Rants from a sleepless night

It's 3 a.m. and I hear a little voice next to our bed "I had a bad dweam, can I sweep wit you?", I'm half a sleep but I manage to mumble "What was the dream about?" she says "skewetons" I say "Sure get in the bed". She snuggles up close to me and I move over a few inches, moments later she's taking up 3/4 of the bed and has expanded like a puffer fish. I have no idea how a child that small can make herself so big! I move over further and turn on my side, I'm now stuck in a tiny crevice between Annabelle and Justin, who is snoring like a buzz saw undisturbed. I feel a headache coming on so I pull myself out of the crevice and head for the medicine cabinet for some tylenol, I stumble into the kitchen where I drop the tylenol on the floor and realize I can't see a thing, my glasses are on the nightstand. Feeling around on the floor, I hope not to accidentally touch a six inch roach that seem to sneak into our house every night. I find the tylenol, take them, and head back to the bedroom. Looks like I'll be sleeping on the futon tonight. I feel through the dark until I get to the futon and sit down, I hear a soft meow-yawn and realize Edith, the once-homeless-with-a-heartmurmur now spoiled house cat has made the futon her bed for the night, I curl my legs over her, trying not to disturb her precious sleep, knowing my almost forty year old bones are going to complain about this tomorrow. I lie there wide awake now and think how fast time has gone by. Annabelle is growing up justasfastasthat and I can't believe she will be in Kindergarten soon, she has two wiggly front teeth, she can open the car door, pour her own drink, take her own bath and (YES!!!) wipe her own butt. She is getting so BIG! I worry about the impact of public school in South Texas on her future, that she won't get into the IDEA charter school since it's a lottery and I've never won a lottery before, that she is the .0001% of White, English speaking kids in a place where 99.999% of the kids are Hispanic and speak Spanish. I worry that she won't get the speech therapy from the public school system that she needs because the 99.999% Spanish speaking kids will be higher priority than a English speaking kid who can't pronounce her "L's". I worry that the drug wars will get worse and border violence will increase making it even more unsafe to live down here. I am a worrier, always have been, always will be. You'd think by now I'd know that worrying won't do one bit of good? I hear Annabelle make a soft sigh as she sleeps and realize she's going to be okay no matter what because I'll make it work, that's what Moms do. Some people go through life without struggles, going to the best schools, living in the best places, having the best of everything and does that make them any better than the rest of us? Of course not. She's going to be just fine...I'll make sure :) What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

Annabelle & I made these Valentines for her preschool class.

I think the most impressive part is the back of them.
Annabelle wrote all her classmates names! My girl is growing up!

And we made these for our story time friends at the library.