The Land of Noddin' Off

Ah, sleep! That necessary part of life. The thing that keeps your hormones balanced and what my beloved Dr. Oz says is one of the secrets to aging well. I am afraid to take his "What's Your Real Age?" test. I think it might show that I have aged 10 years in the last few months.

I have not gotten a full night's sleep in over two weeks. The crows feet around my eyes are beginning to resemble tire tracks.

Little Lib is either going through some kind of stage, or we are getting more serious side-effects to his antifungal. We are past the die-off, which I feel is some measure of success, but other behaviors are worrisome, such as the sudden sensitivity to sound (microwave oven, cell phone ringing, etc.) and also sensitivity to light. How about going to bed at 8 and popping back up and down from 12 to 4? This includes going around the house and flushing all of the toilets when he wakes up (but then he runs from the sound).

Also, now instead of just the seams of his shirts and pants bothering him, he has taken to ripping all of his clothes off in bed, and unless I check him constantly which is something I am not up for doing at the wee small hours of the morning. He will wet the bed as well, then I am up either changing the bed or throwing a towel over the wet spot if I have run out of linens at around 3 AM and stumbling back to sleep only to discover a spilled sippy cup in the bed. I tried giving him 3 mg of melatonin and it had the opposite effect - he buzzed around the house like a firefly.

I have been on my last dangling nerve for some time now and that one is fraying around the edges.

I do spy some hope as of yesterday, however. (And, yes of course I have calls into his doctor at Rhinebeck - I always have calls into Rhinebeck!) Liberty came down with a cold which made him want to sleep, and I think we might have finally straightened out his sleep cycle. He was only up once briefly and he slept through the night until 7 AM. I am sure you all heard the angels singing - it was a beautiful hallelujah chorus.

And, I have discovered the beauty and power of naps. Yes, naps! Glorious little cat naps that recharge my battery. When Liberty took a nap in the past three days, I took one, even if it was only for an hour, and I found that I had so much more energy for the rest of the day and was much less irritable (I am sure to the delight of all within my energy field). I have a lot to do during each day and have been frequently overwhelmed by trying to come up with schedules for myself, to no avail. But, ironically, taking time out to recharge ME has given me more energy and therefore seemingly more time to do things that I need to do. Working at night used to be hard. I would want to go to bed when Liberty did, I was just so worn out. Now, I am much more efficient and can get a lot done at night before I go to bed without being so ragged out that I just fall into bed at midnight.

And, something came into alignment today, like a vertebrae sliding easily back into its spinal groove. Today, I really had a new start. I got Liberty to school on time. I went out and walked a mile and a half in 25 minutes. I came home and worked out and cranked the music up loud. I forgot how powerful music is to change your mood and to motivate. I, of all people, should know this. I danced for years when I was younger (no not in a bar), ballet, tap, and jazz, and was a certified dance exercise instructor later in life. Dancing and music are what make me sublimely happy. Now, if you could be a fly on the wall in my house in the morning, you would probably burst out laughing at the site of an out of shape 48-year-old woman lifting weights to David Bowie's Rebel Rebel. It's probably not pretty, but I don't care. I had FUN this morning. I even got into some really old music of "my era" - God how that ages me - like Michael McDonald's "What a Fool Believes" and "How Long" by Ace or "Crazy Love" by Poco...yep, the 70s. I'm sorry, but there has been some clerical mistake on my drivers license because I know I am still in my twenties. At least that is how it feels (to my mind, not my creaky body).

Maybe that is how it always feels. Things that happened in the 70s and 80s seemed like yesterday to me. But I digress...

Since walking and working out, I have done yoga, written this blog, made fake Ritz crackers for Liberty (I'll get back to you on those), and am gearing up for another blissful little nap interlude where I shall, "fall into the arms of Morpheus" as my wonderful father likes to say, for about an hour before my little darling gets off the bus. [Truly, I could do a whole blog piece on the sayings of my father and his contribution to my appreciation for so much in life - love ya Dad - he reads my blog].

I have to end this post by telling you about something funny Liberty did, because, in the midst of all of this awfully draining stuff, he does things that just crack me up.

By now you have read the post about the pretzels he loved that I had to take away because they contained yeast. Well, yesterday, I put his TV and DVD back in his room so he could watch his movies in his bed while he was sick. He was so delighted he clapped his hands and hugged me. I left him in his room watching Kipper the Dog, and went into my office to work. Then, I see something out of the corner of my eye...it's Liberty hoisting our giant garbage can which is one of those cylindrical things made by Umbro, down the hall. He carried that thing all the way to his bedroom and then made a gesture for his father to stick his hand in the garbage can. This is the last place he saw the pretzel bag, people. Apparently, he got it in his head, that those pretzels he loved would go great as a snack in the bedroom while watching TV.

Non-verbal gets pretty funny sometimes.