A War

You'd think with a five, four, and 15 month old, sleepless nights would be a memory. If you heard I wasn't sleeping through the night, you'd probably want to blame the baby. Not so. The culprit is pictured above with his nighty night "friends." For every bit of sweetness in him (and there is a lot to be had) there is just as much stubbornness. The midnight visitations have increased in the last year. To combat the problem in the past we put an air mattress on the floor. When we got sick of walking over that every day, we moved the baby to the far bedroom and put Andy in the bedroom closest to us. He slept in there as long as the closet light, the bedroom light, and the spider man nightlight were on and he had a flashlight with him for shining under the bed. I don't think anything remotely scary could be comfortable in that celestial atmosphere. The close, lighted bedroom worked for awhile; he likes to be close. Soon, however, I was again awakened by the serious eyes gazing into my sleepy ones. He claims everything from he can't breathe (he gets asthma sometimes) to there's something under his bed. He says he just needs a drink of water or he cries out in frustration while he wiggles and tosses that, "I just can't sleep." He almost never fails to gain access to the master bed. Once wedged between Jeff and I in the tiny Queen, he continues to toss, caress my hands, and attempt to get comfortable until I want to scream...and sometimes I do. He has a chump detector and I'm a chump.

So we do what we always do when there's a problem. I made a six day chart. At the end of the week, if he sleeps all night in his own bed, he gets to go to Chucky Cheese with a friend. It has worked beautifully. The first night he said he woke many times. He was scared something was in the closet but he forced himself back to sleep. This chart is a miracle but I'm wondering what I do for next week. One can only stand Chucky Cheese so often.

Despite the good efforts I am still not sleeping. On the first night Andy slept all night...in the midst of the night...someone was calling me. I made my disoriented way to Andy's room and found him asleep. The calling person was Nicky and she had a nightmare. I was called an additional time at 2 a.m. By 5 a.m. Nicky was in the wedge of the master bed trying to get comfortable for an hour. I finally went to her bed at 6 a.m. I fell asleep and by 6:15 she'd found me again. I was so exhausted I slept through the snuggles and turns until it was time to get up at 7.

The next night Christian woke at midnight and refused to go to bed. Jeff was gracious enough to stay up with him until 3 a.m.

Christian was up again at 8 last night and after an hour + of crying, I got him up. I figured something was wrong because he never cries that long. He stayed up until 11:30 watching an Oprah re-run with me and smiling and playing. He's not sick at all.

They are literally all against me. When I told Jeff this through my tears last night, he tried to make me feel better by saying things like, "we probably had too many kids" and "I don't know what we do wrong because other peoples' kids sleep fine." I told him next time these are the wrong things to say and he must simply give a hug and tell me things will get better. This he must do even if he doesn't believe a word he's saying.

As I type Christian cries and it is now 9 p.m. I hope there's no fire or poopy pants in there because I'm not going in. There's a war going on here folks!