Rollin' / Tired Rant

He's been verrrrry close for a few days, but today when Liz walked into the kitchen, where Vansen was supposed to be staring up and batting at his toys, he was on his belly.  Up until now, he's been foiled in his attempts by his right arm, like in the third pic above.  Up until now, we've been more-or-less comfortable leaving him unattended on the couch, changing table, our bed, etc....  Well, that's over forever.

With Liz going back to work next week (!!!), we're focusing on trying to get Vansen to sleep longer at night. His first stretch of sleep is often good, as he goes down around 8:30 and can sleep through til 1:30, sometimes a little longer.  But that doesn't do us a ton of good because we often don't get to bed until 11:30 most nights, so it's effectively 2 hours of sleep for us.  And then he's up every 2-3 hours after that.  Liz hasn't slept for 5 hours straight more than once or twice in the past 4 months, and for the most part a 3 hour stretch is standard.  Sounds crazy when I say it like that, but that's the reality.  And now that Huelan is mostly potty trained, she will sometimes get up in the middle of the night asking to get taken to the potty instead of filling her pull-up, so that's another impediment to being well-rested.

I won't catalog all of the strategies we're trying, but Vansen just got moved from the co-sleeper to his own crib in his own room, so we're hoping that helps somehow.  Not sure what the logic there is, but we're game to give it a try.

Also on the subject of sleep, there was a study recently publicized about the role of sleep. It's now believed that during sleep, the brain cells open up and allow fluid to wash out toxins from synapses, perhaps maintaining and improving function.  No sleep = dirty synapses = low functioning.  So science is finally catching up to what new parents have known for eons.

Before Huelan, I rarely drank coffee in the morning.  Haha that was a long time ago.

To me, the most obvious effect of chronic sleep deprivation (isn't that how they torture P.O.W.s & force false confessions?) is difficulty with anything creative.  It just seems to take too much energy.  Or maybe it'll get to a point where we're so tired that we'll reach some uber-creative state, like a hallucinatory, muse-inspired fugue.

Until then, here's what we've been up to in list form, and in no particular order:
- Pumpkin patch! Kind of like a cross between a pumpkin lot and carnival with rides and snow cones.  After Halloween, they truck in the evergreens and gear up for Xmas.  We didn't ride the giant slide this year, which I am regretting.
- Swimming at Anh &  Patty's new pad - warm Walnut Creek and Ly Family Chicken.
- Gosia's family came over for dinner- her twins were here for a month from Warsaw, but went back last week.
- Hannah's third Bday party, with Liz and Karen being nursing twinsies.
- Housewarming at Viv and Jason's- plenty of room for the girls to run around.  It'll seem small once the boys are big enough roam, though.
- FaceTime with Great Grampa.  He only has these two great-grandkids, and he loooooves them.  This was super fun and we'll be doing it again soon.

Pics here