vanity leads to sleeplessness

So this is my story from last night after I put Peter in the bjorn carrier -

I walk around a little bit and then start doing dishes (he wants me on my feet!). I sway back and forth, especially for the last few dishes and he falls asleep. I take him out of the carrier and place him in the bassinet so that I can get his diaper stuff ready for the final bedtime change, assuming that he will immediately wake up. As I do this I realize that he is totally passed out, dead to the world, not moving so I decide to get ready for bed. I brush my teeth, wash my face, take my vitamin, and then I do the unthinkable... I start to tweeze my eyebrows. I swear God is punishing me for being vain because the first errant hair I pluck I hear a noise. I'm hoping that I imagined it, after all he's not crying, but sure enough as I continue with the beauty ritual I start to hear more of the little noises. I finish up and walk out to the bassinet. Peter is wide-eyed, waving his arms as if to say, "Look mom! I fooled you, I was just kidding and I'm going to stay up for hours!"

Luckily for me he fell asleep moderately quickly after the diaper and another feeding, only to wake up half an hour later for the rest of his late night snack.

hotline for desperate mothers

The last couple of nights (and it's looking like tonight also) Peter has been staying up late, later than the usual 11 or midnight - until almost 1:30am. He then sleeps for 4-6 hours so it's not the end of the world, but at midnight I start feeling a little crazy. Last night I contemplated whether taking him outside would make him sleepy (don't worry, I didn't take him out into the tundra) and also wondered if there were any hotlines to keep mothers sane. It seemed like a good idea maybe I will have to google it.

Tonight I'm trying walking him around in the baby bjorn carrier. I swear he's been the most frenzied awake at this time of night. He always seems hungry but also spits up a lot so he could be over-eating a little.

I'm trying to switch him over to sleeping in his crib. It hasn't been an issue except that neither of our baby monitors are working and Dave needs a fan running for white noise at night (I can't hear as well with it on) so I dragged up a twin bed and have been sleeping in Peter's room. I need to figure out this monitor issue. I'm not sure if they are actually too close together (really my bedside and his bedside are only about 15 feet apart (if that) separated by a wall. We were using an old monitor (from the eighties) but the other night it started making really loud static sounds randomly so we bought a new monitor for $28 which looked to be on the cheap side even though I thought it should be cheaper. That monitor is constantly making a loud static sound and it's very difficult to hear Peter. I tried moving both sides of the monitor to the living room and it seemed to work so I will try to experiment more tomorrow.

dreary post

I thought I had a bunch of things to say but now that I sit down to write I can't really think of them. I have an idea, but it's mostly just a list. That may be because my days are generally centered around Peter, and then there's a list I look at every day to make sure I'm getting some of the major things done such as letting the ferret out, getting the mail, dishes, showering, etc.

I started charting when Peter eats and sleeps so that I can more easily recognize patterns. So far the patterns are only fairly consistent. Currently Peter is going on two hours of awake time (he almost never goes more than 3 in a row). I think he's over-tired because not much is making him happy.

I really wanted to at least finish carving the pumpkin. I never did it before Halloween but I figured it's still good so I might as well do it now. I think it's going on three days of being worked on and I haven't even made any design.

One of the last times my mom visited she commented on my "mommy look." I said that it was easy for me to get the mommy look because I didn't care enough about the way I looked before I had a baby so now I was really letting things go - mainly my hair not being "fixed." My bangs were getting too long so the other day I trimmed them myself. That was sort of a mistake since they turned out pretty crooked, but I adjusted them so it's not as noticeable and they're out of my eyes so I'm happy.

I was invited to my work holiday party and need to figure out soon if I am going to go or not. I wanted to go but it sounds like I shouldn't be bringing baby with so now I'm weighing what I care about more, plus now it sounds like I have a friend coming to visit that weekend, so I guess I would have to find a babysitter and move the friend's visit. It's looking like I might not go.

There's snow on the ground here and it's been pretty cloudy and dreary, I wouldn't mind some sun tomorrow, or maybe just some continuous naps from Peter so I can actually clean.

awake

I don't have much to say, I just realized that for all my complaining about Peter not sleeping all of the pics on here show him asleep. Here is awake Peter...
Last night he was up until about midnight, woke up at 2, 4, and 7:30. I'm starting to think he just has a hard time falling into a deep sleep.

time to get out the slingshot

My little angel :)
Peter is already one month old, he has his doctor's appointment tomorrow. On the 3rd he rolled from his tummy onto his back though after talking to some friends it sounds like it could be a fluke and it may still be a couple months before he can do it on a regular basis. I was so excited, I cheered him on and then when he actually rolled over I ended up crying about it because it makes me sad that he's growing up (and I'm a little sleep deprived, and I maybe have a touch of the baby blues). The day before he went to the polls with us (though he was passed out the whole time).

Overall I would say things are going well with moments of frustration and sleepiness. Last night Peter stayed up until midnight and still woke up at 1am and 4am. I took a late morning nap and was starting to drift off when I heard the evil woodpecker start knocking on the house. I think I noticed it on Monday or Tuesday... there's a small woodpecker that pecks on our house. We have this weird chip-board type siding, it looks like cardboard below the wood type exterior. There are two areas that the woodpecker likes to attack. It's frustrating because at first it seemed like I had a hard time scaring it off with noise, but every time I tried to get a photo of it the bird would fly far away. Here's the best I could do - the bird is just to the right of the center of the picture and I it might be visible if you click on the photo.