four am wakeup call.

i'm 24 weeks tomorrow, and the hip pain while sleeping has commenced.

i don't remember when it started with maggie. i seem to remember going to the doctor after weeks of not sleeping well and my doctor looking at me and saying "you look tired." i feel like if the most unobservant of doctors i've ever had makes a comment like that, you must actually look like a truck ran over, backed up, ran over again and then dragged your remnants far and wide.

so i'm not sure when that started, but i know it was a pretty big, long deal.  we're just a few weeks away from the third trimester (finally! yay!), so i think it was probably around this time.

anyway.

maggie has been making HUGE strides in her sleep. as in, she's basically doing it herself now. she'll rock for a few minutes (like 2 or 3) and then she squirms and points at her bed and signs please when we ask her if she's ready for her bed.  then she might whine and complain a bit, put her bear to bed, or just lay down on her blankets and settle in.

she does it all by herself.

we're still in the room at this point, but we're getting farther and farther away. i'm pretty sure that soon we won't need to be there at all. 

i feel so very proud of her and so very grateful at the same time. it's been hard work, but i think what's most rewarding is that we did it by listening to her and to the Spirit. we did subscribe to anyone's plan of sleep training. we listened to our kid and we prayed. and when the time was right to do something else, we did it.  and it was hard at first and it was exhausting but when i think about how quickly she changed and how much she has grown since then, i am so proud of us for being brave and i am so proud of her for doing it on her own. 

and the past few nights, she's been sleeping better than she has in AGES.  what a blessing.

i don't expect it to be an every night thing. but it's so nice to see that she can do it.  i think she had slept through the night ONCE in the four or five months previous to this last month. now she's done it three or four times (once on the night before her birthday party--what a blessing!).  i'm grateful for long stretches. 

but i don't really get them.  last night, i was wide awake at 4am. i think it might be because my body is so accustomed to not getting straight sleep (longest stretch is usually 3 hours, maybe 4). when it got 5.5 straight hours, it was like BING! TIME TO WAKE UP!  so up i was.  finally, at 5, maggie woke up briefly.  when she went back to sleep, i went to work. i got a lot done, but goodness i am tired at 930.  why am i not in bed?

i still have work to do, and there's something lovely and wonderful about the time to be just me (whether it's working or not) after she goes to bed. she's kind of squally right now--cold + big fat molar coming in (the gum in superswollen now and pushing up) = whiny, weepy, cranky kid.  plus, we're in the throws of the 2-1 nap transition. she's been on one nap for a couple of weeks now, and i think her body is still trying to adjust to that change.  some days she has monster naps. some days she barely has an hour long nap. 

nevertheless. things are good here.  i'm busy but my husband is home more.  i have read 2.5 mysteries in the past two weeks. i have gotten through the grading for seven classes.  i'm about to start four more, and i managed to plan two entire classes (including posting all of the materials and rewriting 8 quizzes) in two days while my baby was sick and my husband was getting there too.

it's a challenging life, but it's a good one.

even when i wake up at 4am.