Tag Archives: toddlers

Napping. It’s Important!

My daughter has decided that napping on the weekends is optional. I, however, refute this. Not only does she need a nap for her own health, she needs a nap for my sanity. I need a break. I need time to get shit done that I wouldn’t be able to do while she’s awake. I need time to take a nap too, dammit!

Yesterday, when we put her down for a nap, she sang to herself for a while. She called out for mommy and daddy to read to her; she “wants a story”. She cried. She bargained. She got angry. She basically went through most of the stages of grief before she went quiet. Both Ross and I thought she was finally asleep. Nope. He went back there and found her standing in the middle of her darkened room, playing.

Ross brought her out to the living room AND THEN LEFT FOR WORK!

Honestly, I’m not even sure how she was still awake. We’d gone to the store, which she loves. Then she and Ross had played outside and run around for almost and hour and a half. It was hot outside. Plus, she does’t walk anywhere. She runs. Back and forth between the trees. Chasing balls around the yard. She burned through a lot of energy. But, there she was, awake. Both of us were AWAKE.

We played some more and watched a little Disney Junior cause I still needed my mental break. My child zombies out in front of a television. She gets that from her father. Then, at 4:30, she crashed and passed out. Which sucks because she goes to bed at 8:30. I mean, she was pretty cute curled up on the couch but dammit, I had needed her to do that three hours earlier.

She wasn’t happy when I woke her up an hour later. Not one bit.

Parenthood

I love my daughter. I do. More than anything in this world. But there are times where I just want to throw my hands up and say “fuck it”. Last night was one of those nights. After her bath, she jumped all the way to her bedroom with the duckie towel sitting on her head. At some point, she looked up at me and the following conversation took place:

Scarlett: Mommy, cold.

Me: Of course, you’re cold. You didn’t want to wear the Minnie robe. You wanted the duckie towel and it’s not even wrapped around you.

Scarlett: Mommy, cold.

Me: I know. Let’s put on jammies and you won’t be cold anymore.

Scarlett: Cold

Me: I get it. Let’s put on jammies. But this was your decision.

She proceeded to hop into her room, giggling, creating more wind – thereby exposing more skin to the air which – in turn – MADE HER COLD.

I got a diaper on her then the epic decision of pajammas began. I went through all of the available pajammas getting a resounding “no” from her each time. When I got to the end, I asked, “Do you want to go naked?” So I put on the pink bow pajammas and called it a day. She, of course, upset that I had chosen for her, cried. Then we started the whole process again with the socks.

She drives me insane but she might also be the cutest thing ever.I mean really. The cutest thing ever. ZDmA9EzBGaunTHXrN2Ntum

Even given that, I wasn’t looking forward to my weekend alone taking care of my toddler. I have so much to do to get ready for her party next weekend that the thought of being alone while Ross is in New Hampshire was kinda stressing me out.

Then, while scrolling through my feed this morning I found this…

It made me feel so much better! Also, the nanny wiping out is amazing. I feel your pain lady!

Back to Writing

I did it!

I set aside time to actually put some words down on paper and got quite a lot done. I just have to transfer the information from my notebook to the actual page in a way that makes sense. And yes, I’m that person that still writes shit down. This is what it looks like. If you can’t read my writing, that’s okay. Sometimes I can’t either.

This is how I start:

where-i-startI find it easier to get to the place I need to be by writing it down first. Otherwise, I end up lost in the weeds and I can get pretty far into those weeds.

Anyway, when I was in high school, my English teacher taught us to frame out our arguments in outline form. You know:

  1. Thesis
  2. Point 1
    1. Supporting Evidence
  3. Point 2
    1. Supporting Evidence
  4. Point 3
    1. Supporting Evidence (She always made us have 3 reasons, i’m not sure why. Maybe 2 are good enough).
  5. Conclusion

So, as you can see, I am conditioned to outline. It gets worse. Once I have the overall outline, I then take each one of those sections and break it down further.

section-outlines

It can get pretty messy, as you can see.

Once I have all that done, I actually write the book…long hand.

really-breaking-stuff-down

I don’t write every word, just enough to know where I’m going. Things like; what the mood is, how people are reacting, and dialogue, and some side notes. When I actually sit down and start typing, that’s when I’ll put in the dialogue tags, the atmosphere, and the internal monologues.

This weekend, I got almost two full scenes mapped out. This may not sound like a lot but it’s probably a few days worth of typing. I learned something extra this weekend too. Don’t leave your notebook out while you’re changing the laundry (for all of three whole minutes) with a toddler in the house. This is what happens…

toddler-damaged

I haven’t typed this page yet either.

a4d21bf857b8131620570badf3869d62

Lesson learned.