Friday Night Nerd

I was a major nerd in college. Well, in high school, too. And I still am now. I guess I've always been a major nerd. But college sticks out as my prime-time nerd years, perhaps because that's when I found so many members of the nerd tribe. Also, my college-level nerdiness was combined with a serious amount of uptightness that made it all more acute; I never pulled an all-nighter, usually had my papers done early, I didn't have a drink until I turned 21, and for every Saturday night I went out with friends, I spent two Saturday nights doing homework. For real, people, for real.*

In addition to being nerdy and uptight, I was also not terribly self-aware. I had plenty of emotions, but few tools for expressing them. I certainly didn't have any conscious awareness of treating myself with kindness. And yet, despite that, I paid myself a weekly kindness throughout college: No Work Fridays.

Friday was the night I never did homework and never studied. I'm sure I made exceptions during finals week and such, but for the most part, I gave myself the luxury of not putting any pressure whatsoever on myself when Friday rolled around. I had no guilt about getting $5 out of the ATM (yes, the ATM gave out money in $5 increments back in ye olden days of my undergraduate years) and spending it all in one place, watching a G-rated movie (or an R-rated movie; I was 18 and all), going to bed early, or reading a book for pleasure. I loved Fridays, not necessarily for the actual activity I engaged in, but for the total letting go of responsibility and mental freedom that I gave myself by putting everything aside once a week.

I thought about No Work Fridays today when I was out to lunch with my mom. I announced to her that after the kids went to bed, I was going to do nothing. Just relax. Maybe watch some TV, maybe read, maybe take a bath. Maybe all three. But I wasn't going to do chores or putter around the house or anything that might be considered vaguely productive. Oh, no. I was going to take the night off.

How did that work out for me? I've had a great evening, but I haven't exactly taken the evening off. I finished touching up the living room paint job that friends helped me complete earlier in the week, put the furniture back where it belongs in that room, unpacked some boxes, cleaned up the painting supplies, cleaned up from dinner, set the timer on the coffee maker, talked myself out of doing a load of laundry, and broke down some boxes. Now, at 9:30 p.m., I 've made myself a drink, eaten some salad, and I'm about to get down to the real relaxing. We'll see how long I last before going to sleep.

I was very aware as I was futzing around that I wasn't relaxing as I had planned. I thought about those Friday nights in college, and I thought about how surprising it was that I somehow knew to be kind to myself and to take the pressure off on a regular basis. And I thought about how I'd like to start doing that again. I have a suspicion, though, that No Work Fridays look a lot different at 39 than they did at 18**. While I was working away tonight, part of me wanted to just put it aside, go upstairs, and gear up Netflix Instant. It wasn't guilt or a feeling of obligation that kept me from doing that, though. There was a bigger part of me that is so in love with my house that it doesn't feel like work, exactly, to do things like paint and make the living room feel settled. That kind of "work," which would certainly have sounded like real work to me when I was a student, is now more like indulging a hobby.

What I need and want now are No Stress Fridays. For the part of the evening that I spend with Maddie and Riley, we already have a good no-stress routine in place: Fridays are always pizza and movie night. No one has to make decisions about dinner (or cook it), and the movie allows for some coveted screen time to be combined with snuggle time. Once they are in bed, it's time to make Fridays into the day when I do what I want to do around the house, be that take care of some house-related task or soak in the tub for three hours. It's time to get back to taking the pressure off myself and to stop thinking about all the Shoulds. It's gotten so hard for me to do that, but it's important. The world will not stop spinning if I don't make the grocery list tonight. Nothing bad will happen—in fact, good things might happen!—if I allow myself to do what I want one night a week.

And on that note, Netflix Instant awaits.

*In graduate school, we did a learning style/personality type test that revealed that I am successful at most things I do due to dogged determination. I just work as hard as I have to in order to succeed. I am not always, or even often, the smartest, fastest, most capable, etc., but I am almost always the most determined. My college study habits are testament to this.

**I was out clothes shopping today and noted that even though my weight is pretty much what it was in college, my ass sure looks a lot different at this age, too.

Conclusion

My conclusion is that five year olds are all over the map in terms of sleep, but that at 9-10 hours/night with no nap, mine are on the low end of a pretty wide range. I probably didn't need an informal survey to tell me that, but it's nice to have anecdotal data to support my totally unscientific hypothesis.

I'm sure this is controversial—what parenting decision isn't?—but tonight I decided to try giving Maddie and Riley a dose of melatonin a few hours before bed. Mads struggles to fall asleep as of late, and Riley has issues with staying asleep, and my (somewhat limited) research showed that melatonin seems to help with both of those problems. All indications I read are that it's safe and, if anything, might have some positive qualities in addition to promoting better sleep. We'll see. I'll give it a week or so and report back.

I went to the Seattle area for a day for work earlier this week and spent some of the bus ride—the part before I got carsick*—making a list of various things I'd like to blog about. It's long and pretty diverse. The thing I'm selfishly most excited to write about is, uh, selfishness. Go figure. That's right up there with work/life balance and electronic consumption of media v. traditional formats. For now, though, I'm going to bed early, gearing up for a weekend on Mt. Hood at a friend's condo.

*As a kid, I never got carsick. I remember reading in the backseat of the car (no seatbelt, natch) for hours, and I've always loved spinny rides. Nowadays, thank goodness for GPS because I can't even be a front-seat navigator in charge of map reading without getting queasy, and just looking at a spinning merry-go-round makes me want to hurl. Ugh. What's up with that?

Daily Double

Two posts in one day!

I'm back for an update and a question. First, an update on the Leapster2: thanks to all those who provided input/advice. In the end, I downloaded Rabbit River for Maddie and Chicken Coop for Riley, plus I purchased the "Kindergarten Readiness" cartridge for Riley and the "Pet Pals" cartridge for Maddie. Those were about the only games available that did not have a marketing tie-in of some kind: WTF??? Anyway. My issues with marketing tie-ins and marketing to kids in general shall be saved for another post. Ahem. So. The Leapsters have been wildly popular with both kids, and the solution to limiting access ended up resolving itself: they live in the car. Not only has it solved the Leapster access problem, but it has also made car rides with Maddie and Riley so much more pleasant. They have always been relatively awful car companions as they simply require so much physical movement and conversational engagement that we tend to be at each others' throats after trips of much more than 15 minutes in any kind of vehicle. Enter the Leapster: problem solved! They like helping each other out and playing each others' games, too, so those interactions have been positive as well.

Now the question. I never thought I'd *still* be writing about kids and sleep by the age of five, but here I am, wondering about kids and sleep. Maddie and Riley go to bed between 7:30 and 8 p.m. (Early, I know.) They sleep until 6 a.m., for an average of 10 hours of sleep per night, although often they don't go to sleep until later and/or they wake up earlier, so I think they actually sleep about 9 hours/night. Data points on other five year olds? M&R have been begging for naps during the day after two years of no napping, and while in theory I'm happy for them to nap, when they do, they are up awake (albeit in bed) until 10:30 or 11 p.m., then still up at 6 a.m., so that seems like a poor solution and will certainly not be ideal when they start full-day kindergarten in the fall. How much sleep are your five year olds getting, and between what hours?

Bursting

I am bursting with blog content. Bursting! But I have a problem.

I've been sucked into a horrible vortex powered by the forces of a too much work, stressful work, and Netflix instant streaming. So, you see, I work all day, feel behind all the time, get home, get the kids to bed, and collapse in a Netflix-watching heap, thus leaving the blog neglected.

I'm not sure how I managed to remain out of Netflix instant's clutches for so long. I can watch it on my TV via my Wii! On my iMac! On my iPad! On my iTouch! Anywhere! Anytime! It's crazy. I think it will be at least a little better when I get all caught up with Friday Night Lights as many of the next things in my queue are only available on DVD. Maybe then I will blog. Only 14 more available episodes to go.

I really do have a lot of things on my mind, though. So many I can't keep track. Many of them are parenting-related as somehow Maddie and Riley got all growed up and out of nowhwere they are doing things like being totally sassy and refusing to go to sleep and lying and pushing limits and my buttons and WHOA. Of course, they are also doing lots of more positive things like riding bikes without training wheels and scrambling eggs all by themselves and putting together crazy complicated LEGO projects.

We've been in our new house for almost two months, we've been to family camp, the kids have turned five. Five! Five. I've felt myself pulling away from many of my online activities (Netflix excepted), sometimes because I've been forced (no Internet access at family camp), sometimes because I've made a choice. But there's a lot to say. So very much to say.