Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Let Sleeping Mummy’s Lie

My children have always known that it’s a bad idea to wake me up when I’m sleeping.  Even while in utero Emily chose to wake James by kicking him in the back while leaving me peacefully sleeping (don’t ask me how she managed that).  Of course James woke me to share the blessed news and then promptly went back to snoring leaving me laying there awake in the middle of the night while Emily practiced her nocturnal karate.

James is currently traveling for work and during his absence I have been inflicted with quite a number of sleep interruptions.  He was originally meant to be gone for one week, seven sleeps, but on the night of the 4th sleep (half way through which I planned on celebrating making it to the half way mark of the trip) he called to say things weren’t going as well as they could be and he was going to have to stay an extra week (actually an extra 8 sleeps).  There have been plenty of opportunities now for sleep interruptions.  Here are some of them.

One night I was woken to find myself being slapped in the face by a Chewbacca mouse toy on the other end of which was one of our cats, Optimus Prime.  Seriously, I’m not making that up.  I think Chewbacca is still buried in my bed somewhere.  Now Optimus Prime makes it a nightly habit to “find” his Stormtrooper mouse toy from a corner of my room where it has presumably escaped to.  After finding the toy he proceeds to parade his “kill” around the house eventually making it to my bed where he flings it around for a while.  I’m not quite sure when the Stormtrooper makes his escape and hides back in the corner but apparently he’s not that smart because he always hides in the same place.

Another night we had an extremely bad thunderstorm, in February, when its supposed to be winter.  I was rather annoyed that someone kept turning the lights on and off until I figured it out (not at my cognitive best at 3 am).  A different night we had another storm, just wind this time but I did get up to see if there was anything very big being blown around.  I had no plans to save us from big things being blown around so I’m not sure why I looked but it made me feel better.

On several nights I was joined by little visitors who completed the night next to me.  Most of the time this made we wake with a start after they had probably been there for quite some time (serious delayed reactions).  One early morning though, I woke up with such a fright and nearly screamed in terror when I sensed a child sneaking around my bed in a failed attempt to retrieve her phone from my headboard where it lives overnight.  She didn’t even stop when I had almost had a heart attack and then promptly fallen back asleep.  She just kept sneaking and I kept waking with a start.  This happened at least three times, although reports from witnesses vary.  Later I was sure there were two of them doing it which resulted in an epic meltdown from the innocent one I had falsely accused.  I still say she’s guilty because I’m sure if she’d thought of it she would have done it too.

One morning the dog had either escaped or been let out of her crate too early and she came to greet me with a huge amount of joyful barking.  I didn’t feel as joyful as she did, I was especially unjoyful at the thought of her needing to go out to the bathroom and yet being unable to open the door herself.  I was most unjoyful about her bathroom backup plan which is to do it on the floor. 

Two mornings I was roused by the same child with different problems.  The first time she had woken well in advance of my alarm clock and apparently won the prize for being the first and only person in the house who was awake.  This excited her so much that she felt the need to come and share this news with me and ask “what should I do now?”  She was a bit puzzled when my garbled reply was that she should get dressed, have breakfast and be ready for school. 

This morning she turned up to tell me that there was something in her eye, most likely a spider.  I told her it was more likely to be sleep (you know, the little crusty bits that form in the corners of your eyes) her reply was that it couldn’t be because she wasn’t asleep anymore.  Once again I lacked the cognitive ability to explain this and since it was still dark out I was forced to turn on my light and investigate this fierce eyeball spider for myself.  I couldn’t even see crusty bits let alone a spider and after I managed to convince her of this I was too awake to go back to sleep. 

I don’t know what the next few nights will bring, I keep thinking it can’t get any stranger but I should know better than that by now.  All I know is that I can’t wait for James to be back again so he can take care of at least some of these nighttime shenanigans and I can get some uninterrupted sleep.

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