Uninspired

As you can probably tell, I have been feeling rather uninspired lately. On all fronts. I am having a really hard time motivating myself to finish the dissertation and finally get the hell out of grad school. I find myself wasting an obscene amount of time doing absolutely nothing. I haven't even had anything good to blog about.

Here's the short version of what's been happening lately:

• Max had pinkeye over the weekend, and I've been fighting him to let me put drops in his eyes.
• I've been struggling to re-work the discussion section of the second chapter of my dissertation into something I can live with.
• I've been eBay-ing way too much.
• I painted a lot of faces (and the occasional arm and hand) at DISL's Discovery Day this past weekend.
• I've been making an effort to exercise. Period. Because I realized that aside from housecleaning and hefting Max around, I don't.
• The weather has been way too nice to be cooped up inside writing. I'm thinking I should take this party (meaning, me, my laptop, and a few papers) outside.

In other news, Max turned 15 months old today, which means another checkup soon. Also, he has finally started going to sleep on his own. I know, all the parenting books say you should lay babies down "drowsy but awake" from the time they're teeny tiny so they can learn to fall asleep on their own. But The Max? Has never been into that. Believe me, we tried. But he has always been the baby who screams bloody murder as soon as you move to lower him into the crib and continues to wail at the top of his lungs until he is picked up. It did not matter if I was right by his bed or if I was patting his back. Or if I was not in the room. He would just scream, and there's only so much non-stop screaming a person can stand. So we've been cuddling/rocking Max to sleep pretty much his whole life. Then he goes into his crib asleep.

But lately Max has been fighting the sleep thing. He's been squirming and struggling to get down and play after he has his bedtime cup of milk. So after a half hour of struggling and squirming and fussing the other night, I got frustrated and just put Max in his bed awake. Well, I told him goodnight and gave him a kiss, then put him in his bed and left the room. He didn't even cry, really. I could hear him moving around for a little while, and there was a little bit of whining that first night, but Max fell asleep maybe 10 minutes after I put him in his crib. So for the last few nights, we've been keeping his bedtime routine the same as it's always been, but instead of sitting down to cuddle/rock after his cup of milk, we do "goodnight"s and kisses, and Max goes in his crib. With no fuss whatsoever. We can hear him jumping in his bed for a few minutes, and then he's quiet. When I check on him before I go to bed, he's always snoozing away. So I'm loving that.

I am not loving that Max is waking up a zillion times a night (except last night, when he slept straight through from 8 p.m. to 6:10 a.m., which is still a bit too early). But at least he's staying in his bed instead of screaming bloody murder for as long as takes for me to take him to our bed.

Ah, well. It's time for me to get back to work. I'm also thinking about going for a jog at the park, so maybe I'll do that, too.