Author: Veronica

This post comes from the lovely Zoey, who blogs at Good Goog – Adventures in Parenting.

**

Sleep deprivation and parenting go hand in hand. There’s the newborn stage, bouts of illness, the very un-awesome rounds of teething and all manner of other little things along the way. It’s a cruel joke that a sleep deprived parent is constantly trying to get their reluctant little munchkins to sleep. And although Riley is now over 2 and (mostly) she sleeps pretty well, a very new pregnancy has thrown me back into the exhaustion pile. Which I’m happy about. The way I figure it, being tired just means that everything is as it should be.

With my first pregnancy I moaned about a lot of things, being tired and having to drag myself to work, aches and pains, itchy and sore breasts, hips that went to crap, just to name a few. You won’t catch me complaining this time around, because I am so grateful to be pregnant. But nonetheless, looking after an energiser bunny toddler brings its own set of challenges. And sometimes you just have to work on a certain laziness in parenting.

Lying Down Games
I’m a big fan of lying down games, or games in general where I don’t have to move. This could be a game of peek-a-boo on the couch with a blanket, or where I’m lying down and my only job is to react while she tickles me, or even better the game where I pretend to be asleep and then ‘wake up’ suddenly. All good.

Being Oblivious on Purpose
There are certain destructive behaviour patterns that I allow, given I know it’s only going to take me half an hour to clean it all up when she’s having a nap. Like redistributing beads all over our floor. Or pulling out tupperware from the cupboard. Or anything else that is not actually putting her in harms way and is not permanently damaging the house.

Getting Up Early, Very Early
The 5am wake up isn’t exactly ideal. I’d quite happily stay in bed until 7 or 8. Quite. Happily. But if I go with the early starts then I get no protest at nap time and no problem with getting Riley to bed at a reasonable hour. And there’s nothing I love better than a lazy afternoon nap with a touch of Winter sun peaking through my bedroom curtains.

Reinforcements
I take every opportunity for someone else to do the hard work. Let them run around with Riley for a few hours. This is where grandparents and aunts and uncles come in handy. Very handy. The fact that Riley will often ask for her Aunt during the day is very clear evidence of the fact that there are plenty of people with far more energy than me.

The App Store
Riley loves puzzles. In fact it’s usually the first thing she says when she wakes up ‘puzzles?’. Which is where an iPhone or an iPod Touch comes in handy. In a clear travesty I don’t own an iPhone, but I do have an iPod Touch and there are all manner of puzzles and other kids games available for download. Which means that Riley may occasionally consider being still for a few minutes as we chillax on the couch. Sadly this post is not sponsored by Apple. Otherwise I would already have a freaking iPhone.

It’s still a work in progress and it’s still very early days, but I’ll take a certain level of laziness over being snappy and grumpy any day of the week. Because tired or not I have a joyful little toddler who runs around the place yelling ‘happy’ and ‘fun!’ for a good part of the day. I’d like to keep that for as long as possible.

Today’s guest post is brought to you by the lovely Peggy-Sue Brister.

***

I was in a mood one day and my kids weren’t listening to me and I told them if they didn’t STFU I was going to get TAWANDA. They continued to be noisy so I yelled TAWANDAAAAAAAAA!!! My kids thought I had lost my mind. They asked WTH was Tawanda. I explained to DD a little bit about what Tawanda is. How Kathy Bates gets a new personality in Fried Green Tomatoes and stops taking SHIT off ppl. And that momma was now Tawanda momma and I wasn’t taking any more SHIT, so STFU and sit down.

After I told DD a little bit about Tawanda and Fried Green Tomatoes, she started bugging me to get the movie so she could watch it. I went to my Blockbuster by mail/online queue and added it to my list, bumped it up to number one, and got it sent to me in the mail.

It just came today. When my DD saw the Blockbuster mailer in the mailbox, the first thing she asked was , “Is THAT it? Is it here?” I knew what she meant. She hasn’t stopped talking about the movie since I told her about it. Right as we walked in the door she asked if she could put it in. I told her to go ahead. She had waited a week for this thing to come, I wasn’t going to make her wait to watch it.

Right at the first of the movie I explained that the old lady telling the story was one of the ppl IN THE STORY she was telling and they started trying to figure out which one she was. It didn’t take DD very long to figure out the old lady was Idgy. So I told her she was correct. I wasn’t going to make her wait until the end of the movie like I had to the first time I watched it.

I warned them that there were 2 very sad parts to the movie just so they weren’t caught off guard when Buddy dies and when Ruth dies. They sat watching it, transfixed. They didn’t move an inch. They sat perfectly quiet and perfectly still taking it all in, not wanting to miss a single word. DD told DS to turn it up a little. She wanted to make sure she could hear it well.

As I was watching it with them I was tweeting a little bit about it and it started a few conversations with my tweeps about other good chick flick/tear jerkers we all know and love.

Another one that I want to get and watch with DD is Steel Magnolias. I know if she got choked up watching Fried Green Tomatoes, that she is probably going to get choked up at Steel Magnolias too. The part after Shelby dies and Sally Field is having a break down in the cemetery, it gets to me. Then all of a sudden there is a moment of levity, “Here, take a whack at Weaser! Half of Chickapen Parish would give their right arm to take a whack at Weaser. Go ahead Malynn. Hit her!!” Laughter through tears, one of my favorite emotions. (Dolly Parton said that in the movie, I just stole it.)

Another one that gets a lump in my throat just thinking about it is Beaches, with Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey. If you haven’t seen it don’t keep reading this or I might spoil a bit of it for you. Skip to the next paragraph. The last 20 minutes of the movie make me bawl. After Bette Midler takes Barbara Hershey out of the hospital to take her and let her die at the Beach house…I start the lump in my throat there and it doesn’t go away until after she dies and I am bawling. I give this one an A+ on the tear jerker scale. 3 hanky movie, at least.

Another one with Bette Midler, that alot of people haven’t seen is Stella. John Goodman is in it and plays a good drunk. It breaks my heart when she is standing outside in the rain looking through the window at her daughter. And how she gets mean to make her daughter go away. It kills me! If you haven’t seen that one, rent it. Especially if you are a big Bette Midler fan like I am.

Someone else brought up The Notebook. That’s another one that makes me bawl my eyes out. Who doesn’t want to have a love like that in their life? It is heart wrenching to watch if you have a sensitive side. I don’t remember if there is anything inappropriate in it though for DD to see it or not. I will have to check into that one before I let her see it. She is not really old enough to appreciate the storyline of having the love of your life. But that movie made me keep crying even after it was over. I would think about it and start crying again.

Another one that makes me CRY but that it not appropriate for DD to watch is Bridges of Madison County. Who can’t relate to the frumpy housewife who is over-worked, under-appreciated and restless in her life? How fast they fall in love is exactly how it happened with my husband & I. Whirlwind, sweep you off your feet kind of thing. And when he leaves and she decided NOT to go with him. She knows that what they had together for those few days wouldn’t last if she left her family and missed them so she could be with him, and that it would end badly. But man how she wanted to go SO BAD. And the scene where she comes out of the grocery store and sees him parked across the street at the red light, and he just sits there, and she is watching him, about to leave without her, and her heart is BREAKING. OMG I have a lump in my throat just writing about it. She never stopped loving him her entire life. I love the part where her DD & DS are reading her journals, learning about this story/secret of their mom’s and the DD has on her mother’s dress. That is so damn funny. LOVE that movie. I went and saw it at the movies when it first came out with my dad. He is a big sissy about movies too and we both cried right there in the movie theater. I always carry tissue in my purse when there’s a chance for tears. I used them that day.

Another one that makes me cry MULTIPLE times but nobody mentioned is Legends of The Fall with Brad Pitt. That is a long, emotional movie that you simply MUST see if you haven’t seen. I cry several times during this movie but the one that gets to me the worst is when Julia Ormond goes to see “Tristan” in jail and she cries and tells him how she had wanted his wife to die. Then she goes home, cuts her hair off and kills herself. That’s the worst kind of pain a person can experience is the kind of pain that makes you want to MAKE IT STOP no matter what you have to do. In real life, emotions like that involve mental illness, but in the movie, who doesn’t feel her pain? It’s SO SAD. I hated that he made her wait so long for him and that he never came back for her. (earlier in the movie) I hated that she married a man she didn’t really love so she could try to get over the one she did love and move on with her life. She did tell him she would wait forever, however long it took, but DAMN, he stayed gone for like SEVERAL YEARS. He wrote her and told her not to wait for him. Then shows up and is shocked that she moved on! Shame on you Brad!

An old one but good one that is another tear jerker for me is City of Angels with Meg Ryan and Nicholas Cage. He gave up eternity for a human woman and just as they start their life together she gets taken away from him. But he said what he gave up was worth it to be with her for the short time he was with her.

What are some of your favorite chick flick/tear jerkers? Did I mention them here, or is there some I missed and forgot about?

This first guest post is brought to you by the lovely Megan, who writes at College and a Novel. Make sure you give her some comment love, mmmmkay?

***

I am a nanny for a great 14 month old. She is smart and happy and plays a lot, she loves to organize and reorganizes her parent’s pantry and of course she likes to make noise lots and lots of noise. I watch her three to four days a week depending on the week. Last week I only watched her for three but I have to say it was the hardest week ever and only because of Tuesday.

The day started normal and fine. Breakfast she ate, watched her TV, she only watches during breakfast and her DVD that we watch twice a day to teach her to read and help her to speak more, and was playing no problem. Lunch again not a problem except that I could see she was exhausted you know rubbing her eye getting food all over her face and making a general mess, but I knew there was no way she was going to make it through her bath before a nap, yes she takes her bath after lunch and no I don’t know why. So a bath was out until after her nap so I got as much food off of her, took her upstairs and to put her down. Okay so she normally takes a 3 hour nap or at least 2 hour 30 min nap and I depending on the day either do some stuff around the house check things on FB or watch TV and every once in a while when watching TV I will fall asleep.

Today was one of those days except I fell asleep towards the end of her nap and did I mention she teething, add in the construction noise from the house being built next door and my what would have been an hour nap turned into a ten minute nap. Now I get migraines and they are tied to the weather, it happens to be the middle of summer here in Texas and well pollen is out in force. So after a ten minute nap I wake to a screaming baby and I feel dizzy.

At first I just sit there and give her a minute or so to see if she will go back to sleep because I know she had only been asleep for 2 hours and has another hour in her. Well of course she does not and I have to get up. I go get her, change her, and let her play. Knowing that she still needs her bath I go start it by now my head is pounding, it felt like a hammer was hitting my left temple every second and it would intensify every time she screamed which was a lot, and I still felt dizzy and was beginning to get sick to my stomach all signs of a migraine. I gave her a bath in a good five minutes because the water and kneeling did not make anything better it felt like I just put her in and took her even though I went through her whole very intense bath routine, she has dry skin. Out the bath and it was only 4:30 I had been there since 8am and was there until 8pm. We moved downstairs.

She did not get quieter and my head got worse, by dinner time at 6 with two hours to go I was ready to give up and go to sleep, but it’s not my child I can’t lock her in her crib while I sleep, besides all she would do if I did that was scream, I remembered that I had Advil with me and got mad for not remembering earlier, I had looked to see what they had but when it was an uncoated pain killer I knew I couldn’t take that because yes I’m weird and can only take my BC was pill and Advil which is coated I hate taking medicine and then suck at it anyway. Well I took the Advil while she was eating and a half hour later it was better but still not really livable. I spent the rest of my time there walking around to keep myself from passing out in exhaustion and pain.

Finally her mom got home; I went home and went straight to bed. I hate getting migraines and although this was not the worst I’ve had pain wise it was the worst because of where I was. I now try my best to stay awake and keep my Advil close because this was not fun and I DO NOT want to have to do it again.