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.
