Why I don't write

The author of a blog I have been enjoying since her daughter's birth a year and a half ago just announced that she has a book coming out next year. Because I am a bitch, I'm like, "Where the hell's my book?" instead of being happy for somebody else's accomplishment. And there is the small problem of me not actually having had written a book. So.

I have absolutely no self-discipline when it comes to writing, especially when it's writing for "just me." There's also the problem of the extremely high value I place on sleep, to the detriment of just about everything else in my life. I obsess about it, actually. I can't stand the way I feel and function on less than about 7 hours of sleep, and of course with pregnancy I'd like a hell of a lot more than 7 hours. Last night (or early this morning, I guess) Eliza woke up, unable to sleep with a bad cold. I have been up since 3 AM. I guess it's a good thing that all Eliza wants to do is watch TV this morning, because it's all I can do as well. Long story short, I can't get around the anxiety of wanting and worrying about sleep, and thus can't seem to carve out more hours in the day to spend time writing (though of course I can carve out plenty of time for wasting time on Facebook or watching old episodes of Mad Men).

I do not have this problem with running. With running, I wasn't very good when I first started out, so I knew I had to keep at it and devote time to it in order to improve. And when I trained for a marathon six years ago, I knew that I couldn't just show up and pull a 26.2 out of my back pocket. So I spent six months of weekends out running farther than God intended. But writing? Well, unfortunately for me, I've always been told and known that I'm fairly decent at it. Not that I'm Super Shakespeare by any stretch, but I'm not bad and so I 1) let myself off the hook practice-wise and 2) put a ton a pressure on myself when my writing isn't publishable in its first draft.

My problems with writing have hung around me for a long time and I haven't figured out how to deal with them. I have so much resistance to just sucking it up and WRITING. Which is why, you see, I don't have a book deal.

And speaking of sleep...

Today Eliza napped in a big-girl bed for the first time!

She is a giant kid and has outgrown the confines of her Pack n' Play, so we decided to order her an inflatable air mattress for travel. I realized that we'd have to get her used to the mattress before we could ever expect her to sleep on it in a new place, and figured with her schedule being all off-kilter because of the time change anyway, why not give it a go today? If she didn't nap, no worries save for a few hours of cranky baby.

I talked to her about the big-girl bed every time we were in her bedroom this morning, letting her know that this is where she would take a nap today, asking her how you go night-night and having her show me on the bed, etc. When it came time for her nap, we first read a few books on the bed, and I closed the door and left her alone as usual. I SO wished we had a video monitor so I could have watched her figure things out outside of her crib. I heard her trying to open the door, jumping off the bed a few times, and kicking at the door, but no real fussing. I took a shower, and by the time I got out, she was quiet! I peeked in and saw her with her blanket covering her face, passed out on her mattress. There were books by the door, so she looked at books for a while before going to sleep. And she slept for about two hours! I actually went in there to try to wake her up, just because I'm concerned about getting her back to her regular sleep schedule. (Mama likes her in bed early at night for some free time.)

I am so proud of my little girl. She's a very active child, so I'm so impressed that she figured out how to calm herself down in a room with lots to keep her busy. We'll see how she does over the next few days, but maybe a big-girl bed will be in her future sooner than we anticipated!

Sleeping the sleep of a mother

I woke up at 5:30 this morning when Ben got up to go to the bathroom. Then I lay in bed until 6:20 when Eliza decided to grace us with an early weekend wake-up. I got up with her and tried to put her back down, but once I returned to bed, it was obvious via the flashing red lights and whines coming from the baby monitor that The Stig was up for good. Ben got up with her while I tried to go back to sleep, but by that point my stomach had woken up and started protesting not having been fed for 12 hours. So that was the end of that.

While never a rockstar sleeper, having a baby has inched me ever closer to Princess and the Pea status. Everything in my bedroom has to be just so before I can fall asleep, and I have to pee about 18 times before I can be confident that I won't wake up in the middle of the night needing to go to the bathroom, because if I wake up there is a very good chance that I won't get back to sleep for two hours. And if Eliza wakes up in the middle of the night I can guarantee you that I will spend 10 minutes with her and another hour and a half tossing and turning in bed. I think being pregnant and giving birth turned my body into a hormonal fiesta, a party which, in the Mexican tradition, seems to be neverending.