When You're Feeling Down

Last week, Urban Cowboy and I had the unfortunate luck to each get sick with colds.  Each time one of us would start to get better, the other would get worse and I think we were just passing it back and forth for a few days.  I think we've almost kicked it, though, and if we could just convince Urban Cowbaby that sleeping through the night is a good thing, I think we could kick the colds right out of our house!  The lack of sleep, however, is holding us back from getting healthy as quickly as we want.  And, speaking of Urban Cowbaby and sleeping ... what's up with that?!?!  Before we left for England the kid was sleeping through the night and we were all pretty happy.  It was wonderful, actually, to sleep a straight 7-8 hours after 13 months of not doing so.  But then we went to England and he decided he wanted to regress a bit while we were there but we, stupidly, were confident it was a just a symptom of being in a new place and time zone and he would go back to "normal" when we returned.  Well, we've been back for a month now and we have not slept through the night once.  Ugh.  In fact, he's increased the the number of times he wakes up!  We're very tired and very frustrated.  However, every day Urban Cowbaby does something so ridiculously cute, funny, or smart that I can't help but forget about the sleeplessness until he wakes up at 1:00am and then I'm, like, oh yeah - this sucks.  Example of how smart he is?  We've been using a very unsophisticated method to keep him from going up the stairs to the 2nd floor and within the last 2 weeks he's demonstrated that he's been a) watching us and b) practicing because he can now maneuver our system out of his way to climb the stairs.  Also, he's currently the proud owner of about 10 words: mama, ga-ga (Daddy), ga-ma (Grandma), moo, neigh, baa, up, hi, yea!, more, woof, and I think I'm missing a few -  not to mention the signs he's still using/learning.  Finally, the kid is just too damn cute.  His kisses and hugs and cuddles are too adorable and the way he brings us books to read to him in our laps and his excitement at learning how to make funny little lizard noises are all too cute for me to really hold a grudge about the sleeplessness.  I feel like such a cliche, honestly, because before he was born I thought it was all just a bunch of bs when moms would say their kid's cuteness outweighed their negative habits/actions but now I'm a mom and Urban Cowbaby's a walking/talking cutie and I find myself buying into the bs!  Oh, how the mighty fall .... LOL  So, anyway, if you've read this far - thanks for "listening" and if you could maybe just send a bit of positive sleep energy our way, we'd be very appreciative.  Happy Monday.
** Note about the above pic: I was feeling sentimental and decided to post an old-school reminder of how it used to be ... this pic was a rare moment when he was a) sleeping and b) sleeping by himself - two things that didn't happen often or enough prior to his 1st birthday.  SO, basically, a reminder that it could always be worse!  LOL