I will never sleep again

As you can see, I'm playing with the layout of the blog. I like it alright, I'm especially proud of the picture at the top of the page - those are Elijah's tiny toes.

I played with it because I'm not sleeping. Eli getting up so much has really thrown my schedule for a loop, and my insomnia has come back with a vengeance, so even when he is sleeping, I can't. Now I'm up all night, and I sleep till 2 or 3 in the afternoon (Jeremy watches the kids). It seems like a nice arrangement, but it's not. I feel like I rarely get to see my kids anymore - since Eli goes to bed at 8:30 and Cayden goes down at 9:30.

He was giving me a 5 hour chunk. And then it was 2 hours after that. Then he stopped. For the past two days he's been a decent sleeper. Tonight he's been up five or 6 times. And before, he'd eat and go back to sleep. Tonight he seems to think it's play time. I thought a growth spurt, but he can't be spurting this much. I've tried everything I can think of - swaddling, not swaddling, I stopped rocking him to sleep so if he wakes up he can learn to fall back asleep on his own. The doctor (who knows our history with Cayden's sleep issues) told us that we could try cereal in his bottle. She said because he's a bigger baby, he may just need something more satisfying. However, she also said it could just end up backfiring us. I guess with a few babies it holds them over, but with others it just fills them up quicker, making them eat less and therefore they wind up hungry faster. I'm still considering trying it. I just don't know what to do, even if I get my sleep schedule back on track, it doesn't matter, because it'll just get screwed up again with Eli waking every hour. I know a LOT of babies don't sleep through the night at this age - and I don't expect him too. But my pediatrician said we should be getting at least 4 hours - we're not. We were getting 5, but even after he slept that long chunk he would then be up every two hours after.

To top off sleep frustrations, Cayden, who FINALLY started sleeping through the night (28 months. 28 freaking months to do it consistently - and not even all that consistently, we did have the occasionally night where he'd wake once - but he slept through the night more days than he ever has before.) has also been waking. And not just his normal one or two times. Not even three times. Six times. I counted. I am blaming this one on a growth spurt, but I'm just hoping that when it's over it doesn't mess up the wonderful pattern we had.

My children are amazing, and I love them, but I think they might be trying to kill me.


Nothing much else is going on - we're taking them to the Aquarium in Newport on Monday and I am SO excited. That's one of the best parts about having kids, you get doubly excited. I like the Aquarium and can't wait to go for myself, but I know Cayden and Eli are going to LOVE it, and I can't wait to see their reaction. I know Eli's little but I just think he'll love looking at the colors and stuff, and Cayden is just going to go nuts. We're staying overnight in a hotel that has an indoor pool - so Eli will get his first swim and Cayden loves the bathtub, so I hope he's back to loving the pool (when he was a baby, he loved the pool. Then he was afraid of it, then he loved it, then last summer we took him swimming and he wasn't a fan. We shall see.)

Alright, I'm going to go play some more on picnik - I'll have to post my "creations" sometime :-)