New JOB!

I got a new job.  I'll be working awake overnights on weekends two night a week.  I'm super excited.  I will be getting over a 40% pay raise from my current job and will be in a slightly new field learning new things.

I sat down and googled shift work sleep schedules and came up wit a plan for managing this sleep.  Ideally for most of the other nights I want a normal 10-pm-ish to 7-am-ish sleep schedule.  This meant I felt a huge need to get Cedric on a sleep schedule, finally.  I'm hoping to get him to sleep sometime between 8 and 9 pm most nights, tonight he was down at 8:40 pm, so that was great. We have a simple routine of getting sleep clothes on, brushing teeth, reading two stories, closing the bedroom door, turning off the bedroom light, and nursing in bed until he's asleep.  Tonight it only took 25 mins, this is awesome.  This morning he was up at 7 am so I suspect tomorrow will be similar.  If he gets up at 6:30 or earlier, I'm moving bedtime later.

My husband works evenings and gets home on average around 12:30 am.  Ideally I want to be fast asleep by this point, which means really trying to be in bed by 10:30 at the latest.  If I'm up when he gets home I have a hard time falling asleep while he's getting a snack and winding down for the night.  So on the nights he works I want to be able to get up with Cedric in the morning and let him sleep in a bit.  Then on Thursday night, Friday morning I plan on keeping myself up until about 3 am and sleeping until noonish to prepare for staying up all night Friday to Saturday morning.  Then I'll get home from work at about 9 am and sleep as long as I can, hopefully until 4 ish.  Then on Sunday morning I plan on making myself get up by 1 pm, be really tired that day so that I can get to sleep at 10 pm that night.

I think if I really stick to this plan, it will be good.  One thing is that I will end up having quite a bit of time alone at night now while my child is sleeping and my husband is either at work or sleeping.  Plus he still takes one nap a day of 1-3 hours depending on how night sleep went.  Today it was 1.5 hours.  So I'm kind of excited about this.  I need to come up with things to do.  Of course there will be household tasks, but not that much; I don't have high standards.  I might write, I might try an exercise video, I might take up crochetting again.  I need something to get me excited, so I don't just putz on the internet reading cracked.com and facebook.  Maybe an online course?

I'm also trying to plan stuff for the evenings while Brent is working.  I've got some regular dinner with friends things brewing, and I found a Thursday night Al-anon meeting that has childcare that I'm going to check out.  I need late afternoon and evening things to bring Cedric to and that is hard to find.  So I plan on trying to invite lots of people over for dinner at my place, I like to cook and staying in is easier in the winter with a toddler.  I might have to try to find a kid-friendly yoga class or something like that.

Now that work schedules are calmed down, still crazy, but not so much in flux, I feel like I can start doing some things again.