How do you provide motivation in a sleep deprived state?

There are two questions dominating my life right now:

1.       How do you get a 6-month-old to sleep for longer than two hours at a time at night?

2.       How do you motivate a 7-year-old to strive for her personal best, rather than just doing only the bare minimum to get by?

 

Does anyone have any suggestions, because one of these is keeping me up at night (literally) and the other is consuming me during the day?

 

I am amazed at how much my daughter is affected by sleep. Some babies can have a day of poor sleep and it takes them a day to get over it. Not my little one! She has a day of bad sleep and it has taken us a week now to get over it! The poor little girl is sleep deprieved and making it worse each day with crappy naps and terrible night sleep. Plus she’s up at 5:30 a.m. everyday now that daylight savings time has ended. Oh my aching head. Lack of sleep is tough enough, but now my semi-cold/cough is getting worse because I’m just not able to get enough sleep to kick its butt. I have tried to read everything I actually have time to read on the subject of sleep and it’s a complicated topic. Our bodies need sleep to survive and yet we oftentimes have to be taught how to get good sleep. It reminds me a little of my favorite book, Insomnia, when Joe Wiser says that doctors will tell you that lack of sleep will not kill you, but what really goes on the death certificate is much worse.

 

The second item plaguing me recently is motivation. My daughter is incredibly bright. She is above grade level in reading, remarkable at spelling, and capable of learning just about anything. However, she received a low mark on her report card. Her teacher has her pegged and realizes that she is just not striving for her personal best. She does just enough to get by. She is asked to write in her journal, so she does so for about ten minutes and then declares that she is done. She is asked to read for 20 minutes each night, so she does and then immediately closes the book and moves onto something else. She does not seem engaged to the point of wanting to learn or discover more. She is not engaged enough to want to push herself to the next level. I am completely internally motivated, so I am at a loss as to how to effectively motivate my daughter. Do I reward her for accomplishments? That hardly seems to be a good way to push her, because then what happens when we no longer provide her with a reward. Do I challenge her by letting her know that her levels are not as high as we thought they were? Her teacher actually told me that her first reading test put her right at grade level. She retested her and was able to get a higher and presumibly more accurate score. I’m assuming that she just flat out didn’t try the first time. Is the problem that she has been told so often that she is very intelligent, so she beliees she doesn’t have to try very hard to succeed? Is it possible she has “too much” self-esteem?

 

I’m at a loss.

 

 

 

 

 

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Naptime Anyone?

Whew - I'm so very tired. It's now been 8 weeks since I've gotten a full and uninterrupted night's sleep. And I'm sure the trend will continue. But looking into the face of my beautiful daughter tonight will make me forget that I was yawning and nodding off at my desk all day today.

I did manage a very good hike on Saturday. Add the 10 pounds of baby I carried with me and I think it can be considered a bit of weight training as well. I also did a sweat inducing workout on Monday, but it's not looking good for the rest of this week. Hopefully I will be sneaking in lunchtime workouts on Thursday and Friday. I just have to stop yawning long enough to get on that treadmill! I also reserved some mom and baby yoga dvds from the library. We'll see how those go. Spending time with AnnaSophia - big thumbs up. Doing yoga...well. It's never really been my favorite form of exercise. But I'll give it a shot.

Day 14: 153 pounds, 165 days and 33 pounds to go.

One journey ends, another begins

My beautiful baby girl was born on May 15^th at 6:45 in the morning. She was 2 ½ weeks early, but a perfect weight and was born with absolutely no complications. It is such a relief to have her here and even more of a relief to not be pregnant anymore. While it certainly wasn’t a terrible experience, I’m very glad to have my body back to myself. And ecstatic to be able to bend down and tie my shoes!

 

Six weeks of recovery time and now it’s time to start my next journey. I did not lose 60 pounds several years ago, just to let it all come back. As of today I am 155 pounds. My goal weight (I am 5’2”) is 120 pounds. Which leaves me with a weight loss target of 35 pounds. More than I had hoped to gain, but not an unmanageable number. If I can lose 1 pound each week, I will be able to reach my goal by March 2^nd of next year. If I can pull off losing 2 pounds a week, I can reach my goal by Halloween. I’m really aiming for somewhere in between those two dates. I think I’ll aim to hit my target weight at Christmas. This rounds out to 7 pounds a month for the next 5 months.

 

While this goal is certainly possible, it’s going to be a lot harder than it was last time. The last time I lost weight I was single and I wasn’t a mom. My finances were strong enough to afford the Nutrisystem plan. Things are a bit different now. I’m going to have to rely heavily on my lunchtime workouts and focus on crafting my own diet plan rather than having the luxury of simply following directions and eating what is sent to me.

 

My lunchtime workout today was 30 minutes of walking at a pretty brisk pace. I’d like to get up to 4 miles an hour, but today I could only pull of 3.3mph. Of course, I had the incline working against me too. I’m sure that counts for something. Then I did 3 sets of 16 reps on the leg machine (inner and outer thigh exercises) and the same number of sets/reps for my arms (bicep curls and dumbbell rows). It felt really good to be sweaty and tired again. It really felt like maybe I accomplished a little. My diet today has been okay – I avoided the doughnut and burrito e-mails and have only eaten what I brought with me from home. My water intake definitely needs to increase. I’m only on my second glass today. Though I did drink a bottle of water in the car on the way to work. I think my biggest diet challenge is breakfast. I need to find breakfast options that will keep me satisfied for a decent amount of time without blowing my calorie and fat count for the day. The Nutrisystem breakfasts were really tasty, but I’m really not able to find anything like them other than oatmeal packets. That will be my first nutrition goal – to find a good breakfast option that will fill the belly and still stay within reasonable calorie and fat limits.  

 

Day 1: 155 pounds, 178 days and 35 pounds to go.

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My love/hate addiction

I simultaneously love and hate finishing books. I finished two yesterday – a book and an audio book. It was fantastic. It was miserable. Is anyone following this? I get the majority of my books from the library. So I am constantly trying to beat the due date and oftentimes failing miserably. When I do finish a book there is the sense of completion. Something to check off the old to-do list. There’s also the feeling that I’m getting organized by placing that book in the library bag. That book is now one less thing cluttering my bedside table, exercise bag, passenger side car seat, etc.

However, I can’t help but feel empty. Lost. That I’ve somehow been disconnected from my new friends. The characters I’ve connected with, the story the author is telling me still linger in my brain taunting me about the fact that I will no longer be able to learn more about their world.

I think the worst case of this is when I finish an audio book in the car. It doesn’t matter that the story has ended, the trip is still going. And what do I listen to now? I was so absorbed into the world of the book that sometimes I have to sit there in silence. Radio is too jarring, too harsh and abrupt.

Then of course, I must move onto the next book which takes time. It’s a chapter or two before I start remembering which character is which and who is speaking etc. And there’s a time to adjust to the author’s language. Eventually I become accepting of the new book and what it has to offer me. That is until, like they all do, it ends.

 

A very long week

Tomorrow my little monster girl heads to California for a week. I can’t help but worry about her. I never quite know what to expect during these trips. My experience has been that my tomboy comes back with an unwanted haircut, a very quiet demeanor, and suddenly dressed in pink. At least it’s only a week this time. I still have a few months before the dreaded 2-month departure.

 

I feel so helpless and unable to protect my stepdaughter. I love her as though I had given birth to her myself and yet she steps out to that other piece of her life and I’m powerless to make sure that she can be herself and express who she truly is. I have been incredibly pleased that she has not been teased in school by her peers about her tomboy sense of style that I find so amazingly wonderful and unique. Yet she is changed when she returns from her visits. After a short period of readjustment, she seems to swing even more into the tomboy/boy clothes loving persona. I can’t help but worry that this is not healthy for her. Yet I have no say her. No control. My ability to protect her only extends to “my time” with her.

 

Thus begins the countdown. One week. I just have to make it until next Monday evening. And then I can once again start to repair what I can’t help but see as little holes in her heart that seem to tear with every visit. Please let them be filled with love. Please don’t let the scar tissue take over her precious and amazing heart.

 

Never done...

I feel perpetually behind. I just can’t catch up. I can’t “finish” anything. I try – I really do. But the laundry is never done; the house is never clean (heck, I can’t get one room clean); I haven’t finished a quilt in, um, a very long time; the girl scout stuff is never organized and neither is the quilt group stuff; filing is never done; and I’m so behind on the journaling I want to do for my kids.

 

How could I possibly add to my endless list with a resolution? Something new to try to accomplish? Heck no! I don’t need to add anything else to my endless list of to-dos. All I can do is try to keep my head above water. Oh well, guess I should just admit it – super-mom, super-wife, super-employee, super-quilter…I am not. And I probably will never be. But I guess that’s okay. Because I still get to spend time with my daughter as her girl scout leader – organized or not. And I get to quilt with her – sporadic though it may be. And I get to spend time with my husband – in our messy living room. It’ll do. Especially if I can get all of us in clean underwear each day.

 

And yes, the picture above has nothing to do with anything. Except that it has now made me want ice cream. I can’t help it. This is what pregnant women do. I didn’t even finish finding a cool pic or clipart for my blog post. I searched for “overwhelmed”, “piled”, and “covered”. What I got was chocolate covered ice cream…yum. So I’ll manage to accomplish one thing today – I’ll be stopping at the store after work to pick up a yummy flavor or two. Check! One thing done.