Sleep

Ah, peace and quiet. The children fight sleep. I've never been a good sleeper myself and usually get 5-6 now and am often tired. Rachel's been using melatonin for several years now but even then, she would sometimes wake up at 1 or 2 am and just stay up playing or reading. She recently started taking the time-release stuff and things have gotten better. Our new pediatrician for Ben said we could use it with him to see if it would help. Now, it's never worked for me. Both the normal and the time-release - as soon as they wear off, I'm just super-awake. So we've tried a little bit with Ben and it hasn't seemed to work, he'd still stay up for hours in his bed singing and verbalizing. But tonight, I guess it just worked - I was barely done reading to him and he was just laying there blinking his eyes. It was nice seeing him just calmly go to sleep.

Started the work day late, taking Ben in to therapy today. He did really well.

Back to work today, felt weird coming back, even though I'd only been out a day and a few hours. Things just move so quickly there. A good day, I finally nailed down some elusive information. People won't like it, but they'll like it more than just plain not knowing. Now that we know, we can assess and act upon it.

A quiet night at home, but the weekend won't necessarily be quiet. I'm expecting exotic planes and possibly a tank or two. I'll try to get photos.

Read some more in The Expats - still not sure what I think of it or where it's going. I complained that it starts with the overused "two years ago" plot device but in this case, it actually advances both stories, flipping back and forth using different typefaces to differentiate. But one of the stories has its own flashbacks, so it seems to get confusing.

No simplification today, but no complication either that I'm aware of.