Something happened!

I have been wondering if I will ever have something to write about other than the baby or the book I’m reading, and the answer is: YES!  But only if it’s something that happened to someone else.  Apparently.  Because the only things happening to me are baby-related.

What happened, you may ask?  And since it didn’t happen to me, why should you care?

My neighbor’s new barn burned to the ground!  And because it’s crazy-dramatic, that’s why!

My front-yard neighbors, Kev and Kerry, bought a house about 10 minutes north of here and moved in last weekend.  On Monday, Kev was burning cardboard boxes in the fire pit and his barn (his new house has had a barn) burned down.  He swears he put the fire out before he left (he was at the old house, getting it ready for tenants when the fire started).  The arson guy (Kev is not being charged with arson) says an ember must have gotten under the barn.

  1. That’s what he gets for not recycling (not my joke).
  2. The previous owner put the fire pit too close to the barn, but that doesn’t excuse Kev since he used it anyway.

No one was home.  The police (or whoever) called Kerry, and when she couldn’t reach Kev, she called Allison (who owns the bookstore across the street from us), and Allison ran over to the house shouting about a fire, so Kev went running for his fire extinguisher thinking the bookstore was on fire, and HOW DID I MISS ALL THIS?  It was Monday.  We were here Monday.  We’re here all day, every day.

I wonder if this is a new curse.  Remember the house that caught on fire across the street from us in Oregon?  Maybe fires happen to those near us.  At least it was their new house, not the old one.  Wait – twice is a coincidence.  Keep your eyes peeled for a third one – that’ll make a pattern.

Looking for sleep opportunities

Jack’s morning nap today was in my arms.  Usually, once he falls asleep, I take a couple of minutes (at least) to gaze adoringly at the sweet cuddly baby before I open my book or close my eyes.  This morning, I’m pretty sure I was asleep before he was.  I certainly don’t have any memory of his sleeping face.  I am SO TIRED.  Wednesday night wasn’t quite as bad as last Monday, but it was bad enough (he was awake from 2am to 5).

I can’t even write about it without yawning.

I don’t need sleep anymore

For the first time in a long time, like months, we had a really bad night with Jack.  He’s fine, and he was fine during the night.  He was just, you know, awake.  He went to bed like normal, pretty easily.  He was asleep in the crib before 7:30.  He woke up about 3 and a half hours later, just before 11pm.  We had JUST climbed into bed.  I hadn’t even put my book down yet.  John changed his diaper, and then I tried to nurse him back to sleep.  For most of an hour.  He didn’t go to sleep, so I stood up and held him, trying to sway him to sleep.  He’d put his head down, then shift it, then shift it again.  I thought it was going to work, but then he started to squirm and protest, so I sat back down with him and tried to nurse him to sleep again.  No luck, repeat of the almost-settling on my shoulder, and then around 12:30 I texted John to come in and try, since he usually has really good luck getting him to sleep on his shoulder.  Not that night – Jack was having none of it.  Less than 15 minutes later, I was nursing him again, thinking super-sleepy thoughts at him, but it still didn’t work.  Around 1:30, maybe a little before, I tagged John back in, but Jack just didn’t want to sleep.  John put him in his crib and stayed nearby – Jack happily crawled in circles on the mattress for half an hour.  So a little before 2am, it was back to nursing (and another diaper change) for us.  Then I tried the crib thing.  He giggled and wanted to play.  I tried reading to him from outside the crib, but the light from the kindle fascinated him.  I tried lying down on the floor next to the crib, but he kept babbling at me and reaching through the slats to poke me.  Then around 2:30 John texted me to suggest we take him for a drive.

YES.  BRILLIANT.  LET’S DO THAT TWO HOURS AGO.

Jack was asleep within 20 minutes, and we were in bed by 3:15.

Was Jack kind enough to sleep in since he was awake for four hours in the middle of the night and we hadn’t yet gotten ANY sleep?  Um, no.  No, he was not.  We all got up at 7am that morning.  That’s less than four hours for me and John, for anyone too tired to do the math.  Jack at least got that first 3 and a half hours.

Next question: why am I up NOW, at 10pm, with that in my recent history?

Hm.