The Writer's Strike is over.

Sorry folks for the long hiatus. After a weekend of parties (a birthday and baby shower) followed by constant rain, Truong being out of town, trying to find something, anything for the kids to do indoors... I found it really hard to get back on the computer to update the blog.

Quite honestly, we haven't done much of anything exciting at all.

The latest "thing" the kids are up to is Kael deciding that he likes his new found freedom of being able to walk out of his bedroom. For whatever reason, in the 2 years that he's been in a big boy bed, he's never gotten up out of bed and walked out of his room when he wakes up. Instead he would wait for one of us to come get him. Because of this I've continued to use the video monitor in his room otherwise he's waiting in his bed for hours, kicking the shutters, talking to himself. After the 2 hour nap mark, I'll start checking on him to see when he wakes up and go get him. For mornings, I start checking at 7:00am. In my opinion, there's really no logical need for anyone to be up before 7:00am.

So anyway, the past few weeks (I think we're on week 3 or 4), after much encouragement (and, yeah sure, nagging) he's finally started to open his door and walk to our bedroom. The problem is: he's doing this at 5:30am.

5:30 AM!!

This probably wouldn't be a real problem if he jumped beds to continue his sleep. But he doesn't (sleep, that is). He comes to our bed and... doesn't exactly play, but doesn't sleep either. He's playing with his hands, or talking or singing to himself, or burrowing under our covers, pretending to be in a cave -- just enough squirminess to keep us very well aware of his presence but not enough to reprimand him back to his bed.

At first he went to my side and I loved cuddling with him. But I guess he got hot because he started fighting me off. And when I'm trying to sleep but can't because of someone else's actions, I get really crabby. Come people, give me a break. It's 5:30 in the darn morning!

So he's now going to Truong's side and I've told Truong to keep him on his side. Don't put him in the middle because when Kael gets hot, he will climb up out of the covers and lay perpendicular to our heads, across the pillows. It's actually very annoying. There's nothing quite like turning in your sleep into a heel or elbow jabbed into your eye socket. He's got no bed etiquette at all. Plus, when he's across the pillows, he's up against the wall that we share with Malia and if he somehow wakes her up (by, I don't know, tapping the Backyardigans Pirate Song on the shared wall or something) there's going to be hell to pay.

The good news is since he's up so early now, Truong gets him ready for school for me. By the time 7:00am rolls around and I drag my butt out of bed, Kael's showered, dressed and placed in front of a cereal bowl downstairs. All I have to worry about is Malia. Woo-hoo! It's kind of nice. I just have to work on Kael going to Dad 100% of the time in the morning (as in, totally take me out of the equation, Mommy's not even there) so I can sleep straight through until 7:00am then we're golden.

I'm realizing this post doesn't exactly put me in contention for the Best Mommy Award of the Year... but heck, as all moms know, sleep is worth waayyy more than gold. I rank Sleep even higher than Private Bathroom Time, and that's usually a toss up