Dear One Year Old,

Please go to sleep. I know, I know. You take a great nap everyday and are consistently in bed every night by 8:30. It’s the whole “though the night” part of this request that I’m asking for some help with.

Your mom and dad love snuggling with you between them but we’re of the mindset that this event should occur somewhere around 5:30AM rather than the midnight appointment that you are so vigilant in keeping with us. We’ve never believed in the “cry it out method”…not that we think it’s cruel or life traumatizing. We’ve just always thought…”if we just need to rock her or feed her or hold her, why wouldn’t we?” I understand now though, that this pious, righteous thinking is easy peasy when a person gets at least 5 consecutive hours of sleep a night.

Here’s the thing…when you end up in our bed at midnight, we’ve been asleep for about an hour. If you just cuddled your sweet self between us and zonked out til morning I don’t think I’d be entering this request…but you don’t. You twist and turn and fling your limbs and deliberately accidentally slap us and even head butt us from time to time. It’s like a WWF match and you get to be Stone Cold Steve Austin in baby form. This usually persists until you father screams out in pain something along the lines of…

“DEAR GOD WHAT DOES SHE HAVE ON THE END OF HER FINGERS?! TALONS?!”

At this point I usually roll you to my other side so I am now in the middle, keeping your father from further abuse. The only problem with this is that even with the barricade of pillows I have built on the other side of you my subconscious will not let me rest without numerous and unrelenting dreams that you are rolling off the side of the bed. This causes nightmare after nightmare in which I wake up grasping in the air to “catch” you as you lay slumbering safely beside me.

Do you see why I look a bit tired? Do you know that with this fatigue I will not do health sustaining activities like working out? Your oldest sister watched me wrestling buttoning my pants the other morning and said matter of factly Dr. Phil style…”that’s not working for you.” Are you prepared to forfeit your college savings to buy my new wardrobe? Do you understand that if I don’t muster the energy to wax my eyebrows soon you’re going to be calling Bert from Sesame Street “mama?” Let’s not even get into the fact that the other day at Bed, Bath and Beyond I caught myself staring dreamily at those little fake beds that are used to display bedding. I was wondering what a nap would feel like on them. Little girl, those beds are like 3 FEET LONG and I’m over 6 FEET LONG! Do you know how tired someone has to be to consider folding their body accordion style to take a nap?!

So please baby, please…sleep.

Love,

Your bruised, battered, tired and aging by the day (and night) parents.

P.S. We love you. 🙂

My daughters recently started a new school.  It’s a Christian school.  This brings some amazing new discoveries for them as little people and definitely jump starts more conversations at home regarding totally new subjects they are encountering in their school days.  Recently, I’ve been confronted with the fact that Laney, my middle child and resident comedian is even picking up some new material for her act.  Here’s a few examples:

The presidential election was within the week and their school decided to do an internal poll to see who would win the upcoming election if the children were in charge.  One caveat…they added a third name to the ballot.  That of Jesus Christ himself.  A shoe in, you might think and rightfully so as he did win the election.  The conversation following went something like this:

Avery: “We had an election today and between Jesus Christ, Romney and Obama, Jesus Christ won.  Of course I voted for him.”

Laney, head down looking sheepish… “yeah, me too.”

Me: “Kinda figured that would be the outcome, didn’t you?”

Avery: “Yep, he got 58% of the vote.”

Me:  “hmm…really?  I guess I would have guessed it to be higher.”

Avery as she’s walking out of the room…  “I know!  I mean, who WOULDN’T vote for   Jesus if you had the choice?”

Laney comes flying over to me when she sees that her sister has left the room…

“Ok mom…do NOT tell Avery but I voted for Romney.”

Me: “Really, why?”

Laney: “Well, I thought it was a trick question, I mean, let’s be realistic.  Jesus can’t REALLY be president so I didn’t want to waste my vote!”

I let her know that she might not want to share her “wasted vote on Jesus” theory at school.

A few days later I noticed that a box of crackers had disappeared from the counter where I had left it.  After a search, Laney finally revealed that she had taken it to have a snack.  I immediately went in to Mom-speech as I explained that you can’t just take something because you want it, you need to ask.  I was given this explanation:

Laney: “Mom, you don’t understand.  I didn’t take it just because I wanted it.”

Me: “Then why did you take it?”

Laney: “It was bigger than a want Mom.  It was a nudge from the Holy Spirit.”

Thank you, school, for giving my daughter a new language to use against me in disagreements.

Finally, the subject of someone’s death came up and they girls were discussing how young this person had been.  Which then led to the discussion about Abraham living to be hundreds of years old which THEN led to the discussion about Jesus only being 33 years old when he died which THEN led to the discussion of his burial and resurrection.  Avery was going through the entire sequence of events point by point until she got to the spot where they laid Jesus to rest in the tomb.  At this point, Laney saw an opportunity to jump in and she said…

“And then, they covered Jesus’s body with Salsa!”

Quiet overtook the car.

Me: “Salsa?”

Avery: “Salsa?”

Laney: “Yep, salsa.”

Conversation ended.  At that point the girls got out of the car to go into school.  I was laughing so hard that I had to pull into a spot in the parking lot.  I thought I knew what she was talking about but I wanted to google it to make sure since my Bible knowledge is by far the least extensive in our family.  There it was…the verse she was referencing….

John 19:40   Taking Jesus’s body, the two of them wrapped it, with SPICES, in strips of linen.

There you have it folks…she’s here all week, shows at 10 and 2.