the two sleeps

I want to take a moment to apologize to anyone who has seen me in the last few days, because I honestly cannot stop discussing the two sleeps.  It's a phenomenon that has now taken over my mind and I keep trying to bring it up in random conversations.  So if you've already heard me talking about it, please feel free to move right along.  I've become a woman obsessed - HAH.

So, the two sleeps.
A few weeks ago, I read this article (but there are lots of other articles that mention it too) and I was intrigued.  At the time of reading, we hadn't quite made it to Daylight Savings Time (DST) yet, but I was still interested in at least considering the Two Sleeps - ya know, just for a go at it.

Cut to actual DST and our family quickly fell into the category of people highly negatively effected by the lack of daylight in the late afternoon.  (Momentary shout-out to my sweet friend Shelly in Alaska who has so much less daylight then me every single day.  You are a real life hero of mine.  I'm not exaggerating).  We are really good at some things as a family- lack of sunlight during the day is not one of them.  We are the kind of a family that announces every single afternoon, 'Can you believe it's dark already?' like we have never lived with DST before.  Surprisingly, just a day into DST, the kids got readjusted to the time change; alas, we - the parents - did not.

In the days following DST, I was putting Gemma to bed and either passing out asleep on her floor or barely making it to the couch downstairs before falling into a deep slumber...AT 9pm.  Brandon was operating similarly and we'd both wake up in a disgruntled state mid-night and berate ourselves for our lack of productivity.  At the time of sundown, which is now around 6pm, we as a family can successfully accomplish these things:  making and eating dinner, dressing children for bed, putting children to bed.  That's it.  It's like the sun goes down and our battery life depletes at an alarming rate.

After a few frustrating nights, I randomly recalled the two sleeps article and had an epiphany.  My body was already sort of trying to attempt the two sleeps, as I was regularly waking up mid-sleep to go upstairs - I just needed to flow with it.  I determined that instead of fighting my inescapable exhaustion in the earlier part of the night, I would instead embrace it and institute the two sleep method in my life.  And I have been feeling better, more productive, and rested than before when I was trying to fight my sleepiness.

Since our acceptance of the two sleep, I've been regularly falling asleep (or more accurately passing out) around 9-9:30p and then naturally waking up again between 12:30-1am.  During this mid-sleep break, we've stayed awake from anywhere between a forty-five minutes to two hours, before getting into bed and sleeping again.  So far, I've been averaging about 6-7 hours of sleep and waking up refreshed with (what feels like at least) less resistance about getting out of bed.  weird, right?

Between the two sleeps recently I've done any or many of the following:  folded a load or two of laundry, put clean sheets on our bed, wiped down the kitchen, swept the floor, and planned out my week in my planner (jotting down notes and tasks to remember).  Brandon has tended to our wood-burning stove in the basement, taken out the garbage, and organized his own work stuff.  Last night, we looked over and discussed our monthly budget at 2am with sound mind and insightful planning - and more importantly a quiet house (while both kids slept peacefully upstairs).  We're like strange night-time elves!  And we have yet to turn to our electronics during the mid-sleep hours - also a strange feat in today's world.  Not by any declaration, but somehow our mid-sleep time feels too sacred to flip on the tv or open the laptop.  It's like a few magical unplugged hours.

Surprisingly, we haven't had any trouble falling back to sleep for the second sleep.  We just go about our normal bedtime routine (brush teeth, wash face, read) and easily go back to slumber until the morning.  What is wild to me is that I'm not getting more or less sleep than before, but that I feel more rested and productive on the two sleep than the stay-up-as-late-as-I-can-try-and-then-try-to-sleep-all-at-once method.

It's crazy, this two sleep thing -but it seems to be making a difference in my DST-adjustment life.  I was not only feeling really tired but also frustrated with myself - for being tired and for not being able to stay up after we put the kids to sleep.  As with all moments of acceptance, just allowing myself to fall asleep early in the night and having this time of quiet and productivity in the middle of the night that feels natural (and is?) has been a huge, welcome relief during this cold, dark winter nights.

Anyone else finding themselves naturally in a two sleep?  Or interested in trying it out?  I'd love to hear if it's as effective for you?  Are we really just strange night-time elves?  (hahha)

Our Spooky Halloween party for Preschoolers

We had our second annual Spooky Halloween party last week for our kids and a few of their friends.  Our kids love Halloween and all the 'spoooooooky' talk, but it always doesn't take much to go from spooky to scary for their ages either.  So we try to make our Halloween party fun, age appropriate, and not crossing into 'scary' territory.  

About two weeks before we had our party, I sent a Red Stamp text invite to the guests' parents.  Our party guests ranged from ages 1.5 to 4 years old and each child had at least one parent attend as well.

After pizza and snacks, we made our way to our first game of Pin the Nose on the Jack 'O Lantern. Earlier that afternoon, while I cut out the pumpkin face, eyes, and mouth; Grey was in charge of cutting out the noses, so he was proud to have helped get the game ready.  The kids were blindfolded with a handkerchief and spun around three times before trying to pin the nose.  This game was a huge hit and we played it several times in a row.  Even our < age 2 guests (Gem & Lila) enjoyed playing this game!

Our next game is a pinterest-halloween favorite, The Dangling Donut Game:  so we'd thought we'd give it a try.  With a menu of pizza, snacks, cookies, and loads of candy - the last thing I wanted to do was give the kids full size donuts to eat.  So we tied mini donuts to strings to have the kids try to eat through them on a string.  This game was a lot harder for them than we thought it would be and for a long while all the grown ups were cracking up while the kids just bopped the donuts off their faces over and over.  We might try this again when the kids are a little older (5+) but for now, it seemed a little tricky and an unnecessary addition to their already major sugar consumption for the evening.

Then it was time for our 'Witch's' Broomstick Limbo game.  We had the kids sneak under the broomstick for a little while and then moved to the much preferred preschool version - Reverse Limbo by having them jump over the broomstick instead.

Standard Limbo

Reverse Limbo (preschooler preferred)

Then it was on to cookie decorating in at the dining room table.  The kids and I had made a batch of sugar cookie dough the day before and made Halloween shape cut-outs to have them ready for the party.  I also used my Grandma's famous boiled icing recipe.  Each kid got five sugar cookies to decorate as they liked - which ranged from no decor (and just straight into their bellies, hah!) to a ton of icing and even more sprinkles.

We made our way back into the living room to jam to a Pandora Halloween station, turn off all the lights (except we kept the hall light on, keeping it just spooky!), and handed out glostick bracelets.  The kids ran and danced all around making spooky noises and screams.  A Spooky Glo-stick Dance Party = wild child mayhem fun!

Our last event of the night came straight out of our last year's Halloween party playbook.  We filled a styrofoam cooler up with water in the kitchen and lay a moving blanket underneath it.  First the parents get a crack at Bobbing for Apples and have you done this recently?  It is always significantly more difficult than I remember in my teenage years.  Serious water up my nose this  year.

The kids think its funny (and sort of cool still, yay!) to watch us grown-ups bob for apples.  Grey and Sophia tried to do the same and Grey actually grabbed an apple by it's stem with his teeth!  Soph went for the more traditional preschooler move of the secret hand-grab (hehheh).

But the real main event (as was last year) is the Apple Splashing game.  The kids maniacally grab apples from the water and slam them back in with huge splashes.  This is hilarious, long-lasting fun for preschoolers and toddlers.  If it was warmer, we would ideally play this game outside (as it make quite a water mess in the kitchen), but with our tile floor, clean up is fairly easy to just take towels or a mop to the floor.  This game also makes for a good final game, as children remove their costumes (happily as they are now wet) and put on their jammies for the car ride home (and hopefully to fall asleep before getting there)

The two main points to keep in mind for a successful Halloween party with very young children are:

1. Keep it short:  our party was only scheduled for an hour and half.  So we had to keep the party moving along.

2. Be flexible:  with varying abilities for this age group of kids, don't expect that every kid will be able to -or more importantly want to - participate in every (or any) activity.  And that's totally fine.  As long as kids are being safe - who cares if you have to skip a game or too and play something else again and again.

We had a great Spooky Preschool Halloween party again this year.  Thank you to my family that helped set up and to all of our spooky, funny little guests and their parents! 

Monday Rumination List

Here's what I've been up to thinking about this past week and weekend-

reading

Just finished (last night) The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak.  Not my favorite writing style, but it was a fascinating and touching story.

Grey loves 'reading' us Good Night, Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann and both kids crack up at the ending of the book.

This article over at the Good Men Project:  The Case Against Saving for College .

This Defense of Disney Princesses article.  Gem is not into princesses (yet) and I've been relieved about that fact, but this was a reminder that there are some redeeming parts of being princess-crazed too.  But was good to read this article to balance the former about the Princess Filter that says, "...I wanted to analyze how unnecessary it is to collapse a heroine into one specific mold, to give them all the same sparkly fashion, the same tiny figures, and the same homogenized plastic smile." .

watching

This video about how kindness is a boomerang put out from LifeVest Inside.  After watching it myself, I sat down with both kids to watch as a 'movie on the ipad.'  I narrated it for them saying things like, 'Look, that man helped the boy up.  That sure was nice.  The boy is feeling happy and thankful now that someone was so nice to him.  He's looking around thinking, hmm, someone was nice to me and now I want to be nice to someone too.  Look!  He is being nice, to that lady!..." and so on and so on.

This video about Mama Hill from Soul Pancake

Smiling about this video where subway riders make signs for the conductors to make their day better (or at least sillier).  Makes me miss living in the city a whole bunch.

eating

We had two meals last week that our whole family loved - as in both kids were markedly chowing down on dinners that didn't include mashed potatoes or pizza (win!)

We had this version of Korean Beef using (just plain) ground beef.  I had to leave out the ginger (because we didn't have any) but it was delicious -served over  rice- and the kids ate it up without any whining.

We also had this Chicken Pot Pie Soup and everyone happily devoured it.  Gemmi at two bowlfuls and then leftovers the following day.  I crockpot'ed the chicken first (in chicken stock until it felt apart into shreds) and then just put all the soup ingredients together at the end.  I used frozen corn & broccoli (because that's what we had on hand) but the original veggies from the recipe sound awesome too.

new happenings

Brandon is participating in Movember and will not be shaving his mustache for the whole month.  I love when he is able to rock a beard which is only occasionally when he's on vacation since his job has a no-beard rule.  He certainly can sport an awesome beard, but he's never only done the 'stache - so I'm anxious to see how this develops.  It's to help raise awareness and funds for men's health, so we're proud and supportive of our Mo'Daddy.

And, I attended my first CV Alumni Association meeting last night and was so glad I did.  I have lots of brainstorming ideas rolling around in my mind this morning and I'm excited to start the new year working with an organization that is dedicated to our high school alma mater that we still love and want to be a part of as adults.

personally loving

After visiting with my dear friend, JP last week (Hi, Jess!) I came home feeling inspired to get our home to feel more beautiful and purposeful.  Visiting with JP always gives me some sort of inspirational boost (like last year's push to make a family yearbook!) and this year, it was being inspired by her home that really feels like each thing she has in it is either beautiful or purposeful.  Since the visit, I've already re-organized our kitchen task center cabinet and color-blocked my dining room built-ins.

triumphs

I've finished our 2011 Yearbook!  Phew, it was rough to get it all done since my pictures were saved all over the place, but it's finally done and ordered from Shutterfly! (eek!  tiny Booboo!) I've been working on it little by little all this year, so now I can get started on slowly putting together our 2013 yearbook:)  I'd like to go back at least to 2010 when Grey was born so we account for at least the start of a 2+ family time...eventually.

Also, thankfully using up the extra pumpkin puree that I inevitably have leftover after making Brandon's birthday pumpkin roll.  I've also made pumpkin gobs and pumpkin & oat morning bread/muffins.  Yay for no leftovers!


working towards

Starting to think about and plan projects we can do as a family on World Kindness day (November 13).

Running everyday in November (although I missed Nov.1st, bleh).  My new running mantra is:  It doesn't have to be for long and it doesn't have to be fast, just go run.   Greyson and I went together to Roxbury park and he rode his bike alongside me jogging.  It wasn't my fastest running (ie. roughly 18 minute miles -hah to stay at his pace) but it was 1.3 miles in and one-on-one time with him- so count it.

Cleaning out more of our 'dumping zone's (like our kitchen task center cabinet above).  We have a lot of these dumping zones around the house (laundry room, upstairs office space, our bedroom dresser, etc) and I want to slowly make my way through them in the month of November to get them organized in a way that they can still be used as a dump for things (because inevitably they will be) but in a more organized way that it won't actually look like a dump.


What are some of the things you ruminating on this Monday morning?