Day 40: A Downhill Day

My day had all potential to start out terrible. Alivia hasn't been doing so hot at night for the 4-5 days. She's been waking up for a feeding at 3ish, and then she is up at 5. She's been sleeping through the night until 5/5:30 for a couple of weeks now, so this waking up for a feeding isn't okay with me. I've been going to bed later than I should too, so it's not all her fault, but I'm exhausted. So when Alivia woke up at 3, and then 5 and didn't go back down, I wasn't all that excited about getting out of bed at 7:30 with Jack. Shawn was up and running, literally, and I had no choice but to take care of my kids.

As I got Lucy and Jack breakfast I had every intention of going back upstairs and putting Alivia down for her morning nap, which I would take advantage of by sleeping a little more myself. Alivia had different plans. She would not go back to sleep! Here this little thing has been up for 3 hours now, and she will not take a nap. So I forced myself to face the hard reality that I wasn't going to get more sleep and my pathetic and very interrupted 4 hours of sleep would have to do for today.

Once I made that choice, I was in good spirits. I finally got Alivia down an hour later and got a shopping trip all planned out. When Shawn came home it was time for me to go running. So, I loaded up all my coupons and headed to the local Middle School's track. I ran a good two miles (no, I didn't time myself, I don't need the reminder that I'm pathetically out of shape, my lungs were reminder enough), which I was very happy with, I even kicked on my last lap! After walking a cool down lap I headed to Safeway, a store which I've decided I don't hate after all.

Today I paid $35 for 21 cans of Hormel Chili, 4 boxes of pasta, 3 64 oz bottles of grape juice (ummm, that sounds yummy right now), 6 packages of Kraft Singles Cheese, 4 loaves of Whole Grain (really healthy) bread, two tubs of butter, and two bottles of peanut butter. I saved 68%! Not too shabby. I'm telling you, this couponing thing is life changing.

When I got home I was in high spirits! The line from Legally Blond kept running through my head: "Exercise creates endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don't shoot there husbands." I was thinking I really need to make sure I'm exercising everyday because I am noticing a huge difference in my mood. That's when Alivia must have gotten wiff of my joy because she decided to do everything in her power to crush my spirits.

We drove up to Dave and Adriana's to watch the BYU Mountain West Conference Championship game. As soon as we walked in, Alivia started crying. And she didn't stop, not once for the next several hours. I just don't think she liked being there, you know how newborns get weird when they are in new places. Well, she knew she wasn't home and she was not okay with it. I had a great time and I'm happy we went, but man, Alivia took a toll on me tonight. BYU lost miserably, and that didn't help. And then you would think Alivia would get better when we got her in the car and headed home. Nope. She screamed for the first 10 minutes in the car. Then she was quiet for 45 minutes, and then picked it right back up when we got home.

By the time I got the other two kids in bed and fed Alivia I started to get really frustrated that she was so wide awake. I took her up to our room and turned out all the lights to try to drop the hint that it's time fore bed, but she kept crying. When I noticed that I was starting to sway a little faster and with more vigor, I decided it was time to put her down and let her cry it out. I've been down here for an hour and 14 minutes and she is still crying up there. Aren't babies suppose to cry themselves to sleep? I'm kinda getting worried about her stubbornness. I mean how can she even still be awake at 10:45, and how in the heck can she remember that she is mad after all this time? She will be a fun teenager.

So as I sat down and tried to decided what to write about tonight, I reviewed my day in my head. Even though I was going on little sleep (which btw, I can hardly keep my eyes open right now) I was so optomisitc this morning. My day only got better as I went running and then on a successful shopping trip. But from that point on, my day has seemed to tumble out of control like a snowball on a downhill course. I'm tired, I want to go to bed, Alivia is still crying, so I can't go to bed. I guess I'll go drink some of my grape juice I paid $.77 for.