Sleepless in Boston

"Twas the night before Monday, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring..." wait, I'm still freaking awake.
This blog started partially because I have such a hard time sleeping on so many nights of the year so I wanted something to do on those sleepless nights. Not every night is sleepless, there are some nights when I can drift comfortably to sleep with no problem. I love those nights, and love the morning after when I wake up feeling so nice and refreshed. But there are so many nights in my life, like tonight, whey I just have too much on my mind to fall asleep. I think it runs in the family, my mom and sister are definitely night owls with schedules that fit that kind of sleep rhythm better. If I didn't have an 8-5 job or a kid who woke up early, maybe not sleeping wouldn't be such a big deal. Oh well, I'm not complaining. I just have to get better about actually getting up out of bed and doing things like this, writing and getting the thoughts out of my head. It really helps. It's just so hard to get out of a cozy bed even if I'm restless, especially as the nights get colder. Guess I need a really warm fleece housecoat.
So what's on my mind tonight?
Most of all, I've been following an incredibly sad story about childhood cancer on a blog called Mary Tyler Mom, called Donna's Cancer Story. Read it- read every single post. You'll cry, alot. But you will hug your children harder than you ever have before in your life and the memory of this series of posts will stop you from getting upset with your kids several times. That's already happened for me. I simply can't get that upset with Bean after reading this, her life is too precious a gift in so many ways. For the final post in the series, Mary Tyler Mom gives suggestions on how you can help in little ways. Definitely read this post. We should all be helping in little ways.
I'm not trying to purposely switch topics so abruptly, but here's what's also on my mind. I'm always getting frustrated with my older house. That keeps me up alot. Despite hundreds of complete projects on this house, we still have so many more to do and so little time. This month's project is to get the downstairs bedroom in good enough shape to become our master bedroom once our next baby arrives. This re-do involves gutting the closet and moving a bunch of stuff around. Nothing major, but even little things like a closet take forever. My husband and I are both really impatient with those things, we both love to renovate, so we get somewhat consumed with projects. And we want them done now, but things like closets can take days or weeks because things have to be done in steps. And a toddler doesn't like to do house projects. She's not big on applying painters tape to the floors like we did today. She did fine and helped out a little, but it's usually me and her hanging out with my husband does all the work, which just adds to the time it takes. Today I feel guilty that I even care how long it's taking to do a stupid closet, after reading the above mentioned blog. But it is on my mind even if it isn't consuming me as much.
This brings me to the another thing on my mind tonight. I spend a lot of time daydreaming about all the things we'll do in this house as a family-actually it's something that's given me joy as we've been renovating the place. I pictured my kids growing up in their little kid world upstairs and us snug in our new room downstairs (even if I'm not sleeping). I picture lots of days outside on the swing set and in the basement playroom that my husband toiled over for months and we re-did 3 times after it flooded. This house is so special to me because of all that hard work. Things like closets that keep me up at night are sort of annoying for a while, but when they're done, they're so worth it and we get to live as a family in this house. I'm grateful for my health and my family, for being able to daydream about our family growing up in our little house that we've worked on for so long. I think that Mary Tyler Mom would have loved to be concerned about a stupid closet renovation, or a fireplace mantel that doesn't look quite right. I mean, these are small things that can be fixed with time and that look great when they are done. These are good problems to have.
Another thought on my mind - my daughter's two and a half year birthday came and went a few weeks ago, and it was also the same day that marked the one month mark for our time on the adoption list for baby #2. I didn't have time to post that day, but I wanted to. I know two and a half isn't really a birthday that most people celebrate, but when you've waited for so long for a child, you celebrate everything. We told her that she was two and a half and now that's what she tells everyone when they ask how old she is. She's not just two. She's two and a half. It's so cute. So we've been on the adoption wait list for over a month now. I admittedly feel a little bad, because time has flown so fast I didn't even notice. When we were waiting for Bean I clearly remember the passing of time for the 13 months we waited. I wrote letters to our "baby to be" and definitely had a baby book for her by this point. We had a stroller set and a car seat ready to go, and some newborn clothes all set. I didn't need them for a while and they collected some dust, but I had them. I don't have anything for baby #2 yet. We could get "that call" tomorrow. Or not for 18 months. But I really need to get a baby book, and write some letters so that he or she knows just how excited we are for them. There are some overwhelming days with a toddler when I'm not sure how we'll do it with two, but that's always short lived and replaced by my longing for another newborn to hug in my arms. I really, really can't wait. Tomorrow- I will write a letter tomorrow. And Bean and I can go and buy a baby book. She's already promised to give her new baby brother or sister her car seat and several other random toys around the house.
Ok and the final thing on my mind tonight. I need to change up my blog a little. I like how it's going so far, but it needs a change. I sometimes get overwhelmed with wanting to write or do something great so I don't do anything at all. I don't know exactly what I want to do yet. Maybe write a little snippet each day that's on my mind, keeping it to a couple sentences? Maybe try to ask some questions so that people will comment and get a dialogue going? I'm leaning to a little of both maybe. I think there are some great blogs out there that talk about different debatable topics and get lots of discussion going. But my only fear is pissing someone off. I can debate with the best of them. Not sure I want to do that on my public blog.
Ok that's all I got for now. Time to try to sleep again. There's not even a mouse awake now.