That’s pretty much how it goes around here right now: Eat. Play. Sleep. Repeat. Well for Ava that is. I feel like I am still not getting much in the sleep department. She slept better when she was a newborn until 2 months old. Then the numerous wakings throughout the night started. But it wasn’t just always her. She would typically wake up around 2ish and then once I got her fed and back to sleep and of course right when I finally fall asleep…..’scratch scratch’ – there is a dog scratching on our door to go out. Of course my husband miraculously sleeps right through it even though it’s only a matter of a few feet away from his side of the bed.
So I quickly get up, fly across the room to open the door so said dog does not scratch again – heaven forbid the baby gets woken up! I then follow the dog (and by now it’s usually all 3 dogs – once I open that door, the others are like “what? we’re going out?? yay!!!!”) to let them into the backyard. Then I’m standing around in the kitchen waiting for the dogs to come back in. There is always one that lingers outside (usually Angus) and as I’m standing at the door trying to entice him back inside in my loudest most stern whisper (so I don’t wake all the neighbors), he just stands there across the yard staring at me. He knows. He knows I want him to come back in, and he knows I won’t go out there to get him. So he takes his time and sniffs every inch of the grass. I even go grab a bag of dog treats and desperately wave it and shake it at the door fiercely whispering for him to come for a “treat!!!”, throwing all my animal training principals right out. But at 3:00am and severely sleep deprived, there is a certain degree of desperation involved here. He does not come in. So guess what desperation makes me do now? Yes I run out into the backyard in the dark, in my bare feet, hoping that I don’t step in something such as dog or pig poop, and then of course Angus decides now is a great time to bolt right past me back into the house. Luckily I never did step in anything and I did run into the yard in the dark on many occasions.
I get all the dogs quietly back into our room, close the door, settle myself back into bed and close my eyes. 4:00 rolls around way too fast and the baby is awake again. I feed her, get her back to sleep and as I’m falling asleep, something is up with one of the dogs again. Now this mostly only happened on warm nights, there were several nights when they only woke me up once, but there were several nights when they woke me up 3 times. On an average night, twice, and this other time was usually because they wanted a drink. So there I go, following them to the kitchen, making sure to tiptoe past the sleeping pig in the living room. Back to the bedroom and to bed again. Baby is awake around 5:30-6. This time I’m so exhausted I end up letting her sleep beside me in the bed. Then BEEEEEEEP WHAM BLOOOP BEEEEEP – OMG what the heck is that???? Ava and I both jolt ourselves awake to the horrific loud sounds going off in the room. It’s the new ringtone that Steve has his phone’s alarm clock set as. It’s awful. It scared the crap out of both me and the baby. Steve didn’t even wake up. I had to shake him to get him to turn it off. Then the darn thing went off again 30 minutes later. But the best part of it all: when Steve finally wakes up after pressing snooze for an hour and a half. He yawns and says to me…. “I’m SO tired!”. Seriously. It was everything I could do to not throw the pillow on his face.
After a couple months of that, she did start to sleep better throughout the night, then we moved her out of our room into her own room in her crib! A big step. For me that is. She was fine being in her own room, I was the one who had issues with it. I missed having her in our room and I became obsessed with watching her on our video baby monitor (best thing ever!). But I adjusted to it and she started sleeping almost all the way through the night. I admit, it was pretty awesome. But then we all got sick and she was up again several times throughout the night. The dogs however are mostly sleeping all through the night now.
Speaking of sleep, I managed to actually get a pretty good sleep last night. I woke up really early but feeling rather rested. Ava was still sound asleep, Steve was asleep and the dogs were all asleep. I got this great idea of getting up and having some time to myself in a quiet house. Time to actually eat breakfast as usually I’m feeding Ava at the same time so I need to wolf down my cereal or she tries to grab it. The sun was shining, it was a great morning.
I tiptoed out of the room but the dogs were on to me. They dashed out behind me, waking Norman up in the living room. I followed all 4 of them into the kitchen to let them out and….totally forgot that due to the frigid temperature outside that we brought all 6 of the flemish giant rabbits inside – who had taken over our kitchen. What a mess we walked in to! There were rabbit pellets and dumped food dishes all over. The dogs and pig thought this was great – a smorgasbord for breakfast!!! Woohoo!!! So there I was ushering them all out the backdoor as they were trying to hoover as much crap down their throats on the way.
6 Flemish Giant rabbits – all between 15 and 20 pounds each. That’s a lot of rabbit and a lot of mess. Instead of getting my quiet time to eat breakfast, I got quiet time to clean the entire kitchen. Including washing the floor by hand. Oh joy. As soon as I was done, guess what? The baby was awake. Good timing little one.
Ava with the giant bunnies. 5 of them are exactly 1 month older than she is! Also Ava with Norman – he is a big pig now – over 60 pounds and still growing.
