Damage control.

I broke down the other day and signed up for Weight Watchers again. It irks me to have to do it because I know what I can and can not be eating. What's high in calories and blah blah blah.

Me: I really want some halloween candy.

My Conscience: you know, you've been eating quite a bit of that stuff in the past few weeks.

Me: It tastes so good. I hardly ever indulge in chocolate.

My Conscience: but instead of 10 snack size chocolates, how about just 2?

Me: shut up. I'm PMSing.

My Conscience: for 2 weeks huh? Whatever you say.

Me: nom nom nom.

If you didn't guess, that's an example of my internal dialogue. It gotten a little out of hand. And while I realise a 6 pound weight gain over the course of 14 days can't just be attributed to smarties and coffee crisps, it was the catalyst.

I need a visual reminder of where I'm standing on a daily basis. An easy, user-friendly program. So as much as it killed me to spend $85 for 3 months just to reinforce something I already know, it had to be done.

So we're back on the bandwagon at 137 pounds as of this past Monday.

However, I have a coffee addiction. Specifically a coffee creamer addiction. So I decided to not count my creamer in my points. I am breaking the rules. I'm such a rebel.

Neener neener.

By no means are my kids good sleepers. Wait, that's not entirely true. Liam is a good sleeper. Then again he's 11 and doesn't need me to hold his hand anymore. So as much as he counts, he doesn't count in this instance.

No, the needy toddlers are not good sleepers. In a 24 hour period I can count on only a solid 3 hours of not having at least one of them hanging off some part of my body. That would be between when they're put to bed for the night and when Josh wakes up for the first time.

And then the second time. And the third time. And oh wait, lets thrown in just one more, fun times!

I digress.

Time change does weird things to kids and none of those weird things are good. Most of them have to do with sleeping patterns getting jacked up and crankiness and much hair pulling of parents. Or so I hear.

For 11 years I've dreaded time change because of the potential for disaster. All of my kids have naturally put themselves on pretty strict schedules, so a whole hour of change? Lord, there's just no way they should be able to deal with that easily.

Except mine do, with a minimum of fuss. It's not like they didn't have meltdowns or get really tired. They did, but it's so par for the course here that I barely noticed it.

Do you want to hit me for escaping time change relatively unscathed? That's okay, I want to hit you for having good sleepers.

Unless you don't have good sleepers and STILL got shafted by time change. In that case you have my permission to call me a smug bitch.

Watch, since I dared open my mouth about my good fortune I will never have a decent time change experience again. Karma's like that.

Sometimes the coffee just can't brew fast enough.

I was expecting a difficult night of sleeping last night. Indeed, if any parent doesn't expect some sort of fall-out from Halloween then they're just naive.

My sleepless night didn't come from toddlers hopped up on sugar though. I know, it shocked me too.

We headed to bed around midnight, as we usually do. I thought my luck had already run out with getting all the kids in to their beds at respectable times without too many tantrums or pouty faces about candy, and was expecting Josh to wake up within the next 30 seconds. So I didn't go to sleep right away and decided to read until he woke up.

45 minutes later he was still sleeping so I decided that I would just go to sleep too. That's when the snoring started. It wasn't too awful at first, just enough to keep me from actually falling all the way asleep.

Along came 1:30. A couple things happened at this point; Josh woke up and I grabbed him and brought him into our bed. And the snoring escalated.

I started out small. A couple kicks to his shins to get him to shut the hell up. Each kick interrupted the snoring for only about 5 seconds, so I moved on to the gentle shoulder shake. No more success there.

Okay, we'll try the combination shoulder shake/whisper to roll over. Keep in mind that I have a restless toddler attached to my boob so I'm trying to not make more noise than necessary. But still no success.

By this point I'm getting pissy. Josh would be almost fully asleep and then a particularily loud choking/gurgling/snort would wake him up. Is it just me, or is snoring the most disgusting and annoying sound another person can make? It makes my skin crawl.

I stopped holding back. A couple shoves to the chest, a few jabs to the side and nothing. Finally a loud command to roll over paired with me physically helping him do so, and he was facing the other way. This usually makes the snoring stop at least long enough for me to fall sleep but not this time. And there was no waking up the man either, he was dead to the world.

So at 2:15 am, after getting pretty much no sleep yet, I finally gave in and moved to the couch. With the baby. Who is a wiggler. Needless to say, the amount of sleep I got on that couch was not signifigantly more than I would have gotten in bed with my snoring husband, but at least he's still alive today.