Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Three's a Crowd
Ah dear old Sleep, I knew thee well.
I haven't had a full eight hours of sleep in ages. Probably since I first started peeing all night when I was pregnant five years ago. Pregnancies is really just about getting you ready to accept life with kids. All the physical humiliations, being cut off from single friends, and learning how to get by with next to nothing in the sleep department.
For the past few days, the kids have been slipping into our bed at night. Jonah just creeps in undetected clutching a dirty Pooh bear and whimpering about bad dreams. Ian senses that big brother in a warm special place and cries until he's in, too. Our Queen size bed won't hold us all. Steve complains that his ass is sticking out over the edge. Jonah gets all thrashy and elbows me in the nose. Ian twists my hair to relax. We try to sneak them out after a while, but they grow cold and lonely and cry to return.
When my mother called this morning for her daily check in, I told her about our difficulties. She lectured me about our permissive sleeping rules. "Kids have to sleep in their bed. You kids never did that. Well you've created this monster and now you have to live with it."
Should you let your kids cry in bed or should you bring them into your bed is a major debate among the child development experts. Sears v. Ferber. Like everything else we do with the kids, our methods tend to be middle of the road, uninformed, and inconsistent. We've let the kids cry in their beds before, but often we're just too tired to follow through and bring them into bed with our eyes still closed. Sometimes we wake up in the morning and find an intruder in our midst. We can't remember who brought him in or when this all happened.
Someday the boys will be lazy teenagers, sleeping until noon. I poke my head in their room and shake the bunk bed. "Get up, guys! You're missing all the fun." Happy thoughts.
Anyway, five paragraphs later, I'm just too tired to think through an interesting post today. So I've got some linky-links for you instead.
I am very interested in how blogging and internet affect political discussion. Does it lead to small insular cliques or does the linking process broaden debate? Read Dan Drezner for more on that. My own impressions are half-baked, but I think that there are definitely internet cliques but they are organized more by interest and profession than by political affiliation. The books people don't play with the politics people who don't play with the teenagers who don't play with the professors.
Since I'm only one step from full blown germ neurotic, I found this article fascinating. Apparently our kitchens are cesspools of bacteria. Those sponges smear microbes all over the eating surfaces. People contaminate vegetables and even sippy cups with bacteria from raw meat. Food safety, people, listen up! And Steve, you just can't eat leftover Chinese food after three days. (No that wasn't in the article.)
And it looks like Dean canned Joe Trippi, his campaign manager and the father of Dean's Blog for America. Dumb move.
Ah dear old Sleep, I knew thee well.
I haven't had a full eight hours of sleep in ages. Probably since I first started peeing all night when I was pregnant five years ago. Pregnancies is really just about getting you ready to accept life with kids. All the physical humiliations, being cut off from single friends, and learning how to get by with next to nothing in the sleep department.
For the past few days, the kids have been slipping into our bed at night. Jonah just creeps in undetected clutching a dirty Pooh bear and whimpering about bad dreams. Ian senses that big brother in a warm special place and cries until he's in, too. Our Queen size bed won't hold us all. Steve complains that his ass is sticking out over the edge. Jonah gets all thrashy and elbows me in the nose. Ian twists my hair to relax. We try to sneak them out after a while, but they grow cold and lonely and cry to return.
When my mother called this morning for her daily check in, I told her about our difficulties. She lectured me about our permissive sleeping rules. "Kids have to sleep in their bed. You kids never did that. Well you've created this monster and now you have to live with it."
Should you let your kids cry in bed or should you bring them into your bed is a major debate among the child development experts. Sears v. Ferber. Like everything else we do with the kids, our methods tend to be middle of the road, uninformed, and inconsistent. We've let the kids cry in their beds before, but often we're just too tired to follow through and bring them into bed with our eyes still closed. Sometimes we wake up in the morning and find an intruder in our midst. We can't remember who brought him in or when this all happened.
Someday the boys will be lazy teenagers, sleeping until noon. I poke my head in their room and shake the bunk bed. "Get up, guys! You're missing all the fun." Happy thoughts.
Anyway, five paragraphs later, I'm just too tired to think through an interesting post today. So I've got some linky-links for you instead.
I am very interested in how blogging and internet affect political discussion. Does it lead to small insular cliques or does the linking process broaden debate? Read Dan Drezner for more on that. My own impressions are half-baked, but I think that there are definitely internet cliques but they are organized more by interest and profession than by political affiliation. The books people don't play with the politics people who don't play with the teenagers who don't play with the professors.
Since I'm only one step from full blown germ neurotic, I found this article fascinating. Apparently our kitchens are cesspools of bacteria. Those sponges smear microbes all over the eating surfaces. People contaminate vegetables and even sippy cups with bacteria from raw meat. Food safety, people, listen up! And Steve, you just can't eat leftover Chinese food after three days. (No that wasn't in the article.)
And it looks like Dean canned Joe Trippi, his campaign manager and the father of Dean's Blog for America. Dumb move.
