Building Community on Desperation

I've actually written parts of this post in my head throughout the day, but most of that witty commentary will not actually make it into the post.  Last night was rough.  Devin woke up every hour and then was awake for about an hour around three a.m. due to pooping.  After that I hoped he would sleep better, but he didn't.  Another big poop came our way around wake up time.  Eight in the morning.  Normally I would have stayed home from church hoping for a nap, but at that point even a nap sounded like work.  Plus, I hatched a scheme where we could find some kind soul at church who would hang out with Liam in the afternoon while Allen helped Devin stay asleep and I got more than 45 minutes of sleep in a row.

As a side note I now think that sleep deprivation is a particularly horrible type of torture that should be reserved for truly terrible criminals.  I felt a little crazy this morning.  At church I crashed in a recliner at the back (every church should have these).  Our church is in a storefront so the back faces the street and the chair faced away from the rest of the group.  Confused?  Anyways, during worship I cried for a while and Devin slept on my chest.  It was kind of a relief.

Actually, we did find a couple of kind souls including our friend Rachel who were planning on getting lunch and coming back to church to hang out.  Liam enjoyed their company so much that he cried when he had to come home.  I'm not sure if we imposed on these friends by asking them to do this favor.  I was too tired and desperate to figure it out.  Maybe that's how community is built - one desperate moment at a time.

Rachel even took Liam to Wendy's and got him a kid's meal with lemonade.  He reported that he spilled most of the lemonade which was bad because "we paid all that money."  He was also disappointed because "the big people just talked."  Still on the whole it was much better than being at home.

While he was gone Allen did manage to get Devin to go about two hours between feedings, but I didn't manage to sleep the whole time.  Turns out I'm very aware, at the moment, of my baby's crying.  And yes, we often distract ourselves from the not-so-riveting task of calming the baby by playing computer games or hanging out on Facebook.  And no, we did not purposely buy such a large screen.  The computer monitor broke and we had that TV which was given to us by Granny who won it at a neighborhood party.  It's kind of a long story.

And we have more crying.  Actually, I forgot to give him "gas drops" most of the day and I fear that we are in for an even worse night tonight than last night.  This has been pretty much the first time that neither Allen or I have been able to comfort Devin.  Even nursing is not working at the moment.  Also, isn't that onsie cute with the green diaper cover peeking out the bottom?  It says "earth baby."

I decided to show Devin the world's saddest baby in the mirror and got a kick out of his expressions.  Liam kept saying "Let me see!  I want to see!" and ended up photo-bombing the shot.

So I think that my chances of getting much sleep tonight are pretty low.  And then we're back to Monday with Allen needing to finish getting ready for the semester and Liam starting school this week.  Well at least we have managed to get some clothes for him at a garage sale held by the mom of one of his former preschool-mates.  I hope Allen and I can manage to get enough sleep in the next couple of days to navigate the beginning of the school year with Liam!