The New Normal

*Very lengthy post for my own benefit. I want to remember where we are now.*

It has been 7 months since my (our) life was literally changed in a matter of a 6 minute phone call. While it might not seem like my job switch was that life altering because I am, in fact, still in education, the position and school change literally altered most aspects of our daily life.

 Then, less than a month into my new job, I found out I was pregnant.

Then, our house flooded and we were uprooted for about 6 weeks.

 I remember Emily telling me that I just had to figure out my "new normal". And now, I feel like we are there. Granted, in less than 3 months, we are going to have an even crazier "normal", but I want to remember what it was like when we were just 3.

5-6am: Anderson wakes up at some point during this hour. We just never know when it will be, but if one of us breathes too loudly or, God forbid, sneezes, he will be up even earlier. (No, he is not in our room and he does have a sound machine) It is fine that he wakes up early because we are up, too, getting ready for work, feeding the girls, letting the girls out, giving them even more water than they can possibly drink. (I am convinced that Chloe is diabetic) I usually try to fold a load of clothes, put up the dishes, finish making lunches, etc. in the morning, just depending on what time we get up. Our washing machine has a 9hour delay option, which is amazing. The clothes usually have to sit in there for a bit, bit they are washed when I get home, which makes drying and folding manageable in the evening.  Anderson is a GRUMPster most mornings. I foresee a really fun time awaiting us in his middle school years. He usually watches cartoons (Ninja Turtles, Team Umizoomi or dinosaurs on YouTube on the ipad)  and drinks milk/eats a pop tart/waffle/yogurt/something else.

6:45-7:10: We leave for school or Noni's. Ideally, we need to leave by 6:45, but as everyone who lives in the real world knows, ideally does not always happen. Getting Anderson in the car is a routine in itself. I have to open his car door and then he races the garage door. This is sort of like our own Groundhog experiment. If he wins, the next hour goes well. If the garage door gets up before he gets in, I am glad I am going to work. I drop Bug off at school (with  much clinging to me, fake tears, pleading, etc.) or at Noni's where he is pretty happy and playing when I leave. Even though he loves his Noni & Bop, there are some mornings where he is just in a foul mood and if they open the door before he knocks or look at him before he is ready...I am glad I get to go to work.

7:55:I get to work. Somehow, no matter what time we leave I cannot get to work prior to this time. It takes me about 40 minutes to get to work in the mornings.

8-?: I spend my day doing what seems very much like some form of running laps. I attend meetings, complete teacher observations, attempt to interpret various forms of data, deal with lots of parents, discipline/assist students, monitor many hallways and lunches, make phone calls, send emails...you know, work! My actual days look totally different than when I was teaching (I miss History), but the amount of energy required to spend a day as an educator in any aspect does not vary. It is CONSTANT when you are in charge of a high number of little (or big) people in any form. There are many days when I seriously have to remember if I made it to the restroom at all that day. This is maybe the one similarity between being my 2 positions. I do LOVE, LOVE some Education, though. I cannot imagine a job more perfectly made for me. I love how every day is different, how I get a front row seat to the future, how I get to realize that, despite society's view, teenagers are pretty awesome.

The time I leave varies every day. At least 2 times a week I have an athletic event, a parent meeting of some sort, a meeting, etc. and don't get home until sometime between 8pm-midnight. Some really rough weeks, we have as many as 4 things to attend in one week. But, every now and then, we only have one event per week and that is pretty nice. On a "good" day, I have picked Anderson up and we are home before 6pm. Some weeks those days seem rare, but other weeks, there are quite a few that I make it home "early".

Anderson's day is spent having all kinds of fun with Noni or GG or at school where he gets to play with other kids, go outside, do fun activities where they sneak in learning and, always, he wears an eyepatch. The best part of the days he goes to school is picking him up because he runs right to me and is SO excited to see me. I know this will stop one day, so I am loving it right now!

I am really lucky that my kid has such awesome ways to spend his days.

Speaking of lucky, some days my mom comes over and lets my dogs out or bring me food or run an errand for me...I know, I should embarrassed.

6-9: On the days that I work late, either Mom or Toni bring Anderson home (we only have one car). Brandon & Anderson have quite a few Daddy/Bug evenings where they play way more hard core and do more exciting things than when I am home.

Depending on how long he had it off that day/if he took a nap at school, Anderson gets to take his patch off sometime between 5-6pm. I will NEVER get tired of saying, "You can take it off now, Bug. Good job wearing it all day!"

Most days, we get home around 6pm and I start dinner or finish cooking it from the night before (one of my saving graces has been the fact that I am literally a FREAK of a planner and I try to make dinner the night before if it is something that will work with that), let the dogs out, feed the dogs, give Chloe gallons of water, unpack all of the lunch stuff from the day, play with Anderson, etc.

When we eat dinner, we always say our favorite part of the day. We started this awhile ago and it is precious to hear Anderson ask us our favorite parts. If we say something other than, "When I picked you up from school" or "When I got home and saw you", it does not go well. We are trying to work away from him only allowing us one answer, but it is a really fun way to have a conversation about the day.

Brandon usually gives Anderson a bath/shower while I clean up from dinner and make lunches for the next day. Brandon takes his lunch 4 days a week, Anderson takes his twice and I, of course, eat lots of food every day. Anderson's is usually some combination of cheese, grapes, watermelon, strawberries, applesauce, jello cups with fruit, peanut butter crackers, cheetos, peanut butter sandwich, goldfish, cereal bars, a cookie, etc. Pretty monotonous, actually.

We play dinosaurs/emergency/rescue/Ninja Turtles/trains/race cars/ etc. before bedtime. Then, we brush his teeth, read a few books, say our prayers, talk about the day, etc. and "go to bed".** Since I get home later, I am ok with him staying up late. I miss that little Bug.

Anderson's bed time varies depending on if he took a nap that day.** He DOES still need a nap in order to not be a total monster in the evening, but the price of a nap is a kid that is just not tired until some ungodly time of the evening. The no nap thing does not bother me as much now that he is 3 because I think it is more normal for a 3 year old to not nap than for one to nap, so I am in a much better place than I was when he was 20 months old and stopped napping.

We take turns laying on his floor at night until he falls asleep**. This can take anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour. You just never know, and this is a surprise that I do not enjoy. The only day that we are determined that he go to sleep by 9pm is Sunday because we enjoy a little Zombie craziness during The Walking Dead. On Sundays, we basically do not let him sit down and make up all kinds of crazy, energy consuming games in order to accomplish the 9pm bedtime feat.

Once he is in bed, I usually do some laundry, dishes, finish lunches, start dinner for next day, etc. Then, I read. I have to read at least a little bit to end the day. I don't care if it is midnight and I cannot see straight, I am going to read at least a few pages. I am basically no different than a crack addict when it comes to books.


11pm-5am: This part of the day is where the real fun usually begins!  I would say Anderson has not really slept all night since November 2011. I know, he has slept all night exactly 1 time in 2013. It was a Sat. in Feb. and it was beautiful. He wakes up anywhere from 1-5 times a night and either yells, "Bobble! Bobble!" from his room or just appears next to my bed. One of us gets him, walks him back to bed and proceeds to fall asleep on his floor until we wake up with every limb dead asleep and stumble back to bed to get ready to do it again.**

Gabbi always stalks me in the middle of the night, so she just appears wherever I go. I think she secretly loves the middle of the night wake up calls. She is my own personal guard dog from the monsters under the bed.

**SLEEPING: Go ahead, judge away. "I would NEVER sleep on my kid's floor!", etc.

I was there, too. Such a sweet world to be in, really.

I blame Anderson's non sleeping situation on 3 things: the toddler bed curse, the EYE and the fact that my kid does not seem to require sleep

We made Anderson cry it out the DAY he turned 12 weeks old and after the first few weeks, he was a rockstar at falling asleep on his own and sleeping through the night. He never slept much past 5:30, but he slept from the time he fell asleep until then, which was pretty great.

Enter....the EYE.  Because we did not find his cataract until he was almost 1, he was 13 months during his surgery. During those first post surgery weeks, we could not really let him cry, we had to do the hourly drops and we were traveling back and forth from Knoxville to Bham quite often. This is is when it began.

Then, we had to make up for lost time (the first 11 months of his life when we were not patching) by keeping a patch on ALL of his waking hours. Around this time he decided to start giving up naps. We were determined to make him keep napping and moved the pack & play to an upstairs closet, so we were not tempted to get him until after his nap. (sounds awful, but just more proof that we did not just give in!) We were blessed with a stubborn one, so he would cry for a good solid hour and never fall asleep. Ultimately, we did not have an hour to lose without a patch, so we had to rethink the plan. This is when naps started to phase out. Sadness. (If "this one" is still napping on his second birthday and does NOT need a patch when he wakes up, I will go ahead and pay the travel director who clearly booked me on a vacation!!)

Ok, flash forward to 20 months. He is off and on napping, but still goes to sleep on his own and sleeps through the night until 5:30 or so. Then, one night, he appears in the living room...after he is supposed to be asleep. I am not sure any parent ever forgets the shock/hilariousness of seeing their kid after they are supposed to be asleep and realizing their precious offspring figured out how to scale out of the crib. Like the amazing parents we are, we ignored this for as long as we could, until the possibility of broken bones became a little too real. Then we switched to a toddler bed.

It was too early; he was too young.

 He kept getting up, so we reversed the lock on his door. Did you hear me, anyone who was judging? WE REVERSED HIS LOCK! After a month of him screaming, banging on the door, calling, "Bobble, I scared, I need you! Bobble!" we were insane. This went on for hours. I am serious, I kept a calendar with times and I slept in my closet to try and ignore it.

We started going crazy, so we started sitting in his room until he fell asleep and walking him back to bed in the middle of the night.

And, the rest is history.

Our "bed" next to his. It really is ridiculous,but I am tired and this works better than crying it out at his age.  

We have tried everything: night lights, a sound machine, the door open, the door shut, walkie talkies so he can talk to us, bribing with a "sleeping" chart, etc. We are switching him to a full bed upstairs in a week or so when we get it, so we are going to try some new tactics then.

I am, sadly, pretty used to the non sleeping thing. It has been well over a year, so it is more routine than anything. I do worry a lot about what we are going to do with 2 kids waking up in the middle of the night because it does not seem like Anderson is going to outgrow this anytime soon. I love how people talk about "phases". The 2 hardest things we have had to deal with have been going on 2 years now (EYE and sleep issues) and I tend to think of a phase as something that lasts 6 months or so. I know he will outgrow the non sleeping thing and I will never regret if I did enough to show him how much I love him. Because, if sleeping on the floor next to his bed when I am gigantic pregnant is not enough, then I just don't know what is!

I love our perfect life and the routines that we have created. I know I am going to forget all of this once we become 4, so I am glad I am recording it in a very verbose manner:)