Monday, November 26, 2007

Life at Subaru House

Elspeth has dubbed our home "Subaru House" which is cute, especially when you consider how small our "estate" is. After a long weekend at Subaru House, Elspeth was all hyped up last night (excitement from Grandma and Grandpa visiting, lots of sugar, a visit to Ethan's house, more sugar, and did we mention sugar?). Jeremy and I planned some sleep training with Addie last night, and we needed to get Elspeth to sleep elsewhere so we could let Addie make noise in their room.

Our first mistake was the timing, both kids hopped up on a weekend away from the normal schedule. My second mistake was to tell Elspeth we were going to have a slumber party in Mommy and Daddy's room. Yes, you automatically know what I mean, but my 2 year old is not aware of this concept and she thought there would be a party. Jeremy realized the error I had made, when he read her bedtime books and announced it was time to go to bed in her sleeping bag. That was when she got even more excited and asked if it was time for the party.

When I returned home from the gym at 9:30, our daughter was still wide awake. After a brief conference, we decided sleep training could wait and tried to move Ella back to her own room. 20 minutes later, I was back in her room to find her sitting on a pile of stacked stuff, and having a party of her own.

I have not seen my daughter this hopped up since I had to put her on Albuteral, and was beginning to get concerned about her ever sleeping. I read more stories, I sang my most boring songs (apparently more boring to me than her), I held her in my lap. Around 10:30, I began to feel her relax, her head conceded its weight to my shoulder at last. While her legs still twitched, she was beginning to sag. I stopped counting minutes, and started counting kicks, enjoying the weight of her in my arms.

As we sat in the darkened room, relaxing together, Elspeth quietly whispered "what is this?" I held out my hand so she could drop something in, and it felt hard and light. I automatically realized it was trash of some kind, and said "I don't know." clutching it to later find a trash can. In that peaceful moment, of near sleep, my daughter drowsily said "It came out of my nose."

Ah motherhood . . .

3 comments:

anne said...

I love raquetball. Maybe we could play sometime!

thenn said...

You are ON! Especially if you don't mind that I have had exactly 1 lesson and am not overly coordinated. . . . but it was soooo much fun.

Melissa Blair said...

Love it! That is so cute! It sounds like something my Connor would do.