Right now, Sam is supposed to be napping, but if I were to read back the transcript of what's been coming over the monitor, it would say "Ehhhhh MA MA MA ma ma ma ba ba BA ba ba..." and so on. He's not crying, just laying in there talking, and so I have no cause to intervene. When Sam naps during Charlotte's preschool afternoons, I get all manner of things accomplished. Laundry, dishes, cleaning, homework, baking...I compress all manner of Martha Stewart activities into my fleeting 90-120 minutes. When Sam is supposed to be napping but most patently is not, I get nothing accomplished. It really doesn't make sense. I could just as easily fold clothes and load the dishwasher while he babbles himself to sleep, but I can't, for some reason. I'm paralyzed by worry. I'd rather sit and fret and wring my hands that he's NOT SLEEPING and WHAT'S WRONG because HE ALWAYS SLEEPS SO WELL! Could this spell the END of our GOOD SLEEPER?! Fret fret fret.

So I'm channeling that anxiety into something useful: a mostly rambling blog post! Lucky you!

We've settled into a nice routine. My semester and Charlotte's fall schedule started at roughly the same time, and it was a bit touch and go for a while there. But now we know mostly when we need to be where, and what needs to be done when. I've sacrificed a bit of sleep in order to get all my work done and still spend some time with my children and husband, but I mostly don't feel the effects.

Sam's improving a bit on the crawling front. He still uses his army crawl method, but has picked up a bit of speed. He acts all helpless and stationary but as soon as you duck around the corner to make a cup of tea, he turns on the speed and the next thing you know he's across the room, eating a coloring book. Jeff and I watched Iron Man over the weekend, and the scene where Robert Downey Jr. as the titular character was heaving himself across the floor of his basement workshop, trying to reach his back-up chest piece/heart thing, we turned to each other and laughed. "It's Sam!" we both said. My description of the action-movie hero in the Sam Can Crawl video was very apt.

Charlotte is digging her new social lifestyle. She has new songs in her repertoire and will randomly bring up things from her movements outside our home that occasionally baffle us, but for the most part we get it and are delighted to see how preschool and ballet and Sunday school are helping make our bright girl shine even more brightly. We were having some issues the past couple of weeks where Charlotte would wake up at least once a night in an absolute weeping panic. She'd be panting, wailing, staring around all wide-eyed and frantic, and nothing we did could console her. I asked my facebook friends for advice, and the consensus was that she is experiencing night terrors. Several people mentioned that these can result from entering a deep sleep state too quickly, which in turn is caused by going to bed too late/overtired. So we've started putting Miss C to bed a bit earlier, and also easing into bedtime a bit more, as things could get rushed at the end of the day. So far, this seems to be working.

Now Sam has transitioned from placid babbling to agonized yelling, so my intervention may be required. Sigh.