Will I ever sleep again? Or swim fast?

As anyone with young children knows, nighttime sleep is a precious commodity. Well, my 1-year old son has taken us to new lows in sleep deprivation. He has rarely slept through the night, and even at age one, struggles to make it through without one or two wee-hour wake-ups. Since our first child who never gave us much trouble with sleeping through the night, this has been quite a challenge.

Last night was especially nice, the second night in a row in which he screams and fusses from 4-5 a.m. This might be bearable if I were not getting up at 5 a.m. for a swim workout. Being awakened within an hour of your scheduled alarm pretty much negates that last hour of sleep. The result? A screaming headache, which for me is the usual result of getting less than 6 hours of sleep. At least the headache didn't start until after my workout was over. Goggles and chlorine do not usually help budding headaches.

And in case you're wondering, no, we're not putting him down too early. He didn't even get in bed until at least 8:30 and was fed shortly before then. And, under the same rearing that I provide my son, my 3 year old never had sleep problems and slept through the night by 2 months. (Ahem...I provide this information for the Babywise fanatics or other baby-advice givers who are just chomping at the bit to dispense some cry-it-out theories. As a nursing mother who actually nurses beyond the fashionable-in-Atlanta 3-6 month mark, and having two children with two markedly different temperaments, I often find sleep-schedule advice to be simplistic and annoying. Especially since I've really tried every approach and have finally concluded that (shock!) my child is not a cookie-cutter textbook example from Babywise or Baby Whisperer or whatever. Now to step down off my soapbox...)

I would also like to say that I dearly love my children, including my sleep-challenged boy, and I'm so thankful to have the opportunity to be experience the fatigue that is common for this phase of life. I do wish my swim workouts would improve, though. I know they will, if only when my children are out of college.

Starting From Scratch

When people start web logs, what do they normally intend to accomplish? Fame? Notoriety? In this exercise, I hope to accomplish neither. That is to say, I do not want the burdens of excessive publicity (could someone recognize me at Kroger??) or the grief of notoriety (could my Kroger card be rejected?). I just hope to provide a little glimpse of the creative juices that pump inside my head despite the limited cerebral function that motherhood often produces.

After a normal day of child care and several bouts of multi-tasking, I thought I'd tune in to "Oprah" to see what drivel I could immerse myself in for a few minutes while cutting out black paper circles for a classroom decoration (don't ask). Wow! What a fun experience. Watching Bill Clinton, wearing some sort of woven/beaded/tribal (please tell me it's not copper) bracelet, laugh with the girls and gush with pretended humility while he shared his played-out tale of adultery was....well, unbelievable, and perhaps even uncomfortably stupid. Yes, ladies, here is our 42nd president, casting squinty-eyed smiles left and right while he comically describes his harrowing nights spent on the couch following his disclosures to Hillary. Oh, the whole thing was really just so "absurd," he tells us, and Oprah, ever the investigator, thinks to ask if the couch was a fold-out. Somehow we all feel he is one of us when we realize it was not, that he just liked his little living room. Right. I could tell he was getting energy from his weird bracelet the whole time. After listening to him describe the whole thing as the result of a conspiracy by his opponents, as if he were a 13-year old trying to explain away his visit with the principal, Idecided to move on to something else, like housework.