Damn the solstice

Elisabeth is so tired. She can barely function. We're giving timeouts like water. Everynight for the past week or so she has complained about having trouble falling asleep. Despite what some of you are thinking - no, I'm not sharing my Coke with her. Well, not usually anyway. She complains about the light coming into her room. So today we're going to find blackout shades to install. I love the long summer days, but they're wreaking havoc on Elisabeth's schedule.

Not only does she get crabby and belligerant when she's tired - she gets louder and chattier. I thought that by the time she went to bed last night I was going to actually rip my ears off. I took the girls to a birthday party where she loaded up on pancakes, fruit, juice, and birthday cake. And she loaded up on stimulation from playing with other kids. The entire 45 minutes home she babbled. Almost incoherently. Question after question, no linear progression, no time to answer before the next question came out. "Mommy, how are we getting home? Is Daddy going to be there? Are you wearing a bathing suit? What happened when Goofy stepped on your foot? Look! A motorcycle. Are they going to the airport? When can we go to the airport? Can I use your earpiece and call granddaddy? Why are those people riding bikes? Why didn't Jean have enough cupcake holders?" 45 minutes of this. I tried drowning it out with the radio, but you guessed it - Waiting for the World to Change came on. That just begs for questions. She still doesn't understand why that poor guy is waiting. And man, she hates waiting.

(as an aside, just when you're about to hit that button and list your kid on ebay - she comes running in, so excited, and hollers "the pilteated, the pilteated! (sic)" I'm so glad she's acquired a love of birds and nature. We have this guy in our backyard.)

Anyway, she's exhausted. Which in turn makes her looney. Which in turn frays all of our nerves and leads to a lot of frustration and timeouts. And I feel sorry for her. She's really a great kid, but more than other kids (I think) she needs her beauty sleep. I have a lot of sympathy for having trouble falling asleep since I'm just about the world's worst sleeper. Once I wake up in the middle of the night (for kids various needs) I'm up for a long time. And after 9-11, I'm pretty sure I didn't sleep more than 2 hrs at a shot for a year. Hopefully the blackout shades will help her. I think an extra hour of sleep will do her wonders.

I can't remember if I blogged about the baby birds at my bird feeder. This year, so far, I've seen baby grackles, baby woodpeckers, baby cardinals, and baby sparrows. They have somewhat different markings than their parents, but typically it is very hard to tell the juveniles from the adults (at least for me, a novice). But, what is so sweet and so special is that the juveniles come with their parents. The babes sit on the deck railing hollering with their mouths open and the parent gets seeds and comes and puts them in the babies mouths. Its absolutely adorable. Then, eventually, the babies get brave enough to eat out of the feeder themselves. I can sit on the screened porch, about 15 feet away from the birds, and watch.

I am hoping to post pictures from our trip to Florida later today. But maybe not until tonight or tomorrow. We all had a lot of fun, even though it was a really short visit.