Maternal Neuroses

I feel a bit tired today because I was up for a couple hours in the middle of the night last night. I don't know why this is happening, but lately I keep waking up in the middle of the night thinking that the Lima Bean is running around the house. Now clearly it is the middle of the night and she's soundly asleep, tucked away in her crib. But for some reason I've been popping awake lately with a worry that she's somehow gotten out of her crib and is running around the house playing. Since I think this is real, my brain then goes through the list of possible dangers she could encounter while playing in the house unsupervised in the middle of the night. Did I remember to latch the stair gate? Could she be pulling bottles out of the wine rack? Is she tugging at the computer cables?

Even though on some level I know this is just a dream, it feels real enough to get me out of bed just to make sure everything's ok. Usually by the time I hit the hallway I wake up enough to realize how crazy it is that I think she's running around the house and I go to bed. But last night, while standing in the hallway like a nut, I realized that I had gone to bed without covering the pan of brownies I baked last night.

So while I woke up for unreal purposes, I realized that I had a little matter to attend to in the kitchen and headed off to do that. And since I was in the kitchen at 2:36am, I figured I'd have one of the delicious brownies I'd made before I covered the pan with aluminum foil. So I stood there and cut one moderately sized square for myself. That was really good. So I sliced off another little piece. Again, really good. So I went back for just another little edge off the side. And so on until I had eaten a mightly big chunk of brownie. See the photo above. All that damage is mine, minus one square that Win ate earlier in the evening when normal people eat their brownies.

So at about 2:58am, fueled by brownie power, I decided I'd check the web and see what was up. First stop was Food Porn Watch. Jarrett's site is so good for keeping up with food blogs. Then I was off to Culinary Epiphanies to see how Kelli's sourdough experiment was going. Looks like things are going well with her starter. Up next was a visit to Chocolate & Zucchini; Clotilde's on vacation and her travels are heavenly to read about.

Then I came across a site I hadn't seen before and it spoke to the neurotic mom in me that got up at 2:36am thinking my kid was running around the house unattended. Three Kid Circus had me laughing for a while and I'll be checking back in there frequently. On to the Style section of The New York Times, but none of this week's articles thrilled me. Normally the Styles section is my favorite (how cerebreal of me, I know) but this week left me cold. This article on packing children's lunches for school was kind of interesting though.

After about an hour on the web, I flipped through some magazines (Time, Newsweek and Glamour) and some cookbooks (The Minimalist Cooks at Home, The Way to Cook, and The Extra Virgin Olive Oil of Lucca). This brought me to about 4:30am and I guess the brownie buzz had worn off because I was finally tired enough to get back to sleep.

I was now ready for a really nice, deep sleep. Too bad Lima decided she'd get up extra early this morning and started talking in her room at about 5:30am. Let's hope my maternal neuroses (and brownie cravings) take a break tonight and we all get a better sleep.