A Full Nights' Sleep

It's been about a week or so since I've slept through the night. Anna has been waking every couple hours, either because her fever medication has worn off and she's miserable (last week) or her cough medication has worn off and she's coughing (this week). Last night seemed to be far better than the several nights previous to it, thank goodness. We're both tired!

Being able to function on significantly less sleep has been a surprise of motherhood for me. I'd heard about it, of course, but couldn't really picture myself being able to do it. But I am! Everyone seems to have a different definition of "sleeping through the night" and from my view Anna didn't achieve this until she was six months old. By that time I was back to work. For me it was a bigger milestone when Anna only woke once at night, as getting up once during the night is a breeze, more than once becomes especially tiring and renders me sluggish the next day. Waking once must hit my sleep cycle just right, or something. So, I've felt sluggish for several days now and am trying to move slower, not push myself too much to conserve my energy a bit, get to bed early when I can to get through this time.

Over the weekend I put beautiful, dark red mums in the planters on the steps to our house. They're just gorgeous and I vow that this time I will replant them somewhere in our yard after the season is over. I did not do that with the last mums, but then again the mums I got a year ago weren't this beautiful. At the Beard house Edwin had replanted some mums and they did grow back and bloom without any further intervention, so it is possible for these to be successfully replanted as well. We'll see! I hope so! My window boxes have been unsuccessful year after year, now I am debating whether to fill them with mini-pumpkins (one of our neighbors did this and it's really cute) or just wait a little bit longer and fill them with pine cones. I wonder where I could go and just pick up some pine cones for this, it seems silly to have to buy them or pay a lot of money for them.

I mailed out Anna's birthday party invitations yesterday. I bought her invitations, decorations, etc., at Party City, a store I had never stepped foot in until a week ago. What a festive place to look around, and with Halloween imminent there was a hustle and bustle that made it fun to be there. I think I have everything we'll need from that store, now I have to figure out how to incorporate duckies into the party and decide on the cake. Decisions, decisions!

A couple nights ago I finally finished Angels and Demons. Eh. It was entertaining to a point, but then somewhere 2/3 through it got tiresome and a chore to read. How that is possible when the chapters are only 2-3 pages long with simple dialogue and lots of action is perplexing. The motive of the bad guy seemed too far fetched to be believable and the inevitable love story between Langdon and Vittoria cheesy and juvenile, thrown in for good measure and unnecessary. Oh well. Not that the DaVinci Code is a literary masterpiece but I did like that book far more than this one.

So, I've started to read Anna Karenina. Twenty pages down, eight hundred more to go! My concern is not the length, but keeping all of the Russian names straight. The version I am reading won a prize for translation (Pen/Book of the Month Club and the one the Oprah chose for her book club), so I am hopeful that I won't get bogged down like I did years ago when I attempted War and Peace.

All for now ...