Let’s not even pretend that I tried to stick to my workout routine or my eating healthier goals this week. Go ahead and throw all that out the freaking window for this week! The husband had to travel for work. He hates work travel. I hate when he’s gone. The toddler hates when he’s gone. The baby hates when he’s gone. It’s stressful for all of us.
On top of work travel stress the baby is still teething. I do believe we have reached the 4 month sleep regression and this old mama is struggling. I mean SERIOUSLY struggling. Sleep. I need some flipping sleep! I don’t mean an hour here and a cat nap there. I mean put me in a cabana on a private island and let me pass out to the sounds of the waves lapping up onto the sandy beach with an almost empty giant adult beverage in one hand and a book of fiction in the other. I mean curling up on the couch next to my husband in front of a raging fire in a cabin in the mountains on a cold winter’s night. I mean waking up after 9 plus hours of shut eye and snuggling back into my husband’s chest and snoozing for another couple of hours before getting up and stumbling to the couch with a warm cup of coffee and doing nothing but napping for the rest of the day. SERIOUS SLEEP!
This sleep deprivation is really messing with me in so many ways. I am much more forgetful these days than I like to admit. After serving milk to the toddler I left the milk carton on the counter….for 15 minutes. I happened to go back to the kitchen for something else and there it sat. My first thought was “Is that empty? Why didn’t I throw it away?” Followed by “Oh, crap! Definitely NOT empty!” Thank goodness I went back in when I did. It was a brand new gallon of organic milk. Those aren’t cheap these days. I never know what day it is. If my phone didn’t have a calendar app I’d still think it’s February. I was making cinnamon toast and I put the sugar in the fridge and left the butter on the counter. I noticed my mistake when I went to get a plate for the toast and the toddler had gotten the butter off the counter and was eating it. She loves it. I walked into the bathroom the other day with the baby on my hip and the toddler yanking on the hem of my shorts. Next thing I know I’m brushing the toddler’s hair and putting a bow on her ponytail. That’s not why I went in there. I needed to pee! I had needed to pee for 45 minutes. Since when did I get a giant bladder? Who forgets that they need to pee?
I like to think that even though these things have happened I still kinda have it together. I haven’t done anything to endanger a life or cause any serious harm to a building or a car or anything of significant value. It’s just a bunch of little things that remind me that I’m sleep deprived and that the honeymoon we never got would be a dream come true right now.
There is one thing that has come from my lack of sleep. I have answered the age old question - does size matter? Here’s how I did it. I enjoyed half a cup of coffee. I ate breakfast. We went to the park as a family. We had lunch. I’m showing no signs of sleep deprived mom brain activity. I changed the girls’ diapers and everyone took a nap, except for me, because the girls refuse to sleep at the same time so while one is asleep I’m working to get the other one down and once that one is down the first one is waking up. Then I get that one back down and the second one wakes up. It’s an endless cycle. Anyway, the baby wakes up and is super fussy! I mean off the charts screaming mad! What the….? It’s not time for her nap to be over. She has a full belly. No gas or reflux that I can tell. She’s not showing her typical signs of teething pain. I don’t smell any poopy diaper smell. What is going on? I’m starting to panic. I take her to the changing table, thinking maybe she’s really wet and suddenly that’s the worst thing ever in her little world. She didn’t have diaper rash but maybe she does now. As I undo her onesie I see Mickey Mouse. Hmm….Pampers have Elmo. Huggies have Mickey Mouse. The baby wears Pampers. The toddler wears Huggies. What the heck is going on here? I take the Mickey Mouse diaper off the poor little thing and give it further inspection. Yep, It says right on the back - 6. How the heck did I do that? How did I put that huge size 6 Huggies diaper on my infant? I can’t comprehend. My mind can not compute how I did this. As soon as I get it off of her she stops crying. I double check for Elmo’s face on the front of the new diaper. Yes. This is definitely a size 2 diaper. It’s a Pampers diaper. It’s a size 2 diaper. It’s the right diaper. I get the baby buttoned back up in her onesie and we head out to the couch. She’s as happy as can be, all smiles and giggles. So, there you have it. Size does matter.