All In a Night's Work

One morning last week I woke up absolutely amazed.  I had slept.  I mean actually slept.  As in I went to bed at a decent time and never woke up, or to be more specific, was never woken up, until my alarm went off in the morning.  I honestly was so pleasantly surprised that I laid there a moment trying to recall the last time that had occurred in my life.  I couldn’t remember the last time I had made it through an entire night.  I sound like a little kid who slept in my big girl bed all night.  Except, I am a big girl who is THRILLED to have slept in my big girl bed all night...but there are plenty of kids in this house who make it their life’s pursuit to make sure I know they are alive ALL NIGHT LONG!  

The night before, I had gone to bed around eleven (which, unfortunately, is a bit early for me) and I laid awake for an hour unable to sleep, even though I felt dreadfully tired.  Finally around midnight sweet sleep overtook me and I drifted peacefully into dreamland.  Ten minutes later I was jolted out of sleep by the most horrific sound.  A VERY LOUD and VERY ANNOYING toy jukebox had suddenly decided to play its music loud and proud in baby Jacob’s room.  Nothing could have pushed the play button on it other than sinister spirits straight from the devil himself.  I bolted from my plush pillow paradise toward the nursery with only one thought running through my mind.  Murder that jukebox.  Nothing can incite blind fury within my soul quite like getting ripped out of sleep for something so asinine as that.  In my rush for vengeance I failed to grab my glasses.  For many that would mean life looked a bit fuzzy in the darkness, but for me it gives the phrase “blind fury” literal meaning.  As I entered the nursery to quiet the satanic device I searched desperately through the darkness.  Finding the blurry light source I plunged toward it.  Grabbing the toy I wildly pushed buttons trying to desperately to locate either the “off” or “incinerate” button.  Unfortunately, because of the aforementioned blindness, I was only able to locate other offensive yet happy tunes.  After many frantic and failed attempts Jacob started to cry.  In one grand and sweeping motion, I turned on my heel to run out of the room, stepped on a toy, fell full force slamming the changing table into the wall, scraped the skin off my finger, and fell to the floor, all the while clutching the happily singing demonic device to my chest in hopes of smothering the neverending tune.  It must have been quite a sight as I emerged from the room on all fours in the darkness.  I made it to the front room where I could turn on a light and euthanize the overly chipper plaything properly.  Then I had no alternative but to sit in the hallway and wait for Jacob to go back to sleep.  I knew if I passed his door (even slinking like a snake on my belly….which is not beneath me) to get back to my room that he would see me and the jig would be up.  So I sat...and looked at my blurry bleeding finger...and pondered life.  Finally he succumbed and I crawled back to my bed.  Do you know the feeling when you have wanted nothing more than the comfort of your pillows and mattress, the feel of the warm blankets as they rest upon you?  Well I felt it.  And as I eased in under the covers I gave a great sigh that it was finally over.  It took me a little while to fall back asleep because my adrenaline had been pumping, but soon enough sleep took me...and I rested...for twenty whole minutes before Brigham woke me to tell me that he had diarrhea.

The truth is that everything that happens to me as a parent is deserved, especially where sleep is concerned.  I was born into a family where I was eleven years behind my closest sibling and twenty behind my oldest.  I am sure my parents were already exhausted when I arrived on the scene.  Unfortunately, this youngest child of theirs was blessed with a vivid imagination and a vivid sense of her own mortality.  From my earliest memories I was terrified to sleep alone knowing that my short life would come to an end in any manner of horrific ways if I tried to last the night on my own.  Unfortunately, there weren’t any kids to share a room with.  My parents tried everything to encourage, support, cajole, and motivate me to sleep in my own room, but to no avail.  To their utter delight, I am sure, the most comfortable spot conceivable to my young mind was their bedroom floor.  They told me there were probably spiders down there.  “Spiders.  Who cares about little spiders”, I thought, “when there are murderers in my room?!”  They pled with me.  They gave me a brand new bed for Christmas when I was eight.  Who want’s a brand new bed when you can sleep on your parents floor and listen to your dad snore like a freight train?  Certainly not me.  I was as content as a bug in a rug...or as content as all the bugs in the rug that I slept on.  It was pathological and no matter what they did I always snuck into their room as soon as they were asleep and staked my claim on their carpet.

Before they knew it years had passed and I was still bunking with them.  Then heaven intervened and my mom did something that turned all my sleeping priorities on their ear.  I was twelve...yes, you read that right...twelve years old.  I am ashamed now to even admit it...but there it is.  My mom was driving my friends and I to school when she innocently  reminded me that I had forgotten to clean up the blankets off her floor that morning.  Horror.  Utter horror went through my heart.  What if my friends found out my dirty little sleeping secret?!!  What would happen to me if the whole school found out that I slept...ack...with my parents??!!  At that moment the terror of being murdered in my sleep was insignificant compared with this new dreaded threat.  The pendulum had swung and my life would never be the same again.  That night, and every night of my life thereafter, I went to my own room and slept.  Then I grew up and had kids which means that now I go to my room each night and take short naps intermixed with helping them all night long.

Honestly, I feel my lot is easy compared with what my parents went through, and the laws of justice demand that I deserve every bit of what I get.  My husbands dirty little childhood sleeping secret is that he was a bedwetter.  When we got married I told him we would probably have a kid that slept on our floor and peed on our carpet until he or she was twelve.  Thankfully we don’t have that.  So, though my finger is bloody and my eyes are baggy, I am grateful.  Truthfully, it is these experiences in life that help us learn what being a parent is really all about and help us to laugh as we learn.  What would life be like if we slept every night and woke up in the morning feeling refreshed?  Boring.  Boring... and awesome actually.  For now though, let’s focus on the fact that it IS boring and as parents we must unite in the mantra that WE WILL HAVE NONE OF THAT!  Hail the sleepless eventful night!  Hail Pond’s Hydrating Moisture Cream and Avon’s Virtual Lift Serum for baggy eyes in the morning!