Reese and Julie: The First Week of School

Well, we survived our first week of school. Well, it was the first week for preschool and for university, the second week of school for me at the high school. Todd taught his first set of classes and has really enjoyed it. I have enjoyed working on the lesson plans with him and hearing about how they went (surprisingly I need a little more mental stimulation than what an 8 week old and a 3 year old can provide - plus I love using all of the educational philosophy and methods we've been learning at the high school). This was my second week of work. I only went in a day and a half and I was EXHAUSTED. I came home after my full day on Wednesday and slept for 2.5 hours. I probably could have slept through the night if I weren't a human feeding machine for Julie. Either I'm too much a product of our consumer culture (I need more, more, MORE) or I still like my work too much because I keep coming up with more and more stuff I want to do for our campus ministry. Or maybe it's the whole mental stimulation thing. Of course my work is really fun - right now I am rewatching the first season of Glee for work purposes....

Reese started her school on Monday. She broke down Sunday night on the way home from church crying and saying that she didn't want to go. We said ok and that we'd talk about it in the morning. Of course by then she was ready to go. She LOVES her new 3/4s room at school. She's most excited about getting to play on the big kids' playground so that is almost all I get to hear about her school day (the first day when I picked her up, her teacher told me that they were teaching her how to play on the big kid playground - she wanted to play on the swings but couldn't climb on and her bottom kept falling off and she even tried climbing the rope). It also helps that there are lot of kids from her old class in her new room and that she made a new friend who, according the stories she tells me, she must play with a lot. She's finally playing with kids her own age! Yay!

The best part, however, of Reese being in school is that it wears her out. She has been so tired from having so much fun that she's taken up playing "taking a rest" where she lays in her bed for a while :-). The other night she was so tired that, in the middle of dinner, she asked to go to bed. Even better, on Thursday I went to wake Reese up after a surprisingly long time of silence. I opened her door, looked at her bed and it was empty. I peered around her room unable to find her. I creeped up to her bed for a better look and saw a little head sticking out sideways from between her pillows. Her entire body was sideways half off the bed inside her pillowcase. She must have changed into a pretty dress (a typical activity for when she is supposed to be napping), stepped inside her pillowcase with the pillow still inside as if it were a sleeping bag, and then in the middle of playing standing next to her bed, leaned over the bed and fallen asleep. When Todd asked her about this she told him that she had been hiding.

Reese isn't the only one who has been sleeping well lately. This week Julie started having one good sleep a day for around 5 hours at a time. Unfortunately these started around 9:00 so that I didn't glean the benefits as well as I could have. Then, on Thursday night, she slept from midnight until 6:00am. For those of you who have never had a baby, this is like winning the lottery. It was amazing to sleep for 6 hours straight. On Friday I was so excited that I started making plans for a new schedule and having Julie sleep alone in her room. I was wildly optomistic. Really I was foolishly optomistic. Last night (Friday night) she was up at midnight, 2, 6 and then woke up for the day at 8am. Ugh. I still have hope, though. I know sleep is possible. And trust me, I am determined to get it.