Our Bedroom – Update

Continued from ‘Our Bedroom‘

He slept with me Friday night.  It was fabulous!  We went to bed at the same time.  I felt like a normal married couple.  He watched the news for a bit and I read a magazine.  Normal!  He stayed there all night.  There was no hanky panky, it was better than that.  We spooned.  (That’s a weird word!) We cuddled, we slept close to one another.  We were touching in one way or another most of the night.  It was sweet.  It was so sweet.

I slept in until 8:30 Saturday morning!  I am up at 5:30-5:45 thru the week and usually by 7am on the weekends.   He was already up and about.  I think I was able to sleep in just because I felt so content!

I woke up with a smile on my face :)

Saturday afternoon we were watching something on TV and I said “I liked you sleeping with me last night.”  He said “I liked it too!” with the biggest smile I’ve seen on his face in a long time.

Unfortunately he didn’t sleep with me Saturday night. :(  We were all up late watching TV, the kids and I went up to bed and he said he would be there soon – after whatever was on was over.   He fell asleep soon after that.  I fell asleep pretty quickly too or I might have gone back downstairs to get him. He said he fell asleep and didn’t wake up until almost 6am.  He was sitting up on the couch.  The light & TV were still on and he hadn’t put wood in the furnace.  I wondered if I should believe him or not.  But seriously, before he would not have even bothered to explain.  He would have been irritated that I felt I even had the right to ask.  So I believe him.

And besides that, he had a hard time getting the furnace going again since it had gone out during the night. His story check out.

:)

Our Bedroom

Hubby has been sleeping in our bedroom every day this week.  Granted that I am not in there sleeping with him during the day (he works night) but this was a big change.  Before this, I’ll bet he slept in there a total of 3 times in the past 2 months.  And that was only on weekends when I pouted a bunch about it and he gave in to shut me up.  Usually I don’t even say anything about it anymore – there is no dignity in begging your husband to sleep in the same room as you!

On Sunday morning kid3 asked me why hubby sleeps in the basement instead of the bedroom.   Kid3 is 10.  I told him I didn’t know but it hurt my feelings.  I told him not to ever do that to his wife.  He grinned and said “I won’t mom.”  I’ve been wondering if hubby heard that conversation – or if kid3 said something to him, because hubby started sleeping upstairs the very next day.    We’ll see what happens this weekend.  I can tell you that if he goes back to the basement – on the days when we would actually be sleeping at the same time – I’m gonna lose it on him.  Just sayin’.

Yesterday.  Yesterday he actually initiated sex.  I had sex yesterday!  woo hoo!  lol  I don’t care if that’s TMI!

So he’s been sleeping in the bedroom.  He actually wanted to make out with me.  What’s going on?!?!?

I hope it lasts.  Sigh.

He didn’t get the job.

He didn’t really expect to but I’m thankful he at least put a bid in for it.

He was stressing out about it after he did it though.  He was second guessing the whole thing.  What is this?  What if that?  He even said at one point he wished he could take his bid out – just in case.

I know change is hard. But sometimes change is GOOD!

Hopefully this will start to pave the way for him to at least consider job openings that come up on daylight.  Or he is so relieved that he will never do it again.  Ha.

We’ll see.

Pray really really really hard!

Please pray really really really hard!
Before hubby left for work tonight he said that he is going to put in a bid for a job on a different shift.  Daylight!

Please pray that he actually will do it.   (He’s said he would many times in the past, but changed his mind.)

Please pray that he will get the job. (There are a lot of guys that have seniority that will probably want it too.)

Please pray for me to not give up hope if he doesn’t.

See: Hubby works 3rd Shift.. and I hate it!

G’night!

Hubby works 3rd Shift – continued.

Continued from Hubby works 3rd Shift.. and I hate it!

Then it started to get to him.  He had missed several of Kid1’s swim meets the 1st summer.  There was usually one on Saturdays that he got to, and then one on Tuesday evenings which he missed.  He hated that.  He is a very involved dad and hates missing that kind of stuff.

(That is one reason I think I hung on so long in this marriage – he is an awesome dad – now if we can keep working on the awesome hubby thing, we’ll be good :)

Then the following summer (last summer) all 3 kids played ball.  Girls in softball, my son in baseball.  Endless practices and several games per week.  And he was missing a lot.  That’s when he changed shifts.  He didn’t want to to go back to 1st.  So he took a 3rd shift job.  His dad had worked that for many years when he was growing up.  He said he had always wanted to try it anyway.  Well for him I guess it seemed to work perfectly.  He would be there for the activities and still be home during the day and just sleep when he felt like sleeping.

It was not perfect for me.  This meant he was ALWAYS around.  The only time he was not home was when I was asleep.  I like alone time.  It refreshes me.  And alone time while you are sleeping does not count!   I went from having to answer to no one to having him there CONSTANTLY.  And it’s not like he was there commanding my every move.  But he was always there.  The evenings were no longer just mine. I had to be a team player again and I missed being in charge!

And he wouldn’t just come home from work and go to sleep.  I think he is just so very nosy he is afraid he is gonna miss something!  Seriously.  Now he has gotten better at this but we had SO many fights about it.  He needs sleep.  Who doesn’t? And if he didn’t get enough of course he was just a grumpy bear.  Most days he would fall asleep on the couch in the living room right in the middle of everything.  I turned into the shushing mom.  Not once did he ever yell at us to be quiet – I’ll  give him credit for that.  Instead I turned into the mean mom – threatening kids to be quiet all day.   Why?  Cuz if he didn’t sleep, I had to deal with the grumpy bear.  Sometimes I would just keep trying to wake him up and get him to move to the bedroom.  I have pictures of him sleeping on the dining room floor.  He would lay down on the floor when he got home (his back hurt and this helps) and just stay there.  We would be going all about our day – neighbor kids coming over, everyone eating lunch, running in and out playing and there he was asleep on the floor right in the middle of it all.  Drove me crazy.  He thought it was awesome.

My point…..  I think our marriage really took a nose-dive when he started 3rd shift.  I was just annoyed at him constantly.  I felt like I had to “work around” him.  He could not be counted on and just really felt like a thorn in my side.  I could not depend on him for help driving kids to practice or to watch other kids while I went somewhere because you never knew when he would finally exhaust himself and have to sleep.  He was grumpy because he was not sleeping enough, but he would never admit it.

Even with all the problems in our marriage, one thing I was always proud of was how much we talked to each other.  That was not happening anymore either.  When he was working first shift, he would come home from work and just want to talk and talk.  He would get so annoyed if I did not stop what I was doing and give him my undivided attention and hear about his day.  I learned to do that for him and it was good for us.

At night we would usually go to bed at the same time and just lay there, touch our feet together and gab and gab.   The feet touching was our thing :).  We kinda lost that when he began working 2nd shift.  I would be asleep before he got home.  But we still often had gab time in the morning before all the kids woke up.

With 3rd, there is no sleeping together.  Just the weekends, but to be honest he often sleeps in his recliner.  He just falls asleep there and I leave him there.  His schedule is still messed up on the weekends.  It would be very hard to be awake all night during the week and go right back to a normal sleeping routines on the weekends.  It just doesn’t happen.  Even when he does sleep with me now he is awake and up by 3am cuz his body just can’t adjust.  And it actually feels weird to share the bed with him now.  We’re both used to having it to ourselves….  that can’t be good for a marriage!

Anyway, I hate 3rd.  I have tried several different approaches to dealing with loud kids and sleeping hubby.
1 – Shush everyone and try to let daddy get some sleep.
2 – Refuse to shush everyone cuz it’s his fault if he chooses to sleep in the living room instead of his quiet bedroom.
3 – Fight with him about it until I wake him up enough to get him to move to the bedroom.

Ugh.  Did I tell you I hate 3rd shift?

Last summer when I FINALLY got him to put the air conditioners in the windows, that helped.  Because then he would go to the bedroom and turn on the air and it would drown out the noise.  That helped my sanity and he caught up on some sleep and got a little nicer.  I dreaded fall because we would not have the great noise-blocker to depend on anymore and he would have no motivation to sleep in the bedroom instead of the couch.  And yep, it happened that way.

He is getting NOTHING done around the house anymore either.  My resentment is just building.  He has no motivation.  I wouldn’t either.  But my problem is that this was his CHOICE.

But – Yippee!  He is finally looking for a new shift to work.  He finally kind of admitted that it would be better for our marriage if he worked a different shift.  Mainly I think he decided to change so he can get his garage built.  He has planned to do that for YEARS.  I mentioned casually that I’ll bet he would actually get it done if he wasn’t on 3rd.  I planted the seed.  Gotta let them think they came up with these ideas themselves you know…. lol.

So I’m praying that a new position on a different shift will become available to him soon!  Oh please Oh please Oh please!

Hubby works 3rd Shift.. and I hate it!

I hate 3rd shift.    HATE it.  No, I don’t work it, hubby does.  I couldn’t do it.  I would be a walking zombie. When I am sleep deprived, all I want to do is throw up.  I am a person who needs my sleep.  I just am.

Hubby handles it well.   He chose to work 3rd.  He made that choice so he would be around for the kid’s activities.

He was on 1st shift when he started at his job and just hated it.  There are double the amount of employees and double the amount of bosses on 1st shift.  He is a guy that is very capable of doing his job without someone standing over him supervising.  And frankly when someone does that it just ticks him off.  He came home so many evenings saying he is tired of “playing their game”.    It just really ticked him off.

So then he switched to 2nd shift.   I loved 2nd shift!  It was awesome!  It was summertime when he first started that.  And I felt free.  Sorry to say that but I did.  If the kids and I were at the park, or swimming with friends, or visiting cousins, or whatever….  there was no time we had to be home.  He would leave around 2:30 in the afternoon.  I work from home and tried to get most of my work done in the mornings and we would have the rest of the day to just have fun.  And since Dad was home in the mornings, they got to ride the 4-wheelers, and play baseball with Dad and all sorts of fun Dad stuff.  They loved it.  Lunchtime became our family meal time.  Lunches are less of a pain than suppers to prepare and we still got our family meal together.  I felt like I was in charge of my own schedule for once.  It was very freeing to know that no one cared if I was home in time to make dinner.  Or if we ate PB & J again.  We just did what we wanted to do.  And I didn’t have to clear the decisions with him…. you know, kids ask if they are allowed to do something or if a friend can come over after supper and play or whatever.  I said yes if I wanted to say yes.  I did not have to check with him.  He didn’t care, he wouldn’t be there :)

When school started back up it was a bit harder.  I was the only one there to help 3 kids with homework.  And I was the only taxi for the evening.  But I still liked it.  Hubby and I got along great at that time in our marriage also.  He was at home and getting lots of stuff done around the house and with the kids during the day.  That made him feel productive and happy.  I was happy – no mom guilt while I worked in the mornings and the schedule according to me in the evenings.  Life was good.  lol

To be continued….