My kids have been extra awful at bedtime. I’ve written about it here and here and here and here.

At bedtime, I have repeatedly threatened to call Santa to report their naughty behavior. They just won’t settle down. But it isn’t working. And I am at my wit’s end.

So when Santa asked me what I wanted for Christmas, the obvious answer was that I would like my children to go to bed without all the drama. Mommy just wants a good night’s sleep.

Santa threw his head back and gave me one of his classic belly laughs. He said warmly, “Get out the video camera on that fancy phone of yours.”

And he granted my wish, and recorded this special message just for my girls. Proof positive if you believe and your heart is pure, magical things really do happen at Christmas.

My whole world revolves around a well-coordinated routine. As a single mom, I find it provides my girls with a critical sense of stability. They benefit from knowing exactly what to expect when they are with me.

Of all the things we do as part of this routine, reading together is the most important. We read all the time. And every night they spend with me, when I tuck them in, we sing songs and read. It’s such a special time for us. Ellie hums along from her crib and Abby sings loudly and off-key. Have you ever heard a two-year-old belt out “Somewhere Over the Rainbow?” It will melt you into a puddle.

But Monday night, I was extra exhausted and extra desperate. So I laid in bed with Abby (Ellie was already fast asleep) and I read, out loud, the brand new Spring 2011 Pottery Barn catalog. I was so happy. Talk about two birds and one stone, right?

Because my girls are fortunate to be from a family of literary nerds* we have a ton of kids’ books. So it wasn’t for lack of material. It was just that the catalog had been sitting on my counter for over a week and I hadn’t so much as thumbed through it. The cover read “Comfortable Style,” promising “a designer guide to casual living.” Sounds like the holy grail for a busy but sorta stylish girl like myself, right?

I expected Abby to see right through it as I began to read, as she does with most of my shortcuts. But she LOVED it. As we turned the pages, she would point out shapes and colors with glee in her eyes.

She’d exclaim “budderfwhy piw-whoah” as I admired the new line of media storage. She’d pretend to eat the red sorbet right out of the footed dessert bowls I was pining after. She even tried to blow out the pillar candles, placed on the mantle under beveled mirror I adored.

But then she started looking at the pages more carefully. She began asking some pretty obvious questions.

“Why so many piw-whoahs on dat bed mama?”

“AN MOMMY why you need a lotta lotta cups for?”

“Why you put BIG BIG scissors on dat wall?”

She made a pretty good point. Why DID we need so many useless pillows on our beds, enough glasses for THREE different types of drinks at a dinner table, and why WOULD you place a GIANT pair of scissors on the wall as decoration?

That night, she taught me two very important lessons. First, I need to stop daydreaming about decorating my place with expensive crap that we really don’t need. What I have here with my girls is perfect and complete.

And second, I might actually be able to get away with this whole reading-what-I-want thing once in a while. Tonight, I’m going to try the February Oprah magazine. 

*Don’t tell my mom what I’ve done, she’s an early childhood literacy expert and would probably have a cow.

Photo credit http://www.potterybarn.com/.

…just puppets. Read more in my post at OC Family.

If it’s true that beauty is achieved by getting a good night’s sleep, then I am one ugly duckling. I’ve been tired for years.  And it’s hardly the first time I’ve complained about sleep, or lack thereof.  So recently I decided to take charge of the ONE thing in my life I could control at least a little bit: sleep.

Be cautious about converting a crib to a toddler bed. It somehow makes bedtime optional.

Let’s face it. Things around here are busy and getting busier. We’ve had an incredibly busy and hectic month, with lots of ups and downs. I’m not going to lie–I’ll be happy to see the month end next week.

Abby is finally teething, which makes me happy (READ: glad that she isn’t teething in 11 weeks when we also have a screaming newborn). But I am in a sort of downward spiral. She has stopped sleeping for longer than a two-hour spurt at night. And she doesn’t just wake up with a whimper. It’s a full-fledged, teary howl that is enough to push even the most sane (which I don’t claim to be) mom over the edge. Poor Abby, she’s got five teeth coming in all at the same time. I’d be fussy, too.

It isn’t like I can look forward and say “at least in June I’ll be able to sleep.” I am thinking a little more long term, like “when the girls are in college and don’t live here anymore, I’ll be able to sleep.”

But just because she screams and keeps me up all night, it doesn’t mean that I get to skip work the next day. Professional Pam is supposed to show up looking put together. In clean, pressed business clothes, and shoes that aren’t Uggs or Old Navy flip flops. As my belly grows, it’s getting harder to fit into anything that looks presentable, or shoes that fit. And the WORST part is that I have a job that requires focus and brainpower. So the whole half-asleep thing doesn’t really fly. But I make it work because I have to–even though by the time Friday night comes, I find myself literally thanking God that I didn’t keel over that week.

A dear friend here at work (who shall remain nameless) told me once that she had a plan to shut her office door and take a nap under her desk, a la George Costanza. She would take a handful of paperclips with her so that if someone came in or knocked, she could simply explain that she had dropped the paperclips under her desk and she was picking them up.

I have so many pictures to post, but they are very random and spread out over the last month. I promise to upload some recent pics with some quirky photo captions sometime in the next couple of days. But if you need me in the meantime, I’ll just be here under my desk picking up paperclips.