This morning Veronica made her first joke. Jason had just gotten her out of bed and asked, "How's the diaper?"

And she responded, "I'm not diaper. I'm Ni-cra!" And smiled great big, all proud of herself. ("Ni-cra" is how she says her name, in case you didn't catch that.)

Hey, I didn't say it was the funniest joke ever told, but she thought it was funny and was greatly amused by it. And Jason was too. :-)

OK, doing a little better. I finally got to sleep around 3:30 a.m., and then Jason was kind enough to get Veronica dressed this morning and take her to preschool, thus leaving me time to sleep some more. I should be caught up, although I'm still drowsy, still mopey, still cranky, and still sporting a monster headache that I hope two Motrin will make go away soon.

Some mommy-related updates:

Veronica's favorite books right now: Photo albums. She loves flipping through the pages, pointing out people and things she knows. With a couple of exceptions, she seems to know Mommy, Daddy, and Zane in all photos, despite ages and differences in appearances. (One high school photo of me she identified as "Debbie," and one shot of me skinny with blond hair in California was deemed to be her svelte blonde teacher, Miss Lori.) She points out Pita still (calling her "Petey"), her bear, and even herself. "Dere Ni-cra!" she says when she gets to a photo of herself at the age of 6 months or older. (Younger than that, she just calls the image "the baby.") Plus she has a group collage now of her playmates at school, and tells me who they are most days. What's funny is when she points to the older kids, all of whom must be named "Big kid" in her eyes.

Also, for the past couple days, having this weird feeling of energy coupled with a mental blur, I decided to try a little exercise. It's a good way to use up the energy without having to think too hard. So far, I've been pretty amazed at how well I've done, but I've also come to a discovery: The place I hurt the worst is where my C-section scar is located. The muscle there has obviously been affected. It feels like it never healed up, or is just very weak, or something. It's hard to explain, but I wonder if it will ever get any better. My friend Sharon works out religiously at the gym and said that her muscles in that area never did get back to normal after her C-section. Not like I should've thought my abdomen was above such a thing, I guess I just never had reason to contimplate it before now.

Time to see if I can get something useful done today. Next week is Thanksgiving with Jason's family, followed by an early Christmas celebration at my folks' house. Jason's Aunt Emily is getting married on Dec. 17th and Veronica will be the flower girl, accompanied by Zane the ring bearer. Sure, I don't see this arrangment ending up disasterous AT ALL. ;-) So it's going to be busy. Here's hoping this headache will go away and that I'll feel better to tackle the holidays.

OK, so the name of the blog is "Maranie = Mommy," not "Maranie = Chickie With a Sleep Disorder." Yet here I am, again, up in the middle of the night. Jason and I hit the sack around 11:30, and while he seemed to have no problems getting to sleep, I haven't gotten one wink of the stuff. It's not like I'm wide-awake, either. I'm that type of groggy that you get in the middle of the afternoon at work, after a large lunch, that you try to make go away with a Mountain Dew. I'm the kind of awake you are in college, the night before a final, when you're taking Sudafed to wake up instead of for any sinus problems. In summation, I feel like crap.

The fatigue is making me cranky with Jason and Veronica, and it's getting me depressed as well. I went in for the sleep study because I slept too much; now the cure is making me sleep too little. I know it will take some time to get used to sleeping with the CPAP on, but dammit, I can't even get to sleep now with it OFF. I'm convinced that I am doomed, that it's hopeless, that I shall forever be in this fatigued haze. Thank god I've got an appointment with the sleep center on Friday, hopefully this can get resolved soon. I don't know how much more I can take.

Look at the time, folks. Can you say "insomnia"?

Actually, yesterday I got my CPAP machine, which is to help with my sleep apnea. I took a couple naps with it, totalling 3.1 hours. (How do I know this? The machine keeps track.) Then I went to bed around midnight and slept for about two hours (I'm counting a good half-hour just to get to sleep in the get-up - for those of you who don't know, it's a face mask attached to a machine that pumps in air. Yeah, really comfortable.) Then Jason came home from Monday Night Football at Darren's place, I woke up a little, and BOOM - I have been unable to fall asleep since. I've been awake, or some state of near-awakeness, for two hours now. I tried to sleep. I got up and got a glass of water. I drank some more water - damn, this thing dries out my sinuses - and used the bathroom. I looked in the bathroom mirror and saw the red irritation the mask had given me above my lips, grrrr (but I think it's gone now, actually.) I read a little. I packed Jason a lunch for tomorrow. I surfed online a bit - big shocker, not a lot of updates since 11 p.m. last night, fancy that. :-P

I'm just now getting a bit fatigued and may try to sleep some more, albeit without the mask. (It's starting to storm outside and that's enough to keep me somewhat awake.) But I'm wondering if my brief period of time WITH the CPAP machine has actually given me more quality sleep than I've had in ages, thus resulting in my insomnia now. Hmmmm...I'll ponder on that as I go grab a bowl of cereal and then, hopefully, head back to bed, because it would be nice to have this sort of energy in daylight hours. :-)

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm so thankful to Dora the Explorer for the moment. Thank you, thank you, thank you Dora.

Why am I spilling these accolades on the bilingual moppet whose over-excited yammering normally drives me nuts? Because of the Halloween episode, where a little monster (if you haven't seen the show, don't even ask) needs to get home "before the clock reaches twelve - all monsters must be home! It's the rule!" And throughout the episode, the characters keep referencing the Big Clock, which no matter how far they travel, is always in sight. That's one damn big clock...

Anyway, I digress. The point is, Jason found out that this works with Veronica as well. "It's time for bed, Veronica! Look at the clock, when the clock looks like that, little girls have to brush their teeth and go to bed! It's the RULE!" And she immediately walks off to the bathroom for toothbrushing, and then off to her bedroom for bed. I dread the day this little trick doesn't work anymore, but dang, am I happy about it now.

Jason's observation of pale little Veronica streaking through the house, naked, fresh out of the bath:

"It's like watching a custard trying to run for its life."

(snicker)

Jason had another revelation earlier this evening. There's gravel in the playground at Veronica's preschool, and she tends to have it in her shoes and sticks it in her coat pockets. Some of the other kids have stuffed them in the hoods of their jackets. Where did Jason find them? In her DIAPER.

"Dere's my rocks!" she exclaimed. "Rocks dirty?"

"Well, they are now," Jason replied. Which surprised me. He was laughing so hard I'm shocked he could get a word out.

That's the latest here as I try to get over a really nasty cold. I woke up with it on Friday and am practically bedridden by it. Bleh. Here's hoping my phlegm stops giving me problems before Thursday's job interview, and karaoke with my girlfriends this coming Friday. Lord knows no one wants to hear me sing in the state I'm in now. :-P

New photos are posted at my photo page! Images from the past month. I tried to post one here and it didn't work, so I might do it later. :-)