Primarily because I am a freak-a-leak, I like to sleep in arctic temperatures, which is great, because I live in Illinois, where winters stretch on for what I am sure is actually several years at a stretch. It’s probably a good thing we don’t move to more temperate climates, as I am fairly certain I would never get a night’s sleep again (with or without Alex’s ministrations of doom), and I would probably become one of those people who wakes drenched in sweat and looking like they had just stepped out of the shower.

Let’s all chime in with a collective “Ew.”

But thankfully for my husband AND my sheets, my bedroom at night tends to get pretty frigid, so much so that occasionally I will snuggle a heating pad (As he is my boyfriend, I have christened him “Stu”) until my body adjusts to the extreme cold.

Several weeks ago, I was doing my standard lay on the heating pad (Stu) routine as I read my book before bed, when I noticed two things almost simultaneously: my back was becoming uncomfortably warm AND there was a noxious smell coming from..well, SOMEWHERE (I have 3 cats, a dog, a baby, a rabbit, a hedgehog, and some leftovers in my fridge that have probably grown teeth by now. There’s no shortage of odd smells emanating from anywhere in my home).

Rather than investigate (read: I’m lazy and tired), I shut Stu off and promptly fell asleep.

Several days later, as I shuffled into my bedroom I noticed that there appeared to be foodstuffs on my sheets. Because I was then overtaken my desire to have a little snack, I went over and investigated further.

Nope, not food, and not even blood.

Burns.

I had actually succeeded in burning my sheets.

Rather than spend the next several days playing the What If game, and envisioning myself engulfed by flames (not of the burning love variety, either) while I slumbered in my Green Death Nyquil Haze, I chose to have a good laugh at my own expense.

I mean, they put those warnings on heating pads (and electric blankets) for a reason (no, not the “do not submerge in water” ones. Even I know better than that. Mostly.) and yet I chose to ignore them and do precisely what they warn against.

And I suppose this means yet another trip to Target (read: Mecca) for a fresh set of sheets and possibly a vow to my husband that I never, ever, under any circumstances, should operate anything remotely electric.

What makes me saddest is that I am going to have to say a heartfelt good bye to my warm boyfriend Stu, as I toss him unceremoniously into the garbage can. Turns out he was one of those toxic relationships after all.

Last month (was it really a month ago?), I mentioned that maybe, just maybe I had once had a completely inappropriate crush on Vincent D’Onofrio for a spell, and that I had subsequently moved on to more snarky pastures (i.e. Anthony Bourdain).

But even in my wildest fantasies, I didn’t imply that I would have wanted to have hot monkey love with the guy. Either of ’em. I’d have preferred that we sit around reading poetry to each other while occasionally discussing the virtues of Manet vs. Monet. And then mocking people mercilessly. (I’ll let you figure out who I would do what with).

So today I will present to you the one celebrity with whom I would love to have a night of (hot) gross, dirty sexin’: Tommy Lee.

Yes, you heard it here first: Tommy Lee. I want to have The Sex with Tommy Lee. And then never speak to him again.

I mean, shit, we know he’s packin’.

Your turn. Who would you like to get ridin’ DURRTY with?

——————–

A couple of weeks ago, one of my wonderful blog friends gave me an award (and no, I didn’t even pay her) that made my ickle heart smile. I haven’t mentioned it before for two reasons: one, I have no idea how to put the icon on my blog (I had been contemplating glue and scissors, but it didn’t work, and WHOO BOY did it make a MESS) and two, I had to choose some recipients for ME to award it to.

All right, even Niobe and all of her tech-y goodness couldn’t make it work. Dumb blog not doing what I want it to do.

This is not an easy task.

In spite of my tendency toward bitchiness, I am not very good at singling people out. Maybe it’s the mother in me, but I can’t help but want everyone to win and no one to feel sad (this may be the only nice part of my personality, so deal, people.).

The award is called Daily Dose, and it started over here. It’s supposed to be given to people whose blogs you cannot seem to live without. But if you’re blog is over on my blog roll, I probably at least check in with you once a day (not clever enough to use Google Reader, and I tried bloglines but it confused me, so yeah, I just click on your link here. I’m very high-tech, I know), so that’s not a good means to determine who I give an award to.

So I needed another qualifier and I’m using the word “Daily.” I will give you this award only if you post daily (some of my favorite blogs of all time do not have daily posts, mainly because other people tend to have actual lives, whereas I do not.).

Without further adieu, I present to you my recipients:

My darling Cali, who is going through a not-so-fun time in her life, and yet, remains cheerful and optimistic, which I love about her. Plus, we’re currently in a fight over who gets to be president of the Vincent D’Onofrio fan club, and maybe this will kill her with kindness until she allows me to reign over this important fan club job.

I will also give this award to my girl-crush Niobe , over at Dead Baby Jokes. She always posts something interesting or thought provoking and usually provides a snazzy picture or two that make me green with envy over her talent.

Miss Cricket has voluntarily agreed to post every day for the whole year, a feat that although I wish I could join her in, I am not brave enough. Plus, she just adopted a new kitty-cat, and I loves me my cats, so go check her out.

And lastly, I award this to Karen, who not only posts daily, but was my first (non-paid) Internet Person, whom I had never actually met (and yet, was not a spammer). I was shocked and thrilled that someone WHO I DIDN’T KNOW was reading my blog. Plus, she just got a new job, and how cool is that?

If I missed you and you post something most days, which I probably did, as this post has taken me a ridiculous amount of time to complete, give me a holler in the comments and I’ll include you up here.

Thanks again, Miss Em, for deciding that I was worthy of an award. I’ll admit, that maybe I blushed a wee bit when I saw that for once in my life, I’ve finally won something. For reals and for true.

After I returned from the pharmacy yesterday, OCP and Vitamin Z in my grubby hands, I made sure to skim all of the information they had given me (is it just me, or is that stuff almost impossible to read? Seriously, I felt like I needed a magnifying glass AND I AM NOT EVEN REMOTELY FARSIGHTED.), looked over the list of potential side effects (mainly for the Zoloft, which people have reported drowsiness AND wakefulness. Helpful when you are trying to figure out when to take it, eh?), and promptly hid this paper in the bottom of our paper recycling bin.

Then I took my first dose and hid the bottle.

Who the hell am I hiding this from?

Simple answer, that one: my mother. She comes each day and takes my big son to school while watching my ickle one for me so that I might catch up on some sleep.

Now, as open as I am about most things in my family (both of my parents were there for the birth of Ben and only missed watching Alex make his screamy decent because they were watching Ben for us. It is safe to say that they have seen the intimate parts of my delicate girl-hood AND I DIDN’T EVEN CARE.) I cannot admit that I have PPD to my mother.

It’s actually not about shame, as I am not ashamed of this problem (now that I have admitted I have a problem, I am just going to focus my energy on fixing it) in any way shape or form. Like everyone else, I am only human, and although I may have a not-so-secret desire to be a Transformer (more than meets the eye!), I have accepted and embraced my limitations.

I have a problem and I am working toward a solution.

But, if I were to make this omission to my mother, I can all but assure you that this would turn into something else entirely. I don’t know if you know this, or if this is a unique thing to my mother, but depressed people (even if they’re not currently depressed) are some of the most obnoxious egocentric assholes I’ve met (worse than BMW drivers, even), and as such, telling them anything like this would quickly be turned around to how it affects them. Even if it doesn’t remotely affect them.

I’ll give you an example: when I was a kid, I happened to be one of those annoyingly sickly ones, you know, I was always in and out of school due to massive illnesses. My immune system sucked ass, and I would literally fall ill about every third or fourth week. It was awful. Strep throat was typically what plagued me, and I always knew when I was about to get it because I would begin vomiting copiously (it’s a wonder I have any enamel left on my teeth).

Before I got my tonsils out when I was much older (turned out they were completely necrotic, which is WHY I was always sick), I would have to sound the alarm to call the doctor whenever I started praying to the toilet bowl gods. About every other time this happened, my mother (who had not gotten sick since she was a child) would start moaning about the house dramatically until she had to “go to bed” because she was worried that she would get it to (she never actually did).

In that manner, she would shift all of the attention that I might have gotten onto her.

Rinse, repeat. Second verse, same as the first.

So, I learned pretty early on that these sorts of things were better left unsaid to her, and even as an adult, I’m pretty sure if I were to say how I’ve been feeling, she’d turn it around onto herself, and then I would have to listen to her talk about how SHE felt after she’d had my brother and I. It would quickly turn into a pity party for her, and I would be the sole invitee and as such, be forced to sympathize and cluck at her plight (even though it was at the earliest, 27 years ago).

(Trust me, I don’t want a pity party for myself, EVEN if you were to bring whine and cheese. Get it, “whine?” Oh, SNAP!)

So, tell your Aunt Becky, since now she knows that at least SOME of you understand what it’s like growing up with a nut for a mother/father/whatever, is this pretty typical? If not, what do YOU hide from your parents, even now as a grown adult?

Rather than give me a script for some nice Valium or Percocet, one of my OB’s decided that it was a better solution to provide me with some Zoloft to take the edge off things. While I am actually happy about this, it’s not nearly as fun sounding as the other two drugs.

It’s interesting, I have no problems whatsoever in actually TAKING any meds (SSRI’s or not), it was just the initial diagnosis that got under my skin. And now I’m feeling kind of over my anxiety about it (and kind of over myself too, if you smell what The Becky Is Cooking) and ready to focus on (hopefully) feeling good enough to cause considerable mischief AND assorted mayhem.

While I was there, I took the opportunity to also get a prescription for some OCP’s. After Alex was born, there was a period where we were kind of “let’s see what happens,” and despite my previously voiced desires to have another kidlet (but only one more), Alex has managed to cure that ridiculous obsession.

2 kids sounds more than enough to me (at least for now), and besides, since my best friend is getting married in October, I don’t want to be the fat AND pregnant bridesmaid (nor do I want a wee newborn to have to come back from the festivities to care for. It’s even less fun than it sounds, I promise.)

Besides, I am sure whatever copay the insurance God’s foist upon me for these pills will easily cover the pee-stick craze (before you think that we were “trying” or anything, let me assure you that since my thyroid is STILL wonky, my periods come sporadically and obnoxiously. This always led to a “when did I have my period last” freak-out and an inevitable stick to stick in my pee. Ew. I hate that.), and I can stop wondering if every little twinge means another mini-Becky/Dave.

(It took long enough for us to get pregnant with Alex that I have little actual worry that one shot up the old bajina a month would do anything but cause a massive wet spot and subsequent leakage. God, I am sexy. And our sex life is what dreams are made of. Har-dee-har-har.)

I need to properly thank each and every one of you who thoughtfully commented and thought about me during this annoying (and not shining) part of my life. I’d invite you all over for coffee and cigarettes (and maybe, JUST maybe, to watch Rock of Love 2. I AM NOT OBSESSED OR ANYTHING.), but I don’t think anyone is even remotely close enough to do this. BUT IF YOU ARE COME OVER. I WILL EVEN SHAVE THE FORREST ON MY LEGS FOR YOU BECAUSE THAT IS HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU.

Seriously, I always thought that I was one of the few (and not proud) who came from such a colorfully fucked up background. Now, I know that everyone has issues and skeletons and all that jazz, but I am literally FLOORED by how many of you have had similar situations with your parents.

It genuinely makes me wonder how we all aren’t more fucked up (I mean, I suppose you all could be dudes who live in Montana who are NOT actually who you say you are but are actually all named Dwight or Randy, but I doubt it.) as adults, and it further reinforces two things.

1) Not one of us is screwing up our children that badly. Unless they are chained to radiators in dank basements somewhere in your homes. In that case, maybe you are screwing them up. Sorry.

2) I am not alone, and I am honestly thrilled that I told you all about this (well, I’d be MORE thrilled if it weren’t the truth, because that would mean less hangups all around), because it only reinforces this to me.

Mental illness and the fear of it’s impending stronghold absolutely isolates you from everyone else, as it is easily assumed that everyone else around you is disgustingly normal, and the phrase “visit my mother/father at the mental hospital” can be more of a punch line than a reality. I mean, it sounds way funnier than it actually is.

Having done it more than I can even remember, knowing that the worst part is that she fit in there, and coming to grips with the fact that I was the only person in the (insert grade level here) doing this didn’t make real sleepover girl talk, you know?

So seriously, thank you from the bottom of my ickle heart to each and every one of you who saw fit to comment and make me feel like less a freak and more a person in need. I’d like to give you all a hug (but not in a smarmy way), so you’ll have to excuse the baby snot on my left shoulder and the animal cracker residue on my right boob and bear down.

It won’t hurt a bit.

I’ve regularly whined about how much I hate going to the doctor, to the point where even I get so sick of myself that I’m all “get over it, you big puss-bag,” and today is no exception. Normally, I get all fluttery because I want them to do a specific something for me (up my thyroid meds, give me a script for sleeping pills that doesn’t involve the phrase “benedryl,” slip me a jumbo pack ‘o’ Vicodin on the house just because I looked cute), just something.

I get nervous because I’m afraid they won’t do what I want them to do, and then where will I be? (Control issues much? Short answer: yes).

But today is a new game for me: I have no earthly clue what I want them to do for me. I mean, one of my biggest fears (aside from unwittingly being cast in Rock of Love 3) is that a doctor is going to tell me that I am, in fact, nuts, and since I am going in to the doctor today admitting that I might be, well, nuts, I don’t know WHAT to be anxious about.

I’m not overly thrilled that I will be taking with me today to the doctor, a short, balding chubby dude who routinely craps his pants for fun, but since I have very little choice (the dog has resisted my incessant begging for him to babysit), I’m going to pretend that I’m thrilled about having something to do while I wait. Something like try to contain a kid whose favorite game involves slapping me across the face while he blows spit particulates into my hair.

And is it any wonder I’ve gotten depressed?

Maybe it’s a good thing that I’m going into this with no agenda of my own. Afterall, if I have no good expectations of this, it can’t go that awry, right?

(don’t answer that).

Besides, the worst that can happen is that they commit me to the psych ward, and seriously, right about now, that sounds suspiciously like a vacation. A glorious vacation.

Gah.

Wish me luck.

Probably the hardest thing about admitting to myself that I have a problem (Hello, Al-Anon training!), is not that it’s “a” problem, but that it’s “this” problem. I wish it could be something simpler like “porn addiction” or that disease that makes you pull out your hair (I keep thinking trichamoniasis, which is NOT that disease, but a lovely STD. Forgive me for not researching further), because then it would not be my worst nightmare come true. It would be something simpler, at least for me to handle.

When you grow up surrounded by mental illness, there are a few things that happen to your development.

One, you associate all of the “bad things” that happen to your parent with something unrelated, a bit of magical thinking if I may (and I always may), i.e. Mom is sick because the house is dirty. Of course, this carried over into my adulthood, and maybe I’m not the most fastidious housekeeper on the planet, but my house is usually fairly clean, even on bad days.

Later on it occurs to your childish brain that maybe, just maybe, the reason for her illness is because YOU did something wrong. Kids, apparently have a knack for guilt rivaled only by the Catholic Church. This, too, carries over to your adulthood, and you find yourself blaming YOU for any little thing that has gone awry i.e. it’s obvious (to you) that it’s YOUR fault that the dog crapped on the carpet because you’re such a bad pet owner (and not the more logical “the dog crapped on the carpet because he is an asshole”).

I was once told that this is the way children of alcoholics feel as well, so let’s just give your Aunt Becky a double whammy here: my parents are BOTH alcoholics, too!

And lastly (this is a brief list here), children who have a mentally ill parent become absolutely phobic about turning into this parent (in this case, my mother). Admittedly, no one wants to turn into their mother, because ew! but I can assure you that it’s that much worse when your parent is completely unbalanced and unstable.

WHO would want THAT to be their aspiration?

(Please God, let me turn into someone who alternately screams or cries or looks comatose at a mere change in the breeze. Let me be unable to get out of bed for weeks at a time, and let my kids raise themselves until I can get my medication regime right. Please, please, please, please?)

Not so much fun, right?

So let me assure you that I do mental health checks daily (if not hourly) to make sure that I am not Going Off The Wheels On A Crazy Train, and to check whether or not my reactions to situations (pleasant or unpleasant) are normal enough. Dave informs me that this is one of my better features, as it leaves me pretty stable most of the time. I rarely fly off the handle at minor infractions (real or imagined), I approach (most) fights as logically as I can, and because I am prone to think and rethink issues, I’m fairly level.

Shit, I just wish it wasn’t this problem, y’all. Really, I do.

(is it weird to want to bargain with God to give me an STD instead of PPD? Don’t answer that.)

My first clue should have been when our ice maker went kaput. Now, I adore having tiny ice cubes made by my freezer (or is it by ickle gnomes? I’m just not sure WHAT to believe) just as much as the next person, and I won’t lie when I tell you that this is probably the best feature of our crappy ancient side-by-side fridge.

But when I realized last week that it was broken, I was slayed. Floored. Insanely upset and saddened. I went over it in my mind, over and over, when was the last time I heard it make ice? Why hadn’t I seen that the ice I had been getting was badly freezer burned and stinky? How long had it been broken before I noticed it?

No matter what Freud would say, sometimes an ice maker isn’t just an ice maker, is it?

It seems that after 10 months, I am finally falling victim to post-partum depression.

I considered not telling The Internet (not because I don’t trust you, darling Internet, because I do) what I’ve been going through, and I can’t pinpoint why. It’s probably a mixture of shame and remorse, and when I realized that this was what was keeping me from doing it, I further strengthened my resolve to tell you about it EVEN IF I’M NOT BEING CLEVER OR FUNNY OR CUTE.

It’s not pretty to admit, and Heaven knows, with my genetic predisposition to mental illness, it’s an even more bitter pill to swallow (when I inform you that my biggest fear on the planet is NOT a New Kids On The Block comeback, but is that I might someday turn into my mother, this should clarify it). It sucks realizing that this is something you cannot simply will away (like a food craving) and that you just might need someone else to help you through it.

I hate asking for help. Really, I do.

I could type for the next 36 years of my life about why I hate this so much, cleverly illustrate my posts with color coded charts, graphs, and footnotes, write AND deliver 9,308 Power Point presentations (complete with blinky graphics!) to a billion African schoolchildren, and STILL wouldn’t be done complaining about my dislike of admitting that I do, indeed, need some help.

But today I made that call, against every fiber of my being, and on Wednesday I will be seeing my OB about this.

And one can only hope that his suggestion isn’t warm milk.

After I woke up on Saturday morning feeling like I had somehow died and this was my own version of hell, I informed my poor husband that I had finally reached my breaking point with Alex and his lackluster sleep patterns. I told him that I was now so furious with the Baby that he was going to have to just start crying it out.

And I meant it.

We snared a babysitter and went off to Target to look at all of the gimicky stuff that baby manufacturers produce for people like me, who feel better if they’re doing SOMETHING, ANYTHING to work towards a solution.

I even oogled those baby video monitors for a spell, despite their price, when it dawned on me that I can see the baby with my own two eyes most of the day (and night!) and therefore did not need to watch him on the television. But man, the draw was there.

It was only after we got home with a sleep positioner (c’mon, Becky, HE CAN ROLL OVER! What the hell is the purpose of THAT?), a crib pad (which I had needed for him anyway as his mattress is vinyl and when he sleeps on it, he sweats, which is not pleasant for anyone), several new crib sheets, and a bottle of No Doze (for me, obviously), and I peered none too lovingly at his chubby face and realized that he was either sick or teething because his cheeks were bright red.

And because I am not quite a monster, I decided that Crying it Out was just going to have to wait until he felt better.

As a complete aside, if you do not want to feel badly about yourself DO NOT GOOGLE “CRYING IT OUT.” Most people who write about it on the Internet seem to liken it to child abuse and list all sorts of problems that may or may not be caused by this horrible oh horrible method of parenting.

I’d be hard pressed to call this method of sleep training “ideal” but I cannot get over the fact that Crying it Out is worse than “child abuse” or “suicide.” Besides, I haven’t met a single supporter of the Crying it Out Is Bad camp who has selflessly offered to give up their foray into the Land of Nod to help me out.

(And even as parents, at some point we do need to reclaim our lives, don’t we?)

I guess my own personal motto of parenting (which my husband firmly agrees with) could be called “Whatever Gets You Through The Night (Or Day)” and I can’t feel all that bad about it. I try like hell to be as non-judgmental as possible for people who don’t parent exactly the same way I do, but hell, reading some of those responses to “Cry it Out” on the Internet does tend to chafe a bit and raise my hackles.

(Hmmmm….I wonder if I should come up with some sort of code name for Crying it Out here, because as the Lovers of Vincent D’Onofrio found me, I’m sure the Parenting Police will be following suit and telling me that I shouldn’t have had kids if I was going to abuse them by making them cry at night AND occasionally forcing them to listen to Britney Spears (although not at night).)

Ah, oh well, bring on the haters, I say!

I could use a blog troll here or there, right?

(and under no circumstances should one google “baby slaps face” because I was trying to ascertain why Alex seems to delight is slapping my face as I hold him and when the hell this annoying habit will cease. But all that this search pulled up is a bunch of child abuse articles, NOT parental abuse ones.)

So, for now, I will get up at night with Alex, who has stopped being such an asshole for the time being, and soon, oh soon, Crying It Out must begin in my home. Otherwise I am apt to lose any shreds of sanity I have left (which are few and far between).

When I first met my husband, I couldn’t believe that he didn’t find me hilarious. He hardly ever laughed at me. This went on for so long that I eventually compared the nature of our relationship to Mr. Wilson and Dennis The Menace.

It was then when he explained what a “straight man” was (and no, sadly I am not referring to sexuality) and then I got it. He was and will always be my straight man. He may never laugh out loud unless I catch him off guard, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that he isn’t laughing on the inside (which, if you ask me is better than crying on the inside).

So, because I am a highly mature adult, I try to spend most of our time spent in public embarrassing him. I spent much of the last part of my pregnancy waddling after him in stores loudly requesting that he get me my nipple cream and hemorrhoid pillows.

He wasn’t even remotely fazed.

I consider every instance that I make him blush a personal (major) victory, so I take most opportunities as they are presented. A simple jaunt through the pharmacy can turn into me loudly shrieking after him to “fill that Viagra prescription so we can get our hump on!” or “Honey, don’t you need some more ADULT DIAPERS? We’re almost out!”

(I do the same thing to my mother, minus, of course, the Viagra comment as she doesn’t have a penis. I think. The results are the same. Loudly rolling their eyes into the back of their head at my teenage-esque antics.)

You might think that this might elicit as much or more shame to me than it does to either of them, but you’d be horribly wrong. I put myself in the other patron’s shoes: who WOULDN’T secretly smirk when overhearing this? There’s a reason that Overheard in the Office is a great website: people like to hear this sort of crap.

Today, for the first time since I referred to my delicate girl parts as “a split wet beaver,” I finally achieved ultimate embarrassment: I made my husband blush (and likely nearly divorce me).

We’d just dropped off a prescription at Yee Old Target Pharmacy when somewhere in the back of the dusty recesses of my memory, I recalled that we needed to, *ahem,* restock on the lube (damn you, lactation!). I gleefully informed my husband of this at top volume from several aisles away.

Rather than turn the other way and pretend not to be That Crazy Woman’s Poor Husband, he trudged down the lube aisle with me to peruse our choices. Once decided, we turned around and headed back to the grocery aisle to continue our shopping expedition.

It was only then when I turned the shamefulness up a couple of notches, when I handed the baby the bottle for him to hold onto (he loves to examine our purchases).

Poor The Daver turned about 57 shades of red and sputtered none too delicately “NO!” as he took the offending bottle of goo away from him.

“No,” he continued his voice jumping several octaves higher, “I will NOT have the baby gumming a bottle of KY throughout Target, Becky. I am putting my foot DOWN.”

I’m smart enough to know when I’ve successfully pushed the envelope to the breaking point, so I conceded and handed Alex a much more PC package of Medicated Chapstick.

As I walked away, I comforted myself by knowing that after several long years of trying, I’ve finally painfully embarrassed my husband once again.

My son, Alex turns 10 months next week. In these past 10 months, despite my praying, hoping, magical thinking, and even bribery (c’mon baby, don’t you want a Mercedes?), we have made almost zero progress in the whole sleeping realm.

I’ve bought any number of sleep books (but have drawn the line at actually finding anything remotely useful in them, although they do make nice coasters), cried, thrown myself around hysterically in an effort to “get attention,” punched several holes in various walls (frustration, not crappy botched remodeling job), and traded nights with The Daver.

I’ve rocked until my feet felt like lead, I’ve nursed until my nipples blanched, I’ve driven around aimlessly with baby in tow until the road looks blurry, I’ve bounced him in his bouncy seat until my hands cramped. I’ve bought such crib gadgets such as a rain forest soother, a fancy mobile, we tried this vibrating thingy that you put under the mattress, all to no avail.

I’ve googled “sleep regression” and “sleep problems” until my fingers turned blue, and have learned that in order to have a “sleep regression” one has to have been sleeping well to begin with.

Ha.Ha.Ha.

I caught myself recently actually thinking about buying this, at $250 it seemed like a bargain, and it was a combination of this ridiculous potential purchase and the fact that Alex decided that 1:30 A.M. last night was a jolly good time to GET UP FOR THE FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT MOTHER HUMPING DAY.

I spent over an hour trying to get him back to sleep (it didn’t work), and when I realized that I was physically seething with anger at my teeny (but fat) dictator, I marched downstairs and informed The Daver that I was so incredibly angry that I didn’t want to SEE the baby again, no matter what, for a long time. That I wanted to FORGET that I had a second son for a night, and should he try to rouse me to help him with the baby, that he would be very, very sorry. To the tune of a set of lost testicles (but whose would go? THAT WAS THE QUESTION!).

When Alex was younger, I tried to let him Cry It Out, as I had with poor Ben, who was born not knowing that his days were not, in fact, nights. That one got old fast enough, and Ben caught on fast enough that he became a great sleeper rather quickly.

Alex was not so impressed. He seemed to get more and more upset by being left alone, and eventually we stopped doing this. I’d like to tell you that things have at least gotten marginally better over time, but that would be a complete lie (but it would sound better than having me tell you that things have gotten worse).

But now it’s time. After almost 10 months of completely disjointed sleep, resulting in anxiety, depression, threatening my spouse with bodily harm AND divorce, fantasizing about suicide, and considering running away, I am hereby (and henceforth) done.

The problem used to lie squarely within Alex (I completely assure you that although this is angling to be my last baby, I promise on all that is holy I am not trying to keep him a baby who needs his momma at all. I LIKE older children better than this whole “needy” crap that babies do.), and I fear the problem has turned out to be within us.

We naively hoped for a change in this sleep shit, and when it didn’t come, we logicated that any sleep was better than no sleep, and that it really wasn’t so bad, this whole getting up every 1-3 hours! It was fun!

(by we, I mostly mean “me.” Dave has a job that requires an attention span greater than a gnat.)

Fuck this noise, I am so completely over getting up all night long.

I’m not pretending that this is going to be easy by any stretch of the imagination, but it sounds a fuck of a lot better than contemplating the least messy (but most effective) way to commit suicide.

Any suggestions? Or well wishes? Aunt Becky is not very happy today.