Adventures in parenting

Last week was a challenging week in the realm of parenthood. For whatever reason, Elise could not sleep. She did not take an afternoon nap for three days in a row - in a row! - and only slept for 30 minutes or so on the other days, and she slept fitfully at night, taking hours to fall asleep, waking up during the night, and getting up early in the morning. This meant that I got very little done last week and that Andy and I got less sleep than usual as well. And let me tell you, a sleep-deprived toddler is not a happy toddler. She also wasn't eating much last week, which had us concerned. It was a trying week.

This week has been like butter. "Smooth...like buttah". Yeah. She sleeps eleven or twelve hours at night. She's taking three hour naps in the afternoon (unusual for her). She's cleaning her plate at mealtime. She happy and energetic and engaging. We ran errands yesterday and she was a little saint. It is wonderful. And a good thing, too - last week I did not know how I was going to make it through the year.

Yesterday in particular was a good day. Elise topped it off with two adorable antics at bedtime. We were saying bedtime prayers. Usually we just let Elise pray with whatever words she chooses, and right now her prayers consist mostly of "thank you". Last night she had her eyes tightly shut and prayed, "Thank you [for] Daddy's truck. Thank you car. Thank you...church. Thank you...umm...my binkies. Thank you...umm...thank you..." At this point she peeked around her room, apparently trying to find something else to thank Jesus for. I guess she didn't find anything that particularly inspired her. She closed her eyes again and said, "The End!"

A moment later, as I was tucking her in, we found that Lambie was not in the crib. Lambie goes pretty much everywhere with Elise. She's not completely addicted to him - she can go to sleep without him - but she definitely prefers to have him there. So Andy and I did a quick house search for him. He was not there. We checked the car. Nope. We checked the obscure places where Lambie has been found in the past - hidden corners, the bathtub, that sort of thing. We could not find him. Then we remembered that Elise had taken Lambie outside with her earlier in the day. At that point we had to find him because we didn't want him to get all wet and dirty and potentially mildewed overnight. So off I went to search our backyard. I don't think I had ever before been in our backyard after dark. It was really, really dark. We have a motion-censored light, but for whatever reason it decided to stay on for all of three seconds at a time. I went into the darkness and Andy stayed next to the light, jumping around to get it to turn on. Then we came to our senses and got a flashlight. I wandered around the yard for a minute or two, looking around the toys, the shed, all of the places that I remembered Elise playing. Then I found him. On the patio, lounging in a lawn chair, looking as though he had been waiting for his umbrella drink for hours. Even in her excitement over playing outside (Elise loves to play outside), she had thoughtfully made sure that Lambie was comfortable in his own chair before she ran off to play.

Those two things made my night. Right now Elise is "reading" a grocery store ad, and she just told me that it was a great story. "Really?", I said. "Yes. It's really, really fun!" was her response. Gotta love those great, fun artichoke ads.