A Blog Post About Sleep....and toddlers, and sickness, and coughing.

I always used to roll my eyes when I would hear people tell a mom "you will sleep when you're dead" or "don't worry, you'll get some sleep when they're 18". In my pre-mom days I thought, pshh, LIKE it's hard to be a mom and stay home all day. ME on the other hand? I have to get up at like 7 am to get to work, then after work I HAVE to work out (I mean I weigh like 125 pounds), pick up sushi, and frantically call the hubby because I forgot to record Modern Family. Then shower, pick up the house, maybe hit a movie or frozen yogurt with the hubs, and retreat back to our humble apartment life and read in bed. Man, I was exhausted. EXHAUSTED.

Then I got pregnant after 18 long months of trying. I was SO ready to just chill for a while, even though I stopped working full time when I was about 4 months preggo. Now one baby is not that hard in retrospect, but at the time you feel like your life has been ripped away from you. Nothing is the same, life stops or something, and you lose touch with the outside world. You start watching full Netflix series, while a baby is asleep on your boob, and simultaneously realizing that you are now a "stay at home mom" so you had better get some dinner going right? Does sushi still count? Wait, i'm not driving to get sushi in my pajamas with this baby child attached to me, and trying to rip my shirt off.

(when there was just one little love bug)

Then you have another child. You never watched Netflix with this kid, and if they want the good milk, the liquid gold, they better slurp it down in about five minutes. This baby catches up with the older kid, and they becomes an indestructible toddler duo that needs more than liquid to survive. They also need to go to preschool, be stimulated socially, spiritually, educationally, and i'm sure there are other things. They have some serious demands like playing Angry Birds during rest time, and only want to eat processed cheese.

You are ON all day long, and loving most of it, but now you know exhausted. For real, exhausted. If you're me you have a child with the lovely condition called "viral induced asthma". What is this you ask? This means that any time your child has the slightest cold, or trickle of snot, they start coughing almost uncontrollably until they are blue in the face. You have to wake them up every 4 hours during the night to do a breathing treatment, which is a steroid that will end up keeping them up all night anyway. This little child is also in a big boy bed now, so it's no effort at all to scamper down the hall if they need you, or wanted to just tell you they have a cough.

The other night for example I was researching the 18 month sleep regression. Apparently this is a thing. Praise the Lord there is hope. It had me enthralled until about 1:30 in the morning, and I finally closed my eyes. Just as I could feel myself drifting off to sleep I hear a little voice say "mommy I have a cough". Here we go. He did in fact have a cough, the bad asthma kind. I knew it was coming. So I busted out the nebulizer, and after about 45 minutes of Monsters University he was back asleep. After sneaking out of his room I hear someone crying for "mamamamama" and also hacking up a lung from a snotty nose. My first experience with the double cough. So I woke up Cody and told him Max would probably be back in about 4 hours when his meds wore off, but I needed to hold Levi upright so he could sleep. By now it's almost 4 am. I sat with Levi from 4-7, but put him down because I could heard a loud barking coming from the room next door, and the shower running meant Cody was about to leave for work. Lord give me strength!!

When I walked out Max was already in the hall and said "mommy I have a cough and need a monster mask". The day started, and every night for the next three nights has looked pretty much the same. Surprisingly, I am okay. I am realizing that you really can choose joy! Praying for some sleep tonight, and I will NEVER complain about a night full of sushi, modern family, and yoga again! Oh yeah, and a full nights sleep. I will also never understand why I thought weighing 125 pounds was on the hefty side! Someone should have slapped me, but please don't do it now or something might jiggle! For real.

Happy mothering to all my tired, maybe a little jiggly momma friends! So glad to do my life with all of you!!