Aha!!!

I figured it out, guys! Why I am so tired:
While Michael was talking about how hungry he was, it suddenly clicked... I don't eat enough. At least, I haven't since I got sick.
Being sick completely squelches my appetite, and my appetite is really hard to build up again afterwards.
Food....sigh. It's been something I've forced myself to care about lately because, frankly, I don't! For some reason, being sick does that to me!
And I already have a hard time remembering to eat even when I'm healthy.
Yep, there it is! I haven't had enough calories in my body to sustain it in even the most sedentary activities. That's bad. No wonder I didn't gain weight on my forced gym-vacation.

Bad Mommy Slept In

This post goes a little beyond my typical Qusing. It happens to come from my private blog; I realized there was nothing too gutsy coming from this particular "rant," so it gets to step outside the locked gates. 

Do you ever feel bad for sleeping in?

I've been so tired...I'm not really confused over it; we stay up too late (it's my ME time!), I'm recovering from a bad period and a stupid cold and watching 2 extra kids for 5 days (with one kid sick for a couple of those days) and tending to a sick Scarlett and enduring two weeks of ovarian cyst pain. All overlapping or at the same time.
So why would it be surprising?
But it is a little alarming to wake up and feel no conviction to get out of bed at all. No drive, no need, no sense of any urgency to begin the day. Normally, mornings are difficult for me, but there is that guilty tug that helps me finally leave the warm blankets and get going.
It's a little weird not to feel that. Guess how late I stayed in bed this morning? About 10:45. Yesterday we had church, so I got up at about 9:30. The day before? Totally slept in until about 11:30. And guess what happened on Friday? I slept in (maybe till about 10, I don't know), and then I felt so exhausted I decided to take a mini nap. No one seemed to need me at the moment, and everyone was content with whatever they were doing. So after getting a crick in my neck with a 10-minute doze on the couch, I climbed into bed.

And I slept all day.

Michael said he didn't wake me because they were doing fine while I slept, and he assumed I needed it. That is very selfless of him! I woke up baffled that it was...um...7:30 at night? Maybe it was 6:30...
Who does that? I mean, why do I do that? I don't want to let my brain go into hypochondriac hyperdrive and start wondering if I have thyroid problems or something...because I might start worrying about other things. Like how when I finally did get up, I "stood up too fast" and crashed onto the floor between the bed and the trunk (I hit my fingers on the trunk, but I missed all sharp corners). It's just stupid and funny to me now. But if I let myself worry??? I don't want to go there. I'm embarrassed when I start hunting up all these things it could be when it's really just something simple.

Sleeping in kind of makes me feel like a bad mom, though. Because yes, Ender comes and talks to me and asks if I can help him with this or that. Yes, I can hear Scarlett cry between waves of sleep that hold me under. Yes, I heard my phone ring, muffled under my pillow. Yes, I had plans to go to the gym today...for the first time in nearly 3 weeks. I do miss the gym.
Do I feel like that because my mother never slept in? She never did. Never later than me, at least. Even during the years in high school that I somehow got up at 4am, my mother also did. The only time I can remember my mother sleeping a lot was when she caught pneumonia in Georgia. The house was very quiet and still, and her room was dark. She laid in bed, and we worried around the house as we carried on with our daily doings.

Is it scary for kids when their mom sleeps in? Does it create confusion for kids who have to wait for breakfast while Mommy waits for her eyelids to unglue? Do they feel powerless and alone? I mean if this happens regularly. It seems like there would be some significant disorder in result of such vague, shifty mornings.

I feel bad for it. I must seem like such an irresponsible, lazy, negligent, selfish mother to sleeeeeep while her kids cry or whine or sit around all morning.

October Creation

Original inspiration for Scarlett's costume here. 

I consider this a success! It's not nearly as fancy as the its "original," but who cares?

She looked adorable for our ward party.

Ender is making a great Batman face (not that he truly knows who Batman is...). The lovely little hands sticking out behind my head are a wreath on the door made by Ender, not a hairpiece. 

Scarlett the Jellyfish! Ender the crazy Batman!

I was a flapper.

Michael was an aviator/pilot guy. The picture doesn't do his outfit justice
(I'm so sorry...I am not so great at taking pictures).
Michael looked fantastic, you'll have to take my word for it.

This kind of sums up Ender's evening! He was hyper. I'll be honest, it was a bit of a difficult night.
But inbetween his bouts of hypercranky, he was hyperhappy.
And what else would you expect on a night that you can fill a bucket with candy and dress up cool?

Here are two pictures of the jellyfish costume. Why? Um, because one picture shows how the fabric is kind of gauzy/shimmery....and between the two, you get the true color...
Oh whatever, I think I'm the only one who cares about that!
But I'm proud of it! I think this is my first time sewing with elastic! 

Bald Babies

I have to admit that bald babies catch me off-guard a little. Kind of makes me go "Wait, where's their hair? What happened to them?" I'm just so used to Scarlett! She has a lot of hair, and it's crazy hair.
But for all those mothers of bald babies out there, here's some encouragement. A reason to be grateful for your baby's peach fuzz:

This morning, Scarlett cried for a while before I got her up. I didn't mean to take so long to get out of bed, it's just that when I'm sick like this, it's even harder to wake up and separate dreams from reality. I dreamed I got up and put my contacts in and everything, but then I'd hazily wake up a minute later and realize I was still in bed.
So while I was having these reality show dreams ("my life but not really") mixed in with annoying dreams of some guy's dog trying to bite off my neck while I pried away its sharp jaws (yeah, what?!), Scarlett was crying. And she has a cold. That equals lots and lots of snot. Do you see where this is going?
On occasion, we come get her in the morning to find that she has a strand of hair stuck up her nose in the sticky boogers. It's unfortunate and gross, but oh well. We clean her up and that's it. And I do put her hair up for bed most of the time, but that's no guarantee it will still be out of her face in the morning.
When I finally hobbled out of bed, feeling utterly sick (it happens to be "that time of the month" on top of all this), I found her with a web of gooey hair all over her face. Dried and fresh snot and boogers all over the place. Snot down the front of her nightgown, snot making her hair coil up in spiral curlies with boogers anchoring them to her nose and eyes and mouth. It was so disgusting, and I definitely felt bad for having let her cry for so long (I'm so sorry-- I didn't mean to).
What's maybe worse is that all I could do was brush everything out of her hair, clean things up with a wipe, and put her in fresh clothes. I am so exhausted, I don't think I can monitor a bath for her. My stupid cold is hitting me bad today, and my period is actually really painful this time. It hurts. I'm so tired and achy that I'm not even taking advantage of the gorgeous rain to read a book-- and that's a huge deal.
Not to turn this all into a pity party for myself! Really, it's sad for Scarlett. :(

Well, there you go. Bald babies (or boy babies who don't need the hair) have an advantage. And their mommies do too.

....goodnight. I think Scarlett and I will both take a nap. Hopefully her current hair design keeps the boogies out (it's sort of a mohawk of pony-buns...my creativity factory is broken) (or on the fritz, which is more likely).