A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Sleep Clinc. ..

So, um, have I mentioned the bit of trouble Oliver has had with sleep over the years? I have? Have I told you what a complete crisis it feels like when you and your child, and your husband and your other children aren't getting the kind of sleep that you need? If I were a detainee and this was some kind of sleep deprivation tactic I would have confessed long ago. I would have folded completely and moved to the other side of any ideological border. But, sadly, the only thing asked of me was the one thing that was the hardest: that I keep going, putting one foot in front of the other and trying to look like a normal person. The weird part, I suppose, is how used to it you get. You barely mention it to the people you know in real life. No words could really convey the enormity of seven years of lost sleep.

But in the last seven years I.have.been.tired. They say the Eskimos have a hundred words for snow. I've got a thousand for tired.

So Nik and I set out on a mission to solve the riddle of the missing sleep. Step One was our Clonidine trial, which was a dismal failure. Step Two was a referral to a sleep clinic.

But somewhere between Step One and Step Two, sleep happened. Curiously, the sleep started the night we became Clonidine free.

As of last night we have slept every single night -- all night long. Fifteen nights in a row. 15. More than two weeks.

I don't know if this will last but I sense somehow that things have shifted for my boy.

If you have some wood handy, now would be a good time for you to knock on it for me.

Waiting for our wind

Twelve years ago I was invited to crew on a 42-foot wooden sailboat in the South China Sea. I was living at the time on a small island in the Philippines and already contemplating my return to this side of the world in the year to follow. I was young and free and ready for the next adventure. So even though I had no sailing experience and I didn't know what lay ahead of me, I was ready to step aboard and let the wind carry me into what was yet unknown. The owner of the boat, one of four ex-pats living on our small island, was ready to retire and wanted to take his boat from where it had been docked in Manila to his home port in Europe. I signed on for the first leg of the journey, a trip that would take us south from our island in the middle of the Philippine archepelego, past Palawan at the southernmost tip of the island nation, through open sea then skirting along the coast of Borneo, north through the legendary straights of Malacca, finally reaching my stopping point at Phuket, Thailand in the Andaman Sea. We had no schedule, only charts and maps that looked mysterious to me and a sense of purpose and adventure. 

I spent my first afternoon aboard The Bird of Passage below decks where I made myself useful cleaning and scrubbing and trying to find storage for the foodstuffs that we would need for the next couple of weeks. The boat moved gently with the small swells that entered the protected cove where the boat was anchored and I fought to to keep from vomiting as I worked. Exhilarated by the thought of what lay ahead I refused to let my lost sense of equilibrium get the better of me. By the time everything below deck was ship-shape I had succeeded in convincing my body that it could ride the waves without argument. When I came up for air my ship mates, all seasoned sailors looked at me approvingly. I suppose that all sailors have lost and found their equilibrium in times past and they remember.

From my perch here on dry land, in vastly different landscape and circumstance, I have to remind myself that it really happened. We passed close enough to Palawan that I could make out the beaches and trees and I was sorry that I had never made it there to dive as I had planned. Dolphins followed in our white churned wake. The first glimpse of Borneo, rising like a green gem out of the water, after a few days stuck in the uncertain monotony of the doldrums certainly felt like the great adventure I was after. When it was my shift at the wheel, I learned to stay the course in the dark of night by picking out a star in the heavens and using it as a reference point. When we headed into the infamous Straight of Malacca where piracy is a real threat, I learned to watch the other ships we encountered and to be on the alert if they seemed to be charting the same course. It was magical, all of it.

I don't think of this period of my life very often and when I do, it is not without a bit of yearning. In some sense, I will never be that free and ready for adventure again and how I do wish I could have it all back again!  Thoughts of this extraordinary time in my life came to me a few days ago when I felt that old stuck feeling and was angry and frustrated for not knowing what to do about it.  There are many times when it quite simply feels as though we are treading water, not going anywhere, making no progress toward any of our goals; not unlike the doldrums that drove sailors mad in the days before gasoline powered engines.

It just so happened that I was feeling this way when I moved a photo album aside so I could make room for a few more books. By chance I opened it and found the photos from my adventure aboard the Bird of Passage and in a bright moment it all came back. One photo of two crew-mates reminded me that they weren't having the wonderful time that I was on our little boat. They had taken a few weeks vacation from regular jobs in Germany to help crew this leg of the journey and they had a booked return flight home. They had a schedule. They planned to see something of Thailand before flying out. They were impatient. So when we found ourselves just sitting there, in the middle of the South China Sea, waiting for wind that wouldn't come they weren't content to scan the water and sky  to see whatever might distinguish itself from all that blue. They didn't find the bird perched on the tree growing from a solitary rock that jutted from the sea when no other land had been in sight for two days to be worthy of the only thing that really happened on that day. They wanted to move along, thanks. They wanted to get what they planned on from the start.

At the time I was so enthralled by everything that I barely noted my crew-mates discomfort.  As a novice sailor the absence of wind didn't seem like much to complain about when I was surrounded by such beauty. Imagine being on a sailboat and not caring at all about the wind! But now when I think of these two, now that I am mother to a boy who might need a gust now and then --  I have a lot more sympathy for them. Feeling like you are stuck anywhere is hard, especially if you're anticipating the place you'll be getting to. Still, I wonder if they remember that bird and that rock? And that amazingly improbable tree?

It WAS an amazing journey; once in a lifetime for sure. And this IS an amazing journey; one for a lifetime. Wind or no wind, it's good to be reminded of that sometimes.

Are you hungry?

I'm guest posting today over at (Never) Too Many Cooks. Come and visit! And while you're at it check out some of the other delicious recipes my friends are cooking up!

Cheers!

In Snow Time

One nice thing about this series of snow days we've been having is that it has forced us to S-l-o-w D-o-w-n!  I know this is important. But sometimes I forget that it is important. Slowing down, doing less, spending more time paying full attention to what we are doing: it is SO important. For Oliver, I think it is one of the more important things that we do to help him get on in this world without a whole lot of frustration. I've also come to believe that it is a vital part of my own mental health. And it just plain helps me to be a better parent. I mean, just because women are good at multi-tasking doesn't mean that we can and should multi-task. At least not every waking moment.

So that's what we've been doing this past week, a whole lot of living moment to moment. In retrospect I see that it took a few days to calm down. It took some time to just relax into the stillness of the world around us. Today was day six of our snow-bound program and I think we got it just about right. Nothing was rushed. I wasn't obsessively checking my e-mail, desperate for outside contact. And I'm so far from feeling cabin-fever that I was disappointed today when we didn't get all the snow they had warned about. Sitting together with my kids in their room this afternoon, cheeks still rosy from sled-riding, I was totally filled up.

Tomorrow we will start easing back into the wide world of snow-plowed streets and obligations. I hope I remember that just because I can do everything it doesn't mean that I should do everything.

But to remind me I will wake up to these lovely stained glass hearts that the boys and I spent the afternoon making. Before he fell asleep tonight, Sami insisted that he and Oliver decorate the window next to my bed so that I might wake to their sight in the morning.

 ,

Holy Snow, Batman!

Can you believe all this snow?

I know this doesn't impress those of you from the North -- or the West -- but this is Virginia for pete's sake!

 

Almost made it!!

 

There is a snowman under there somewhere. 

 

The best thing about snow? Snow Cream!!!

 

Searching for Wyken, Blyken and Nod

Tonight we are Clonidine-free. It took us essentially two weeks to wean Oliver from the medication that we had hoped would help us solve the ever-present sleep problem. The decision to try a sleep medication was a long time coming. Oliver is seven and a half now and has never slept well. To put it nicely. I suppose we always thought -- hoped -- he would grow out of it. But the impact of lost sleep for our whole family is just so great that the time had finally come when we were willing to try just about anything. We initially experienced moderate success. Two, three, four nights in a row strung together in solid ten hour blocks. But no matter how many adjustments we made in his nightly dose, it just didn't seem to completely solve the problem. Not only that, but it introduced a new problem. With every increase in the dose Oliver began to rebound to greater and greater effect every afternoon. It wasn't pretty and I won't describe it here because it remains one of the more difficult things that we as a family have gone through. What little sleep I was getting ultimately seemed to come at a pretty high price for my sunshine boy. And no matter how many apologies I make to the heavens the guilt remains.

It's hard, this business of parenting, isn't it? There are no for-sures and an awful many lets-sees and  maybes.

But we haven't given up. We won't give up. We've found a new developmental pediatrician (and only five hours from home!) who said all the right things when we met with her two weeks ago. We have an appointment at a sleep clinic on the horizon. And as always, Oliver himself gives us the most perfect incentive to keep on.

Portrait of a Snow Day

 

When it doesn't even matter if your socks match

 

When getting dressed is half the battle

 

When you can't believe it takes THIS long to get dressed

 

When you need to take a break half way through the layering

 

When you can't believe how magical it all feels

100 mile diet update

 

Well, there it is. February 1st and this is the remainder of the foods that we put away over the summer to carry us through these long cold winter months when the farmers market tables look so bare. If we were pioneers we probably wouldn't make it through the winter! Four bags of pesto, pickles, three kinds of salsa, green beans, jam, and some tomatoes. Actually, we still have quite a few more jars of tomatoes and a few bags of frozen zucchini and two bags of hot peppers. Oh, and the canned corn that nobody likes. Next year I will definitely skip the canned corn and just freeze all of it. The same with the green beans. It is less labor intensive and tastes waaaay better. Both are OK in stews and soups though. We also still have about 20 potatoes, two quart bags of blueberries and one of sun-dried tomatoes.

Overall I feel pretty proud of the changes we made this year. We didn't eat entirely local but we did a pretty good job. Better than I imagined. During the summer and well into the fall there were lots of weeks when I spent less than $20 at the grocery store. As we moved into winter though I found myself shifting back to my old cooking habits which include lots of staple items bought at the oriental food market and some, but very few, processed foods. It was funny how all of my philosophical ideals quickly went out the window when I had to prepare a lunch for Sami to take to school last week and found myself at the grocery store face to face with a box of granola bars! 

We started our little adventure almost a year ago and I have to say that it was more fun and less difficult than I imagined. I'm lucky to have a few Mennonite friends who actually grew up living this way -- making everything from scratch, growing things and buying what your neighbor had to sell. Anytime I felt stumped I could just pick up the phone or call over the fence.

The hard part was not having a ton of snack foods on hand to pull out when the kids needed something to tide them over until dinner. This was especially true after apple season ended in the Fall. I would just give them bread with jam and butter but it would have been far easier to just rip open a bag of tortilla chips or open a can of pineapple. 

So, in honor of the groundhog tomorrow I'm turning my thoughts towards the sun. I'm dreaming of my garden, the crisp snap of a green bean, and the satisfying heft of a tomato. At the end of last summer I wondered if I would ever try such a thing again. Apparently, that is what winter is for! Because, yes, I think I will.  I'm ready!!

Ah yeah, and this post wouldn't be complete without to following: