left, look right," I said, but I saw nothing.

Fortunately, thanks to a rather traumatic eye experience from my youth, I thought to look under her upper eyelid and there I found a lovely fleck of something. She'd already been crying, but the speck hadn't budged so I helped her flush her eyes out at the kitchen sink—literally running the water on her eye—but the fleck stood its ground. It was lodged in there pretty well.

So I prepared to repeat what the doctor had done to me (after reviewing how online since it's been nearly fifteen years since my incident).

I got a paint chip stuck in my eye at work while I was stacking chairs. Because I worked at a pool and was around dangerous chemicals, I had to do a chemical eye wash in addition to flushing my eyes with water before I went to the ER where the doctor flipped my eyelid over and fished it out with a Q-tip. It took like two seconds. And half a million dollars.*

My eye, he said, "look[ed] like an ice rink," with little lacerations all over it from the paint chip skating up and down my eyeball every time I blinked. It was super painful. I had an antibiotic to prevent infection and couldn't wear contacts for, like, a month (which really wouldn't be traumatic now because I haven't worn contacts in years but in high school it was kind of a bummer) and my eye was puffy for quite a while. It was not fun.

Rachel's speck was much smaller than my paint chip and, though I don't know how we didn't ever think to look under my eyelid (too bad YouTube wasn't a thing back then), I luckily knew to check under her eyelid early. We tried flushing it out with water again, now that we knew where it was, but to no avail, so our next course of action was the Q-tip method.

She's old enough now that she understands that staying still is important, but she had a hard time relaxing enough to let me flip her eyelid inside out. Once it was flipped over, though, I had Andrew stick wet Q-tip in there to pick up the speck. It took us like two seconds (once we figured out what we were doing). And now she's feeling much better.

It's amazing how much pain a tiny foreign object can cause!

Here's the method we used, in case you ever need to flip an eyelid inside out one day.

*A slight exaggeration. And work paid. But still.

Whoopsie

Zoë was a little too rough with the toy box. She was reaching for a toy (and holding onto the toy box, obviously) when she lost her balance (and didn't let go of the toy box) and pulled the whole box on top of herself. Poor thing!

Winter in the South—BINGO!

To keep from going insane this winter (nine snow days last year was a little bit much) I made up a "Winter in the South" bingo game. I think I'm going to print out one card for everyone in our family and we'll see who gets to bingo first. I don't know what the prize will be.

Something awesome like...sleeping in...or something.

That's all the kids could talk about before they went to bed last night, "Yay! It's a snow day! I can turn off my alarm and sleep as long as I want to!" But then they—all three of them—were up before their alarms even usually go off, probably woken up by the tinkle, tinkle of snow pellets dancing on the roof.

So much for sleeping in!

Zoë went to book club with me last night so, thankfully, slept through her siblings' early morning jubilee.

Anyway, here's a link to the cards so you can print out one for yourself!

Sunday best(-ish)

Not last Sunday but the Sunday before I broke out the hair gel (that hadn't been touched since the girls did their last ballet performance...in 2013) and helped Benjamin comb his hair. He's never had the kind of hair that lies flat naturally. It's bent on defying gravity.

I don't think we'll add doing Benjamin's hair to our regular morning routine, but doesn't he look handsome?

This past Sunday, Benjamin chose a shirt and a nice pair of corduroy pants to go with them, then Andrew told him to pick out a pair of socks, so he did. He found a lovely pair of bright orange halloween socks, with purple polka-dots and black jack-lantern faces, which was fine because he was wearing long pants and shoes, right?

Andrew finished tying up Benjamin's shoes and then Benjamin reached down and started tucking his pants into his socks.

"What are you doing?" we asked.

"I'm tucking my pants into my socks," he said.

"I can see that," I said. "Why?"

"Because if I don't then no one will see them!" he explained.

Full disclosure: Andrew wore the Star Wars socks he got for Christmas to church. And he only combs and parts his hair probably once every four years. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.