no normal

"How do you do it?" Matt asked as he groggily sat in the living room, a cup of coffee plastered to his hands.
"Do what?" I responded, folding laundry.
"Stay cheerful when your sleep is interrupted night after night."
"Do I have any other choice?"

I'm sitting on the couch now at 6 a.m. Thea "got up" at 5:30 and now she looks like she's ready to go back to sleep. Yesterday she took big naps all day, sometimes with no more than 15 minutes awake in between - so many naps, in fact, that I began to wonder if something was wrong. But no, it is just her nutty schedule. One day she won't nap for more than 20 minutes at a time all day and then next it is glorious three-hour stretches.

A word on 20 minute naps: they are hell. Twenty minutes is just enough time to think you are going to get something done, but not enough time to accomplish anything. Example: Thea goes to sleep, I boil some water and get a cup of tea and some toast going. I sit down at the computer to work on a web site I'm building and from the living room I hear an "annnng." Repeat four or five times and I was just about ready to start tipping back some cold ones.

Instead I cleaned. You can't hear a baby wailing over a vacuum. Every little cleaning project I accomplished made me feel a zillion times better. What is the deal with that? Why is getting all of Thea's little clothes actually into her bureau such a rush? Why is walking into a cleaned-up room so rewarding? I think it is because it provides tangible proof that I actually did something with my day other than clean spit up, change diapers and respond to "hey, mom, guess what?" 50,000 times without swearing.

Matt is off training to be a bigger and better fire dude this week. He went to Palmer, came home for a night (just long enough to be reminded what gloriousness a hotel room can provide at this stage) and went off the next morning to Fairbanks. He came home with stories of singing karaoke and driving through a slalom course at high speeds with a fire truck.
I folded laundry and tried to unravel the mysteries of CSS web design in 20-minute stretches.
Funny thing is, when Matt is gone, it is difficult but I seem to thrive on the challenge. The house is clean. Dinner gets made. Liam and I do fun things like jump in mud puddles. I am supermom, hear me vacuum.