Thursday, November 6, 2008

I'm having a pity party, want to come?

Ok, Vivi, I've officially joined you in the ranks of NaNo-bitch. The wheels have essentially fallen off my grand NaNo plan and I am struggling to hold on. As you all may recall I made the momentous decision to start dragging my keester out of bed at 5:00 am to allow myself two hours of uninterrupted "me time" so I could try to foster a writing routine. This worked like a charm, for exactly two days. I was productive. Things were flowing. Then the fargin' time change happened. I expected it would cause a temporary disruption in the girls' sleep (they normally awaken at 7:30, so probably count on a few 6:30 ish mornings ...) Wrong. For some reason the time change caused my youngest's "mommy detector" to go into hyperdrive. For four mornings straight she woke up at 5:15! On two of those days I hadn't even gotten my document open before I heard her staggering down the hall. And not only was she up, she was up to stay. The first morning I made the mistake of trying to take her back to bed. The shrieking that ensued was horrendous, especially since she shares a room with her sister. So the darling child was hauled into mommy & daddy's bed where my poor groggy husband was expecting us. After four mornings we decided that we were getting dangerously close to this developing into an ingrained pattern. So very begrudgingly I have given up trying to get up at 5:00. I am now trying to squeeze my writing in where ever I can grab a few minutes. I'm managing to make my word count goals so far, but this kind of defeats the purpose of the whole thing. My main reason for NaNoing this year was to make some time for me and to establish a good writing routine. I would be lying if I said I wasn't feeling somewhat resentful yesterday. Apparently even by dragging myself out of bed over two hours earlier than the kids normal wake up call, I'm still not allowed to have any "mommy time".

Fortunately when my youngest woke up crying at 5:40 this morning (I guess she realized she'd overslept her previous 5:15 wake up call) I was able to get her back to sleep and she stayed asleep until 7:00. Even better was that my oldest wasn't woken by her little sister's escapades and she was able to sleep until 7:30. Fingers crossed that tomorrow sees further improvements. I'm hoping that if I can get the kids back on track sleep-wise that in a new days I may be able to try sneaking out of bed at the crack of dawn once more.

3 comments:

Vikki said...

Oh, no! Well, you are not alone...my son has been waking up at 6:30 every single morning since the time change. Like you, I manage time here and there during the day, but it's never anything I can count on. It sucks! And I've now pulled a muscle in my neck, so sitting at my desk hurts. It's like bad NaNo-Karma.

Elizabeth said...

I have the same problem, so now I take my laptop to bed with me (there's a joke in there). When I wake early, I sit in bed and work. This way the babies have no idea that mom is not sleeping anymore.Hubby might groan that I am disturbing him, but I just place a pillow over his head and he goes back to sleep.
Might this work for you?
Or do you not really want a solution and just like to sleep in and I should shut up?

Tracey said...

Oh, Vivi, ouch! Hope you're neck's feeling better.

Actually, E, I was getting into getting up at 5:00. I was finding I was very productive. I'm kinda bummed. I've considered slipping downstairs with the laptop (since my computer is on the same floor as the bedrooms), but my hubby doesn't have word processing software on the laptop (he doesn't need if for what he does with his work stuff). I really don't know if I could manage to write any document of length in word pad with out scratching my eyes out. It just annoys the crap out of me.