It’s Always Something…

It’s official Followers… I can’t remember the last time I had a full-night’s sleep. Usually our kids are pretty decent sleepers, but every night for the past couple of weeks there has been something that has interrupted Mommy B and I’s sleep pattern. It’s bad enough that we don’t really get much sleep as it is, but to have that little bit of sleep interrupted on a constant basis – we feel like we have an infant (or two) in the house again. Here’s a short list of what has woken us up recently:

• Alli waking up due to a bad dream (we think). Luckily all it usually takes to get her back to sleep is a sip of water and a hug from one of us (usually me).

• Aiden waking up because of a bad dream (again, we think). He’s a little harder to get back to sleep, usually because he wants to be held and rocked back to sleep – even though he’s almost one and a half. Our forever baby…

• Aiden waking up because he’s sick. We thought he was just getting more teeth, but they have yet to appear so we’re assuming that he just caught a little bug of some type. So into the bathroom he came for his usual dose of Tylenol or Motrin… a couple nights in a row.

• Alli waking up due to a low-grade fever. We’re pretty sure that she was just overheated from playing outside that day, so we gave her some medicine to make her fever go down and luckily she ended up sleeping pretty soundly the rest of the night.

• Aiden waking up because he’s hungry. That night I picked him up out of bed and he kept pointing towards the bedroom door. He had been coughing a bit before he woke up, so I walked him downstairs to get him a drink. He wasn’t having any of it – but he kept pointing towards the kitchen counter. Directly at the bag of mini Krispy Kreme donuts. I took one out and gave it to him, just out of sheer curiosity. He shoved the whole thing in his mouth and cuddled back up onto my shoulder. I swear he was back asleep by the time we made it upstairs to his bedroom. Well, OK. What can I say, the boy loves to eat.

• Fireworks being set off on a random Saturday night. It wasn’t even a holiday but apparently the neighbors at the end of the cul-de-sac had something to celebrate. OK, so these didn’t really wake us up, but they kept us awake later than normal… especially because I was nervous they were going to wake up one of the kids. There we were, trying to get settled in for the night and all of a sudden I’m hearing the explosions of Roman Candles coming from less than 40 yards away from my kids’ windows. And these people have young kids of their own! Jerks.

• Thunderstorms. Anyone who lives in a southern coastal city knows what I’m talking about here. Thunderstorms can pop up at any time and anywhere, typically without warning. Leave it to Mother Nature to have a few pass by our house while we’re all trying to sleep. Luckily the kids could have cared less and slept soundly through them, but that didn’t stop the dog from barking right beside our bed at 1am.

• Speaking of the dog, she decided that Tuesday night’s dinner (or something she found outside and ate afterwards) didn’t sit well with her stomach. So at 3am yesterday morning I was awoken from a dead sleep to the lovely sounds of Scarlett regurgitating the contents of her stomach onto the carpet at the foot of our bed. Not once, but twice. Anyone with a dog knows what that sounds like. Mommy B had slept right through it, so I had to wake her up to help me get everything cleaned up and disposed of. Thanks dog… the one night both of the kids sleep soundly through the night, you have to screw it up. Not to mention Mommy B had to get up at 4 (and I at 5) to head to work.

I think youse guys get the picture. As Mommy B and I crawled back in bed last night (technically it was this morning since it was around 2:30am after Aiden woke up crying for some ungodly reason,) I joked that the worst part about it all was that it seemed like they all had agreed to take turns depriving us of sleep. Like a conspiracy of the little ones – as if they had sat around and agreed to it one day while we weren’t looking. Because it’s always one of them or the other, never both.

I can hear it now, as they’re sitting around the coloring table with Aiden taking point because he’s the worst offender: “OK girls, here’s how it’s gonna go down. I’m going to start things off tonight by fake-teething. Tomorrow night, big sis Alli you take over with some crying and when they come in to comfort you, mumble something about monsters coming to get you even though you haven’t seen Monsters, Inc. yet. I heard we were going to get some rain the next night, so when the thunder starts rumbling, Scarlett you do your thing. I’ll take over again the following night and pretend I’m hungry. Who knows, maybe I’ll even score a midnight snack out of the deal! Scarlett you come back in the night after – try to eat something really nasty in the back yard before they bring you in for the night. And make sure to really hack it up nice and loud around 3am… they’ll hate that! Alli, you’re up next with more crying and requests to see someone who you haven’t seen in a while and who isn’t even in the same state. Grandma C maybe? Or perhaps a long-lost aunt you’ve only met once when you were six months old. I’ll follow that up the next night with more crying for no good reason. Sound good? OK, Operation ‘Make Mom And Dad Go Batsh*t Crazy’ is now underway. Good luck ladies.”

Yep, I can totally see that happening. Or maybe the sleep deprivation is catching up to me…