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sleep deprived

Okay, I'm writing this at 3:30 am, having tossed and turned since 1:30am and I'm starting to loose it!!

Nathan is still waking up about every 3 hours, and that means I have not had more than 4 hours sleep in over 9 weeks. Some days are better than others, and I almost always get to nap during the day, but the lack of prolonged deep sleep is getting to me.

The last few nights, even though I am bone tired, I lie down in bed, so desperate to fall asleep that I can't. I think to myself "I am so tired. God, please fall asleep." And then I get upset that I am not fallling asleep and start to cry and then have stop myself and tell myself to relax otherwise I won't fall asleep and then get upset that I can't relax and then... etc.

I completely understand why sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture.

"Without sufficient rest, emotional mood deteriorates. People become irritable and short-tempered, both with themselves and others. Loss of emotional control is possible, leading to emotional outbursts and even violence.

"Stress and anxiety levels both rise as a result of sleepiness, which often begins a vicious circle. Insomnia and fatigue leads to stress and anxiety. Stress and anxiety are leading causes of insomnia. Left unchecked, this cycle can result in full-blown anxiety disorders and depression."
-- from sleep-deprivation.com

Nathan's first cold

I think Nathan has his first cold. His nose is all stuffed up and both his eyes are all goopy. He probably got it from me, since I've had a stuffy nose for the last day or so. Poor little thing.

The whole family got dressed up for the BCC awards brunch on Sunday. Nathan looks particularly dapper in his Ralph Lauren designer outfit (a very nice gift; we would never buy him something that chic).

Nathan smile

Nathan smiles every day now, but the smiles are elusive and hard to capture on camera. This is the only we've managed to get on film. Also, I uploaded more photos.

Rashi's Daughters web update

I those rare moments I have to myself and when I feel like doing something cerebral, I've been working on revamping my mother's website for her books, Rashi's Daughters. Her second in the series, Miriam, is all done and getting published in a few months.

She showed me a informative very amusing website called Web Pages That Suck that gives pointers on web design. The site explains why various sites suck, from over use of graphics, poor use of color, wierd navigation, or other stupid designs. Their 10 worst webpages of 2006 are:

10. Brown University

9. NIEU Foreign Exchange

8. Red Blood Club

7. Tampax

6. Longcycle

5. HRODC

4. Accept Jesus, Forever Forgiven

3. VTR Australia

2. Association of International Glaucoma Societies

1. Optimal World

I've been visiting a couple new baby message boards and I find the "sigis" quite amusing. These are a collection of the "lactivist" ones.




And her is a cool photo tag a mom made of all the January 07 "snowbabies." Look for Nathan on 1/22/07.

8 week check up

Nathan had his 8 week check-up today. He got a whole bunch of vaccinations and screamed pretty loudly while the nurse was sticking him. Hopefully he won't be too cranky the rest of the day. Also, now he weighs 11lbs 2oz and is 23 and 3/4 inches long - that is the 42nd percentile for weight and the 80th percentile for height. More pictures are online now.

True Majority

I heard about True Majority from a spot on the Colbert Report. Ben Cohen set up this politically liberal website, mainly focused on anti-war activity and reducing the fraction of the federal budget devoted to military spending. I especially enjoyed the cute cartoon explaining the HUGE imbalance of miltary funding in the budget.

Racoons

This week we discovered we had a family of little racoons living under the house. The cats often travel from the back yard to the front by going through holes in the screens to the crawlspace. But apparently our three cats were not enough of a deterant to keep the racoons out. So in addition to the baby waking me up every few hours, now I have strange chittering and knocking noises coming from the floor in the middle of the night. We have now blocked off all the opening to under the house and hopefully it will fix the problem, although the cats will have to find a new route from the back yard to the front of the house.

Gary has decide to start exposing Nathan to crucial literature - JRR Tolkien.

hold head up

Nathan can now hold his head up pretty well and can definitely see and track objects (nevermind the bib - we needed to do laundry). Yeah - milestones! I'm looking forward to when he starts being able to smile on purpose - that will be fun. He can smile now, but it is involuntary and mostly due to gas. I've uploaded more photos to our flikr album - click on the picture above to see more.

Nathan at 3 days old, Nathan at 5 weeks and 3 days old, and Katherine at about 2 weeks old - all in the exact same outfit.