Thankful kind of day.

I am happy to report that Addison has been sleeping better since her night terror episode. She's gone to bed more willingly and has not awoken as often or as early in the morning. The night after her episode she slept in her bed all night (well, if 6:30 AM counts as all night!)...and last night she slept in her bed until 1:30. Not great, but better than 11, which is what we had been dealing with.

I have had three awesome days at work. I haven't been cursed at or called any disgusting names at all! Believe it or not, that's a very good week for me. And for my kids...they've actually all been present & in class. That makes it all that much more amazing that I haven't been subjected to verbal lashings! Whoo hoo for good days at Pace! I just hope I haven't jinxed myself by writing this today...crossing my fingers that tomorrow is a good day, too. :-)

We got our mini-notebook computer yesterday. It's tiny. It's an Asus Eee PC. We got the plain black one. I didn't know they came in green and pink, too, otherwise we'd have one of those colors. It's awesome now that we have two computers...we can do all our computer stuff at the same time & have more time to have actual, real conversations with one another! What an idea!

In really, really big news for our family today: Addison got invited to her first friend "birfee" party! It's for her bestest friend at school, Madelyn, who is almost exactly one month younger than Adds. It's next Saturday & we are very excited. I'm going to the Florida Educational Technology Conference in Orlando on Wednesday. I'm supposed to stay until Saturday and drive back with my co-worker, Joanna, and my boss, Robin...but I'm thinking of driving down by myself so I can leave on Friday afternoon. That way I won't miss Madelyn's birthday party. I HAVE to be there for Addison's first friend birthday party!

Thank heaven the weekend is nearly upon us...

a quick note

Just a quick note to say that Addison slept a little better last night. No night terrors to report. She did wake up at 11:30 and would not go back to sleep until she was snuggled nicely between Robert & me on our bed. Thankfully, we all slept until I knocked the clock off the nightstand at 6AM. Why did I knock the clock off the nightstand, you ask? Because Addison requires more than 1/2 the space in our queen bed...this mean many, many nights that she's in bed with us that I end up with my head on the nightstand. Yea for fun times.

Mom & Dad brought over yummy Sonny's for dinner tonight. It was awesome to have dinner cooked for us. I love nights like this!

Dad bought our tickets for our California trip in July. We selected our seats so that I sit next to Hoyt and Robert sits next to Addison. This is because I'll be a scaredy-cat on all the planes and will be virtually no help in dealing with Addison. God bless my loving, understanding husband who doesn't make fun of me for my irrational fear of airplanes!

night terrors are not nightmares

Just in case you were wondering, when kids turn two, they start developing fears. These fears manifest at night time - most of us probably remember how scary it was to go to sleep at night all alone. I still remember.

Anyway, Addison has had trouble sleeping for a few weeks now, mostly just waking up at 2 or 3 AM and coming into our room where she promptly falls back asleep. In the last few nights, she's started waking up, sobbing uncontrollably. Last night was the worst. She'd been asleep for two hours when she abruptly woke up. She was coughing, choking, screaming, fighting us to put her down. She ran to the front door insisting that we go home - "Addy want to go home!!!", like she had no idea that we were home. She didn't want to be held, talked to, given water, left alone, stand up, sit down, nothing was right. She went on like that for almost 30 minutes. It was horribly scary for Robert & me. She calmed down only after we put on her Tinkerbell DVD. She stayed up for about an hour after that, & didn't wake up again until 5 AM, when she did the typical come into our bed routine.

Today I did some research and found out that there are these things called "night terrors" as well as nightmares. The easiest way (according to the article I read) to tell the difference between the two is if the kid is more upset in the morning it was a nightmare; if the parents are more upset, it was a night terror. Addison had no recollection of watching Tinkerbell or her 30 minute outburst, but we sure did. Night terrors happen when the child is still technically asleep, but they are having a lucid dream, often walking, talking, crying, screaming, whatever, but not perceiving a parent's presence correctly, so us talking to her & picking her up likely made the situation worse. We know now, but hopefully it doesn't happen again. It was quite frightening to be unable to calm her for such a long time. Wish us luck tonight!