After going back to bed last night, I finally fell asleep around 1am. Bean was talking/calling out in her sleep and woke me up at 4. I got back to sleep after a while, and she woke me up at 6. Then up for the day at 7. Thankfully it's Saturday - Dave got up with her right away and I went back to sleep until 9!! yay!
So, the new plan is that I will get a cd player to have in the bedroom (a personal one with headphones), and when she wakes me up I'll start up my relaxation CDs from the hypnobirthing class I took, that I should be listening to anyway. My problem is that I have so much going on, my mind kicks into high gear as soon as I wake up, and I can't relax again. The cds should help me get back to sleep. If we put her in the next room, which is currently our office, she would still wake me up (because our walls are thin), and it would still take me forever to get back to sleep.
And, I need to do this anyway, since in a few months I will have a newborn waking me up in between Rhiannon waking me up!! LOL (actually, I don't know if I should laugh or cry. laughing is better, I think)

Today has been a really good day. Maybe it's because Dave is home, I don't know. But she's been really sweet and listening good so far today. Now it's bedtime... we shall see how that goes. LOL

I actually said this to Rhiannon the other night. I haven't been around much lately (if you haven't noticed). I've just been stretched so thin. I've been busy, true, but I have to admit, Beaner is just getting the best of me. She runs me ragged, I tell ya. I don't even know what to do anymore. Add to that the fact that I've been getting 5 hours of sleep or less per night, and you can maybe imagine how things have been around here lately. I went to bed at 9:30 tonight in the hopes of getting some extra sleep - what a joke. I was almost asleep around 10 when she started fussing, so she settles down and I finally drift off... for a whopping 15 minutes before she starts fussing (shrieking, crying) again at 10:45 and totally wakes me up. An hour later and I'm still laying there. What a waste of fucking time. I should have spent the last 2 hours getting some of the thousand things done that I have on my list, but no, I wasted it laying in bed. I'm so freaking tired, I could just cry.
I threatened her the other night with banishment from the bedroom if she didn't knock it off. I swear she does it on purpose. She wakes up, then she chooses to wake everybody else up by making a big fuss. I've watched her do this. She'll wake up, look around all calm, then just launch into a fit. The only thing is, we don't have another bedroom for her, so I can't just move her to her own room. Our guest bedroom is now my candle-making workshop, and the 3rd bedroom is our office. That leaves our bedroom, which is massive and has plenty of room for everybody.
She has just been SO naughty lately. I'm at the end of my rope with her. I feel like such a lousy mother, she just runs circles around me. It's like she enjoys getting in trouble, just to see a reaction. I spend time with her during the day, take her on playdates, go to the park in the evenings... nothing helps. It doesn't matter what I do. She pitches a fit wherever we are when it's time to go home, or even when I just ask her to do something. Today in Costco was another prime example; she hit me at least 3 times because I made her get back into the cart when she wouldn't listen and kept rolling on the floor wrestling with her friend (I was there with another friend and her kids). They all got ice cream, and she didn't. I want to do fun things with her, but I'm afraid to even leave the house anymore.
I tried to take a nap the other day, and miraculously managed to fall asleep for a change. Half an hour later, she was up - I asked her to please lay back down, and she spit all over my back. This, even though a couple days before, Dave needed a nap and laid down with her, and she slept for 3 goddamn hours. It's like I'm not allowed to sleep around here.
See, this is why I don't post anymore. Nothing to say but a crazy, exhausted ramble.
Oh, and I'm SO excited to be going home to MN next Friday. woop-de-doo. Now we get to demonstrate our wonderful parenting abilities to everybody in our family. It's going to be a nightmare, I just know it.

This poor girl. Why does the media have to release horrifying, graphic details of this poor little girl's final hours? Isn't it enough that we can imagine, to some degree, what was inflicted on her? A convicted sex offender confessed to murdering her, for Pete's sake! Why have it spelled out in detail, robbing her of her dignity, and her family of their own personal pain? To make a headline? She was a child! Give her some respect. Give her family some decent human courtesy.
I feel nauseous now that I have every gritty detail and can envision exactly what happened. I'm in tears, again, just thinking about her. And now I can't purge the horrible visual from my inner mind, because it was all spelled out for me. I'm not linking to the article here, because I regret clicking on it myself, so I wouldn't want to inflict it on anyone else. I really hate what this society is becoming. Or has become, perhaps. I keep getting shocked, so maybe I'm just behind...

I was too afraid to read the one about Sarah Lunde. I really hope the gov't gets on the ball and does something about these sexual predators. It's ridiculous that they are out on the streets doing this sick shit to our innocents.

Every story that happens, I think about my own sweet baby girl, and it scares the living daylights out of me. I want to just wrap her in a bubble and keep her safe from all the horrors of this world.