I Had A Dream (It Was Called the Long Weekend)

And finally the girl goes down. This has been the second day in a row that Baby A totally skipped her morning nap and despite being tired refused to nap before two in the afternoon! She has also been difficult to get down at bedtime. She'll be nearly asleep as per usual and I slip her into bed where she usually inserts her thumb and drifts happily off to sleep. Lately? As soon as I lower her body to the mattress her eyes open and she begins to cry, roll over and stand up. I then take her back to our room to try all over again. Or if I'm really fed up I'll leave her there to get tired and fall asleep on her own. Which never seems to happen anymore. With her new found ability to stand she has little interest in sleeping. I hope it's only yet another phase which will soon pass and she'll be back to two naps a day.

This long weekend was productive even though I worked on Saturday. On Friday evening our friends invited us to their house for a BBQ. Our other friends who are eagerly awaiting the birth of their son were also invited. I can hardly believe that I was in her shoes less that a year ago. I would have still been in the 'head in the bucket' stage. Weee! After everyone was finished eating Little A provided much entertainment with her unending energy. She demonstrated proficiency in crawling, babbling and coffee table chin ups. A good time was had by all.

After work on Saturday I put Baby A down for a nap and Papa D and I puttered around, tidying the house before our friends arrived for supper. Supper which I did not have to cook. We ordered the most delicious pizzas from a restaurant that just opened. We ordered a Bruschetta and Spanikopita pizza. We also ordered two pieces of Baklava for dessert. Mmmm! Decadent. Baby continued napping until we were nearly done eating. She was rewarded with much praise and cuddling for sleeping so long. After supper we all sat down to watch the riveting “Baby Galileo” and I impressed our guests with the extent to which my brain has gone mushy.

Sunday started off with a bang when Audrey got up at 4:30am and stayed up for an hour and then we both went back to bed. I didn't set an alarm for church since she always gets us up in plenty of time. When I awoke to her happy babbling at 10:00am I knew we would be late. We hustled but had no chance of being early. I think we were right on time. Our church program for kids called 'Promiseland' was full so we had to bring Little A into the service. She enjoyed the music but once the sermon started Daddy and I had to take turns walking around with her out in the foyer. This was our punishment for being late.

That afternoon while A slept we went outside and transformed our dumpy yard into a respectable one. Peter mowed while I dug evil weeds out of the flower beds. These weeds are so evil. How evil are they? So evil Peter had to help me once he was done mowing because I was only about half done. The night our friends came for pizza they brought us some plants for our garden. Sunflowers and a Lamb's Ear. After digging out all of the evil weeds I found special places for my new plants.

Since Peter didn't have to work on Monday we decided to rent a movie. We haven't done this in ages. Baby A did not want to cooperate and decided she would move her bedtime from 9:00pm to 10:45pm. She must have been able to sense how badly I wanted her to go to sleep. She must have tasted it in my milk or something. Later than expected we cuddled up on the couch and watched 'The House of D'. I am a die hard David Duchovny fan and have wanted to see this since I first heard about it. My review? It was pretty good. The acting was really good. I liked the idea of it. The story didn't quite flow the way it should have. David's goatee was unfortunate. I wanted to like it a lot more which is often the way I feel about movies that he is in. Because he wrote this one I really wanted to like it. Oh well. At least I didn't feel it was a total waste of my time. But the true test of a movie being good is my desire to watch it more than once. I chronically watch movies that I like over and over and over again. Examples in no particular order: Dirty Dancing, Some Kind of Wonderful, Pretty in Pink, Say Anything, The Princess Bride, The Matrix. All of these I have watched at least 15 times each. At least. I wont tell the true number of times lest you all think I'm a complete nut... So anyway, 'The House of D' gets 2 ½ stars out of 5 from me. I'd give it three but that goatee... ick...

This brings us to the last day of our weekend. Monday. Although Little A was reluctant to go to bed at the proper time once there she stayed asleep until 8:30 Monday morning. This was good because we were late getting to bed after our movie date. It's so much easier to appreciate her after a good nights sleep. I looked forward to a productive day due to the fact that there were two of us to look after the baby. The day would have been even more productive had she gone for her nap at the usual time. Instead as aforementioned she didn't. I felt I spent the entire morning and early afternoon waiting for her to just go to sleep already!! Once she did we had a glorious time cleaning out the eaves troughs and watching Season 3 of The Ultimate Fighter. (I'm so predictable...)

This weekend made me realize that the ideal way to raise children is with two parents at home at all times. When one is frustrated, the other can take over. Or if both are frustrated you can joke with each other about how frustrated you are. If you are only one person primarily responsible for child care you become mentally and physically exhausted. Sadly I am the person primarily responsible. This weekend was simply a tease of what an ideal life would be like. Sigh. Back to the real world.

Update at 'The Mama D Experiment'