Lemolade

The joys of life with a baby in the house: daily sleep deprivation. (He totally makes up for it when he smiles that huge grin at you, first thing in the morning, having not the slightest idea that he's bugged you all night long.) Mr. Maxwell has been waking up at night a lot more lately. Apparently a lot of kids do this at 9 months. Teething. New skills like crawling and cruising. Not that he has ever been a sleep-all-through-the-night kind of kid; lately, it's just been much worse.

Last night, he fell asleep around 8:30. He slept soundly in his crib until 11 o'clock. I held him against my chest, with his head laying on my shoulder, and then he was back to sleep and so I laid him down. He slept for awhile and woke up again at 1 AM. He's sitting in his crib, banging his fists against the mattress. It feels like every time I put my head down on the pillow, two seconds go by and again there is crying. I get up and try to console him. At 3:45, he stands up and holds on to the bars of the crib and starts saying "mamamama" and crying half-heartedly. He briefly falls asleep in the big bed and then I lay him back down in his crib. Just 30 minutes later, at 4:15, he's up again. By 5 o'clock, he's awake again. He wakes and sleeps intermittently for an hour and a half (meaning I am not sleeping during this period either). Then around 6:30, he's up and happy in the big bed again. Can't get him to go to sleep. Starts crawling with a big smile on his face toward his dad when he walks in from the bathroom. Willie picks him up and rocks him a little, but Max is definitely not going back to sleep then. And Willie has to finish getting ready for work. Since the rest of us usually wake up around 6:45 or 7 o'clock to get Zahra ready for school, I figured I'd just be up with him. Instead, somehow he manages to fall sound asleep, just as we are waking up. This turn of events frustrates me and I'm very tired at this point. He stays asleep until I put him in the stroller to walk Zahra to school (we leave the house at 7:40). He stays awake for awhile until we are back from walking Zahra. I try to get a nap in and lay down with him at a quarter to 9. We nap until 10 and this rest makes me functional for the rest of the day. Tired, but functional. Here's the cute little guy you see smiling and you just can't be mad at. We were at Disneyland, eating at Cafe Orleans, on Friday night (the first night of Halloween Time). I think he was chewing on a french fry when I took this picture.

And, on another note, no, the title isn't a spelling error. Just the way Zahra is currently pronouncing the word "lemonade." I thought I'd do a random post and didn't know what to call it. Every time she says, "Mom, can I have some more lemolade?" it cracks me up. Maybe you have to be there in person, but it's funny.

Big foot. Here we have Zahra wearing her dad's shoes around the house. She was clomping all over the place last night and it was really funny. I couldn't quite capture how funny it was, but she and I kept cracking up. It was bedtime but I couldn't resist a few pictures. (At the point the picture was taken, maybe around 8:50, Max was sound asleep upstairs.) The pictures of Big Foot didn't come out very good but the one above was decent.

And Zahra's afro. I was washing her hair on school picture day last week and her hair made these beautiful halos in the water. They were pretty neat looking, so I decided to capture it. She loves taking baths and frequently pretends she's a mermaid.

That's all for now. With any luck, tonight will be a good night and we'll get some decent sleep in the house. Fingers crossed. Bye.