Eye Twitches

I recently called my sister for a quick medical consult (this will be her lot in life from now on, although we'll all try to keep any oddly located skin rashes for our paid physicians...). My left eye has been twitching pretty much constantly for the last several weeks. I don't really notice it until I sit still, but then the whole world just becomes, well, twitchy and it's all I can think about. Very annoying. And given that my personality lends itself quite easily to unnecessary and irrational worry, I was confident that I was going blind. Hence the call to my sister to see how quickly she would recommend I enroll in Braille school.

Her diagnosis was both relieving and distressing. I'm not going blind. But I am, evidently, exhausted. Apparently eye muscles are particularly sensitive to fatigue, and it's not uncommon at all to develop a temporary eye twitch when your body is depleted of sufficient rest. Why might this be, you ask? I am not in college nor do I work the graveyard shift. I don't even have a newborn in the house anymore. I do, however, have an otherwise adorable 18-month-old who has refused to sleep longer than a 2-3 hour stretch for at least three weeks (with the exception of two or three gloriously undisturbed nights, but as all of you parents know, this is not enough to fully catch up). I don't know what's going on. We've done all the troubleshooting we know to do, and I know that sometimes toddlers just go through spells when their sleep is routinely disturbed. But sadly, this has made for a very grumpy Maddie...and a very grumpy Mommy (Kurt is exhausted as well, but he should get an award for rallying to maintain his positivity).

Today, for example, Madelyn and I battled all day long (neither of us won, for the record). Conveniently, she has recently discovered this new little scream thing...almost like a tiny dog's yelp. She does this when she gets even the slightest bit frustrated or when she's asked to do something that she doesn't want to do, which evidently was ALL day long today. But the screaming is really only a warning to another recent discovery: hitting. My precious little girl with her kind eyes and her gentle hands hauled off and smacked me across my face five times today (not coincidentally, time outs have recently increased in our house as well). I did my best to remain calm and patient and remind myself that she's tired and experimenting with boundaries and just being a normal toddler. But it still hurt.

To add insult to injury, however: at one point after a bout of screaming and a stern reminder that we don't scream in this house and we use our words and listen to our mommy, she looked directly at me and walked over to the fridge where I had recently hung a crayon drawing of a sunflower that I made for her. She grabbed the drawing and walked over to the recycle bin and promptly stuffed the drawing in the bin...all the while looking right at me. Sigh. I suppose I should feel encouraged that she chose "recycle bin" over "garbage."

So all days aren't giggles and cuddles.

Twitch, twitch, twitch.