The Last Night I Have a 4 Year Old

Tonight is the last night I will have a 4 year old in the house with me. This makes me sad even though I know there will be great things about having I., the 5 year old, with me. Five years ago tonight after 29 hours of labor, my water finally broke with an audible *pop* and boy were we off to the races! I had thought the labor had been painful so far but it wasn't even in the same ballpark as what happened after the water broke. Anyways, the rest will be part of tomorrow's post.

Today I. and I had a good day together. Usually on Mondays, I don't go to the gym so that we can take advantage of this "last" year of weekday time that we get together before full day school next year. But with her birthday being tomorrow, I wanted to spend time together in the morning before she went to school at 12:30. I'm planning on taking her to Chuck E. Cheese in the morning because we can just goof around together and it's a big deal to her to go there. So today we went to the gym and then came home and made apple bread together. I. has been wanting to make it for a week after having some at school and we still had apples that we picked in Julian that I'm trying to find uses for. It was so great, standing side by side at the kitchen counter on a chilly day, smelling cinnamon and apples as we made our bread. And right in the middle of putting the ingredients in the bowl, I. leaned towards me with her lips all puckered up to give me a kiss on the lips. Honestly, life really doesn't get any better than that. After a much needed resttime, we walked to the mailbox hand in hand together and she told me she liked holding hands with me. Together we watched a hawk catch and eat a mouse and both found it pretty interesting and then we walked home and made Shrinky Dinks together before her dinner time. A perfect, laid back, hanging out kind of day. It makes me wonder how in the world am I going to cope come next September. But I won't dwell on that now...

This time change is kicking our butts. How one hour makes this much of a difference is beyond me but it does. I. is up so early in the morning now that she's pretty wiped out by the early afternoon. I was panicking because she is getting up at 5 am now and I'm not a morning person. The reason why I'm not a morning person is that the only deep, decent sleep I get is from about 4:30am until when I wake up. So you do the math and you'll understand why I. waking up at 5am was stressing me out.

Well, desperate mommas lead to creative solutions and I decided to cash in on I.'s digital clock obsession and work it to my advantage. I took a piece of paper and wrote 6:00 on it and then drew a picture of I. getting out of her bed. Then I wrote 6:46 and showed her calling "Mommy" and explained that these were the times she could do these 2 things and not before. I left the side down of her crib (yes, I know she's in a crib and she's turning 5 - when I told her we were going to get her a big girl bed, I was informed quite sternly, "But I like my little bed and I don't want a big girl bed.") and went to bed with my fingers crossed.

Unfortunately between V. getting up at 2:30, the garage door slamming shut at 4:15 and things that had to be attended to in the bathroom, I did not get good sleep this morning. So when I. started calling me at exactly 6:45, I didn't feel too good but was thankful that my plan seemed to have worked. We'll see tomorrow if lightening strikes twice but so far so good. I'm hoping that her wake up time will start moving closer to 6 but we'll see. For now, this will work as soon as my own inner clock gets reset and maybe I'll start sleeping good from 3:30. Sleep issues suck!