pumpking patching round 2

Update from the weather desk- it hit 57 degrees this morning. FIFTY-SEVEN. 

The locals are calling it a cold front and bundling up. I call it normal weather for October.

You'd think the cool air would mean my brain is fresh and unfried but I've completely forgotten what I was going to blog about.

I blame the lack of brain cells on Annabelle. For the last 15 nights (but who's counting?) she has woken up during the night. For most of those nights, she's sobbed and yelled and generally made a scene about going to bed because she's scared and can't stop her "bad thoughts about the Grinch and the selfish giant." We saw a Halloween figurine in Cracker Barrel and she said, "My brain is going to add that to the list of bad thoughts." After the many hours it takes for her to fall asleep, she'll wake up sobbing and scared around midnight, then 2 o'clock. Hours will pass before she'll fall asleep again. I can't sleep when she's not sleeping so I lost hours of sleep too. It's like having a newborn again. In the Army, Christopher did training where they played tapes of children crying for hours so he became immune and will sleep through most of it until I kick his legs and wake him up. It's been a beautiful time of family bonding. Things are finally headed in the right direction. We've talked to her about praying or singing when she's scared and I'll hear her doing both over the monitor to calm herself. We've figured out a routine that makes her feel safer. She finally slept through the night last night and while I'm still not fully recovered, things are looking up.

Due to the above-mentioned sleep issues, we've been sleeping in a little. We need to leave for school at 8:30 but yesterday I didn't wake up until 8:13. I flew out of bed like it was on fire. I NEVER leave the house without mascara or earrings but I didn't have time for either. I felt like I was going in public naked but desperate times call for desperate measures. We squealed into the school parking lot only 2 minutes late. I don't know if I'll be in the running for Mom of the Year because we made it, or if I'm out of the race because we were late. 

We switched Sesame to a new school at the beginning of the month. There were many conversations about whether to leave her where she was or switch her. The school she was at was very into desk work and the school across the street was more play-based which I like. She'll have 13+ years ahead of her for deskwork. I want her to learn through play while she can. Had I toured both of them at the beginning of the year I would have picked the new school, but I was so afraid of leaving and hurting the original teacher's feelings. I liked them as people but I didn't like the curriculum. I felt like a traitor leaving for a school within eyesight of the first school. 

Short story unnecessarily long, we went on a field trip with the new school on Tuesday. It was to a pumpkin patch and AB kept repeating that she was glad we went to a pumpkin patch the Saturday before so she was able to "practice pumpkining and know what to do." I drove us but the children coming from school on the bus were supposed to arrive at 9:30. They were 20 minutes late which made me feel so much better about my 2-minute tardiness. 

There's not a colored tree to be seen in our neck of the woods but there are pumpkins of every shade. Annabelle interrupted the man giving a speech on the lifecycle of pumpkins to say that she doesn't like to eat the inside of pumpkins, only the seeds. The strings are too gross. But she likes the seeds. We cooked them with butter and cooked them in the oven and then Mom ate some. But the inside is yucky.

 Another day, another goat to feed. 

Maybe if she had a goat to snuggle with she'd go back to being a good sleeper.