A good little monkey

Owen is not sleeping.  The first few months of his life, we had the dream situation.  The one that people tell you not to talk about too much with other parents because they will hate you for it.  Then he hit the 3 month mark and it all changed.  He started waking up a ton during the night and, alas, he's never gone back to "sleeping through the night".  To tell you the truth I haven't really cared...well, of course I've CARED but I've taken it in stride, knowing how fast they grow and change and enjoying the extra snuggling I get with him when I feed him and bring him into our bed.  I haven't even really been that over-tired, especially compared to how tired I always was when Zoe was a baby and I worked a full time job, getting home at midnight most nights...(now THAT was tired!)  The past few days have been particularly sleepless in my house though and, although I still don't feel like a zombie I can tell I am tired because I'm a little more short tempered and I fall asleep on the couch at night despite all efforts not to.

Also, though I can always tell I'm tired when I start being overly, irrationally critical of books I read to Zoe and the shows that she watches.  Today I was reading a harmless little book about a princess who gets captured by a witch and escapes with the help of the witch's recently reformed dragon and a prince.  The author does her best to make it PC (the princess and the prince end up friends in the end instead of getting married) but she seems to have spent all her energy into that and neglecting the logistics of the actual STORY.  The thing that gets me the most is that the princess is talking to the dragon through this huge, wide open window, telling him to go get help and the dragon FLIES AWAY to get help (the prince) and bring him back so that the princess can then climb out of the window, unassisted, and fly away back to her kingdom with them!  Can you believe it??!  It annoys me every time I read it....well, every time I read it tired anyway....and don't even get me STARTED on Curious George.  That monkey will never learn.  Always making the worst choices and then acting all cute and innocent about it so that no one ever gets mad at him.  I guess The Man with the Yellow Hat has no right to get mad at him, since it's all his fault...always leaving George to fend for himself all day long!  The man should be arrested, seriously.  If not for his repeated neglect but for the fact that he actually went to Africa, kidnapped George and smuggled him back into the United States on a ship to sell him to a zoo (we recently purchased the original Curious George stories and she's a little obsessed).  Anyway, when I catch myself thinking this way, it becomes clear to me that I am not getting enough sleep.

Today, to keep my mind off the sleepiness and in an effort to steer clear of escalating crankiness (my own), Zoe and I made some clean mud.  It was really easy and really fun and super easy to clean up since it's made mostly of soap!  Great little activity for a 3 year old too since she could help me make it, play with it and clean it up.

Ripping up the toilet paper

Grating the soap

Combining

Mixing it all up

"Cooking"

Ta-da!

Clean up