The story of the pound of Strawberries

It all started Tuesday night.  I had a baby shower and left Colby to fend for the kids with the whole bedtime routine.  I came home around 10:30 to two sleeping kids and a husband crawling into bed.  I had a few things to finish up (pumping, planning meals and ordering groceries) before I could head to bed.  Right as I was finishing up, I heard little footsteps in the back of the house, and jumped up to calm Hudson and convince him to stay in his own bed.  With a few minutes sitting by him, he was back asleep and I just had to wrap things up before I could continue my much anticipated journey into bed. I crawled under the covers a little after midnight, and it took probably 30 seconds before i had drifted into dreamland.  And 10 minutes later, about 5 seconds to be wide awake again.  Hallie had woken up and was not happy.  She didn't want to nurse, didn't act like she was in pain, and simply was exhausted but wouldn't stay asleep.  After trying so many things to get her to sleep, including standing by her crib until my feet hurt because she simply wanted someone by her and would cry if I left, and rocking her to sleep, she kept waking up after 2 minutes of me being back in bed.  This is abnormal for her and miserable for me.  Colby joined me a couple times, but had a work meeting at 7:30 (much earlier than a normal day) in the morning so I tried not to disturb him.  The short story is that I didn't get into bed for the night until 3:30.  Not my kind of evening.  I snuggled up in a blanket, turned on my side and stuck earplugs in my ears.  I desperately needed undisturbed sleep if I was even going to semi function the next day.

I was awoken the next morning at 6:10 to hear not one, but TWO kids chattering in Hallie's room.  Hudson was in her crib and they were both awake.  Considering the amount of sleep I had had and that Hudson normally sleeps till 7:45 or 8:00, I was livid.  I couldn't believe Hudson had gone in and woken her up.  As I expressed my frustration to Colby (remember I was on just over 2.5 hrs sleep at this point) her calmed me letting me know Hallie had been crying and he had left her hoping she'd go back to sleep.  Hudson most likely woke to her cries and went into her room and climbed in.  Her said if I were to just listen, I would her Hallie start crying then Hudson would say, "It's ok Hallie, it's ok" and then she would calm down.  Sweet Hudson was not waking his sister, but trying to help.  My heart softened, but I still wasn't happy that the were both awake.  I went in, grabbed Hudson and sent him to bed with Colby hoping he would go back to sleep. I fed Hallie, and in her exhaustion she promptly feel back to sleep.  I crawled into bed.  Hudson was not asleep.  Colby got up to get ready for the day and I begged him (with not much convincing needed) to watch Hudson as I desperately needed more sleep.

Hudson came into my room a little later (7:15?) saying he wanted more juice, and I told him to go ask Dad and that Dad would turn on a show for him. I knew Colby had a conference call, so couldn't tend to much and TV would be a good distraction.  I heard him pulling a chair up to the cupboard, and didn't think much of it as Colby could help him. Not much later, probably around 7:45, he came in with a red mouth and empty strawberry container.  "Mom, these are gone, I made a mess and I want more juice." What??  I got out of bed and followed him to the living room.  He sat on the couch where he normally sit to view his TV shows and I saw a pile of strawberry tops sitting on the couch armrest.  Thankfully it was leather and could easily be washed off.  Before i could even take all that in, he walked to the kitchen and crawled under the table showing me his "mess."  He had pulled the trader joes granola from the cupboard and spilled it all over the floor.  Thankfully there was probably only half a bowl remaining. I swept it all up and asked Hudson if he was still hungry.  For probably the first time in his life he told me that no, he was full.  I counted the strawberry tops.  There were 26. He ate a full pound of strawberries.  Colby was nowhere to be found and I realized that the conference call he had at 7:30 wasn't actually a conference call, but that he must have needed to be IN the office by 7:30.  A quick phone call to Colby confirmed that I was right, and that Hudson was devastated that he couldn't watch Colby drive away to work from the bench on the front porch.  It was probably at that point he had cement my room to say he wanted more juice.  I later noticed an empty juice cup on my nightstand which he had undoubtedly brought me and later realized an empty MILK cup in the living room, which was left out from the previous night half full, along with the remains of his dinner that were still on the kitchen table and probably snacked on this morning.  Colby forgot to finish up dishes the night before with having two kids to get in bed on his own.  Whoops! No telling what, if anything, Hudson ate from his dinner plate from last night.

As I've told this story, most people have asked about his bowel movement or said they hope it isn't bad.  Luckily, there were no accidents and everything was normal.  This kids has a healthy little digestive system.

All in all, this was a pretty funny story.  I got a little extra sleep, hudson got in his fruit for the day (week!) and Colby made it to work on time.  At least we know Hudson would fend for himself in an emergency and he would choose strawberries over snacks. We love that kid!