Disneyland sounds pretty good right about now, or How motherhood has turned me into a total wimp

This is a picture of the place that I'm so scared of

It's 5:31 am.  I've been up since about 3:40, when Oliver woke me by falling out of the new big kid bed and clunking his noggin on the floor. He was fine, a little hugging and a re-tuck-ining and he was back to sleep.  I, on the other hand, do not go quite so easily into the good night.  I like to lie in bed stressing out about our upcoming trip to Mexico, the one I do not want to go on.  Woven into my exhausted visions of tragedy and discomfort (how am I supposed to bathe them? Where will they nap?)  are weird calculations about how much fabric it will take to make closet curtains, and what a text block of 40 words looks like.  It's like one of those horrible Scrabble dreams or crossword nightmares where all night long you dream fitfully of letters and tiles and points.  Ugh. 

Motherhood, it seems, has turned me into a total wuss.  I have traveled all over Mexico by junked out bus, slept in trucker motels, eaten Guinea pig in Ecuador, slept on ant-infested dirt in Panama.  But that was when it was just me.  And that was back when I could sleep in if the ants kept me up.  

Now I have two kids to think about and I have the havoc those two kids can wreak on my life when we lack sleep or comfort or diversion.  Suddenly Mexico seems like way more trouble than it's worth and I totally get places like Disneyland and Club Med (songs for the kiddies and drinks in exchange for beads).  I don't like that I've turned out this way.  Honestly I thought there would be way more of the loosey-goosey mellow-yellow about me as a parent.  Alas, here I am.  Next stop: drip dry, elastic waist pants and a money belt.

What keeps you up at night? Tell me.  I need company.

A thing I like

Art by Mary Emma Hawthorne, who I discovered through Big Happy Orange.  Lovely and way out of my price range.  But wouldn't it be nice to have big white walls and honey-colored floors and these paintings on the wall?

The Dark Night and the Awful Secret

I am dead tired.  Like fall-asleep-and-get-in-a-car-crash tired.  The culprit is insomnia.  The other night I was up for three hours with the darkest, most awful thoughts about my children getting hurt.

The problem is our upcoming (well, not for a month, but it's never too early to start stewing) trip to Mexico to visit my mom.  Her house teeters high on a hill with nothing but a low wall separating my monkey-twins from the abyss.  In the dark of night all I can imagine is them climbing up and over.  And I won't even write what comes to mind next because it is too awful to repeat.

Adding to it all is the damn Secret, which urges you to believe that you can think things into being (everything from new cars, to illness).  And while I think it is absolute self-centered drivel designed to keep people from actually doing anything productive to help others, change the world, or improve their situations, it has somehow wormed its way into my consciousness.  So now, while my worst and darkest mind its doing its whole baroque melodrama, I am not only lying awake praying for sleep, I am bargaining with the Universe not to take my unruly thoughts too seriously.  It's exhausting.

A thing I like

Bargain gift alert: I just ordered the cutest vintage barrettes from Kitchen Table Studios.  $7! You still have time, but hurry!  She enclosed a free pair of earrings as a thank you.  When was the last time Target did that?