Countdown to the California Gift Show and I Need Sleep!



Origami pinwheels for booth design at the gift show.  Wanna try some?  Click here


There are exactly six more days until the California Gift Show, my very first tradeshow to showcase my pieces from Twig and Sparrow.  I have had an amazing amount of help from my husband and I have to pinch myself every now and then, due to the fact that he is behind me in this crazy venture 100%.  Sometimes I think that someone up there looked down on me ten years ago and said 'ok, this girl need someone amazing in her life'...and boom, there he was.

In the midst of all of this, my sleep issues have slowly crept back.  For a while there, I was very gung-ho about getting up before the kids (hence, waaaay before the sunrise), working out to some videos, getting a head-start on some work, then making breakfast to some happy, well-rested children that ate whatever tickled my fancy that morning.

Don't tell me you haven't thought of that, either.  We all have.  'Today is the day that everything will change!  We will start eating clean, eliminating sugar from our diets, going to the park more often, and darnnit, I will regain my muscle tone to pre-baby days!!!'.

It works.  For a little while.  And then, like a strong riptide on the shore, we get lured back into our old ways.  It happens so slowly, so gently at first.  You begin to sense a slight change in things and think, 'ok, I can bring it back to center.'  And you do.  But then, you become outnumbered. 

Kids start waking up in the middle of the night.  You 'accidentally' take a nap in the afternoon while the kids are at mom's.  You give in to the temptation of a nice frosty frappucino.  Everything starts to get, well...blurry.

This is what happened to me.  Everything just sort of gave way to the massive, relentless forces we all know as children.  Pretty soon I end up picking up pieces of responsibilities here and there, doing a crappy job all the while, trying to fit in getting my samples done for the show next week, answering phone calls, refereeing fights among siblings, and making sure that the little one doesn't fall on her head for the seventh time today again.  And then, it happens.  They take away your SLEEP.

Yesterday, in the frenzy of my sleep deprivation and aches and pains, I decided to buy a new pillow and mattress pad.  It seems in my advancing age (yes!), my body has become less accustomed to our bed.  Or something to that effect.  I brought them home, excited to use my new sleeping tools, looking forward to waking up to a sore-free neck and pain-free lower back.

Now because I have somehow thrown myself into a self-induced state of jet-lag in my own time zone, I could not get to sleep.  At all.  Funny, I was about to fall asleep on the 405 earlier that afternoon, and here I was, wide awake at 11:30pm.  Great.

Then this amazing phenomenon happens that I never believed could happen before having given birth to any children.  They start to SENSE their mommy's rhythms, her waxing and waning of hunger, consciousness, energy, and all that other hoopla.  I start to drift into the fantastic first stages of sleepiness.  And the middle child, Ariadne, starts to wail.

She needs to go to the bathroom.  So I take her.  End of that.
Then an hour later, as I am tossing and turning in my newly comfy bed, Conrad the Eldest comes in.

'Mommy, my jammies are wet'

Guess what?  We throw a towel over the wet spot and he goes back to sleep.

An hour later (I love how these are so perfectly timed in hour intervals, it sooo fits my OCD!), the baby starts wailing.  I go in and give her some water.  Done.  For now.

Half an hour later, she wails again.  Loud.  I pick her up a little, then put her back down quietly.  Done.  For now.

Half an hour later, she cries again.  Maybe it's her teeth.  Oh, F it, give her some ibuprofen.  Done.  For now.

Half an hour later, she wails again.  I need some sleep, it's 3 am!!!  So I put her in the guest bed with me and she falls asleep while I sleep with one eye open so she doesn't fall off the bed (again).

5am...Conrad walks in the room yelling 'where aaaaare youuuuuu?!?!?!?'...I put baby back in her crib and take Conrad back to my room so I can polish off some sleep. 

Nope.  He starts yelling 'Lilo doesn't really have sharp teeth mommy!'
So Ariadne hears this and wakes up...then baby wakes up.

I become 'mean mommy' and begin to say the following to my children: 
'Today is a special day!'
Children's faces light up.
'You are going to watch mommy take a nap for two hours today, doesn't that sound great?'
Faces fall down to the floor.
I think 'that's what I'm talkin about'.  Yeah, reasoning goes pretty much out the window from here on out.



Did I also mention that in the midst of all this, I space out in bed and the kids end up in my bathroom? 
Conrad is on the counter cleaning his ears with about 74 q-tips and the baby is eating Colgate straight from the tube.  Ariadne is flossing her teeth with about 23 floss sticks.  I go in to take my birth control pill that I left on the...

...counter?

Where is my pill?

Conrad informs me that baby has eaten my pill. 
So does this mean that if I just go ahead and take the next pill, I am in the clear?  Maybe not.

We're ok with three kids, but a fourth would mean we would have to get rid of this fridge magnet:

Magnet from amazing Berkely-based green gift boutique TreeHouse Green Gifts



And by the way, as I am writing this, Conrad has just informed me he has peed his pants yet again.

Thank God it's Friday people.  Thank God.