Rosie started another school year, and she is pumped. It doesn’t take much to get her excited though.

In addition to being excited about a new school year, mom and dad are excited for the fall and a little bit more routine mixed in with everything.

We started the walk to school “parent train” again; a group of 3-4 families meet at the corner and cycle through taking the kids the last 1/4 mile to the front door of the school. Honestly, this is the best. I never thought walking to school would be a highlight, but I really enjoy this time in the mornings.

Mercy doesn’t smile much- but she was smiling just BEFORE this picture was taken.

Speaking of Mercy…

Sleep regression is terrible. A few weeks ago, Taylor was out with some friends and a storm rolled in over our house. This would normally be no big deal, but the storm came in right at about Mercy’s bedtime, and it was a little unusual. Instead of the storm lasting about 15 minutes and passing by, the storm just stalled, and sat right over our house, for about 90 minutes.

Every time I said “it’s going to stop real soon”, I proved to be a liar. It didn’t stop, and Mercy got scared. I got frustrated- bedtime ended up being close to a 2 hour routine that night.

Ever since then, Mercy has been freaking out at bedtime. Instead of going nicely to her bed, she insists that the door stay open. She has a million reasons NOT to stay in her bed (I need water, I need a hug, I need to go potty). She screams and screams, and if she wakes up in the middle of the night, she will scream and scream unless you stay in the room with her. And she will just come out of her room and scream and wake the whole house up. Rosie is struggling too, because her sleep is interrupted throughout the night.

Taylor and I are exhausted. This has been terrible. Yet, not enough time has passed to where this will be a long-term habit, but we do not want it to go on much longer. What should be done?

Personally, after 90 minutes, my patience is usually around 0. If she cannot fall asleep after 90 minutes, I am tempted to give her a sleep aid of some kind, but that isn’t the best solution.

What does the internet say we should do?

• Read before bed.
• Create a nighttime routine
• Give her a blankie to keep her “safe”
• Spend time in her room to normalize it.
• Talk calmly and gentle to her about bedtime.

Done and done- now what? None of this addresses her issue- a calm kid, until bed time.

We went to the beach last weekend, partially with the hope that a change of scenery would help. It did- sort of. But, we talked it over, and decided one of the main issues is that she keeps coming out of her room. She would still be sleeping in a crib (not her current big-kid bed), except she kept getting out of it. At the same time, she is begging for the door to stay open. The challenge is that her room is right beside the living room, so if her door is open, the family is “held hostage” by this action, knowing that the slightest sneeze could put us into a 30 minute spiral.

So I had an idea: We need to keep her in her room, and she needs to learn to comfort herself when she is worked up like that. Our house (and doors and doorknobs) are close to 70 years old, so the normal child proof doorknobs won’t work. But this did: a simple, lock from the outside for children.

We tried it last night, and per usual, she freaked out at bedtime. For 15 minutes I did what the internet said: speak calmly, put her back in her bed, and do not match her level of screaming or stress. Then, I just locked it, and something amazing happened: she fell asleep.

This may seem insignificant depending on when the last time was you were around small kids, but this was huge for us. After dragging trough life like a living dream for 2 weeks, we may be getting to the other side.

The expensive parts

Life is expensive sometimes, and we are entering into one of those seasons. We have several trees in the front yard, and because of them, our roof is showing its age and needs to be replaced. We have been working with insurance about it, but they will not budge, so we need to pay out-of-pocket for it, and paying for a roof is like paying for new tires: it is expensive, and you don’t have much to show for it. After that expense, everything still functions just like it did before.

In addition to the roof, we have slowly been putting the pieces together for the outdoor garage, and how the electricity out there is not working properly. And electrician pointed out that there are two lines feeding the garage, and one of them was cut; the other line was 90% cut, and created some “arcing”, which is similar to “sparking”, where the current turns on and off repeatedly.

This had the impact of frying everything out there: Tv, stereo, AC unit. And, the only way to fix it is by re-trenching a new line out there, which is also thousands of dollars.

But that’s not all. Before going the beach last weekend, the car needed to be inspected and have the oil changed.

“You need new tires and axles.” Axles? Since when do cars go through axles? When getting the car back, all sorts of other lights were on on the dash; what the heck is a VBA system in a car? Ours has an issue now, it seems. Luckily, the mechanic will fix all the lights. Unfortunately, it was after my father in law had to drive the car and saw a colorful dash filled with errors.

Ugh. Life is expensive, but we will make it through. I think Taylor and I are both getting close to looking into a new car the next time our bill is a couple thousand dollars.