(or more lovingly subtitled: The four hours in which I curse the 4 to possibly 5 males in my home for their sweetness.)
I don't sleep well right now: allergies + heat + pregnancy = no bueno.
So even though I only had about 4 hours of sleep the previous night and fought off the evil nap demon courageously and victoriously during the course of the next 19 hours of semi-comatose "awakeness," despite going to bed around 11 pm, I found myself tossing and turning around 1:30 am.
Zsa-man:
Well, I tossed and turned myself face to face with a specter.
Enter Zsa-zsa, my cute little recently birthday-ed 5 year old.
"Mommy, I had a bad dream."
This seems to be somewhat a theme of the past three nights and I am sure that when I am again coherent enough to remember what a nice mommy is, I will try and see if I can help him deal with bad dreams. But for the moment, he just started my struggling-to-sleep body into full alertness.
Fortunately, years of dealing with the repercussions of "horrible middle of the night responses" that have given my older children PTSD from waking up the sleeping momma bear have helped condition me to temper my responses. It has actually been quite a while since I have gotten up angry. Well, it wasn't the last time this fateful evening.
Staring blearily into the beautiful cow-like brown eyes of my Zsa-man, I found myself grumbling something about: "go potty first then you can snuggle with me."
Fast forward 2-45 minutes and once again I turn over--again, semi-comatose--and am once again startled into full wakefulness by the 5 year old specter haunting the side of my bed. I stifle my grumbling marginally successfully this time as I lovingly pick him up to set him between Quinn and I.
And then I feel the moisture. My darling little bed-wetter has soaked through his pull-up once again and the process becomes infinitely more complicated.
The evil, sleep-deprived mom monster is beginning to make itself more asserted as I gently extract him from the bed before spreading anything to my own bed and say somewhat gruffly, "You need to change before you can sleep with us. Back to the bathroom to change."
He and I go across the hall, bearing new jammies and wipes and he sweetly proceeds to dress, apologizing a few times, bless his heart. I assure him groggily that he is a sweet boy as I try to convince myself to keep the bear in the cage, knowing he is sweetly innocent and just needs a little magic mommy snuggle to scare away the nightmares.
We stumble back through the darkness into the night of my very own room and face the bed.
Enter the baby and Q-dawg's moment to "shine":
I face the bed that despite providing no real deep sleep supplies infinite comfort for my pregnant body. I consider the size of Zsa-man's body. I consider the space left by my husband's sweetly intended snuggling approach to beyond the middle of our queen size bed in his sleep. I consider the space required for my over-large "pioneer stock" pregnant body to lay down. I whisper Quinn's name a couple times to no avail. I gently push-encourage his body to return to "his side" of the bed. I lay Zsa-man down right next to his father. I squeeze myself sideways onto the remaining strip of luxury bedding. For five minutes. I change my position so my head is at the foot of the bed and my overly large tummy has room beneath the space left by Zsa-man's short body. I am not left to only grumbling over my (possible) little infant son's ability to emanate large waves of heat and the continual block and flow of my allergy induced mucus in my head. So grateful to be pregnant...just not appreciating the extra heat of having the snuggling inside and without at the moment.
Fast forward two hours--Spooner's turn!
I wake up to heat. Lots of heat. Zsa-man has snuggled away from his father and is making his way down to my end of the bed. I bless the Benadryl I took during my last bout of awakeness that allowed me a blessed few more hours of sleep. I hear quiet little kid breathing behind me. All mothers know this sound. The sound of a child waiting watchfully over their parent, eagerly awaiting their wakefulness in a semi-quiet state: quiet enough to indicate they are trying to be quiet to let the parent sleep and noisy enough to not allow that slumber. Apparently, that is not enough for sweet little Spooner as he crawls onto the bed next to me, snuggling.
Going through my head is how sweet this moment should be, how it is truly special that my 7 year old is so tender-hearted and loving...as he gives me little kisses and puts his arm over and back and over and back and over and back off of my shoulder to snuggle.
Then, he gets the blanket.
I begin to feel the temperature escalate exponentially as he gently lays down a blanket over my pretending-to-sleep-overheating body. Tucking it up under my chin, draping it carefully over my body and even making sure my toes are under, I hear a happy sigh and whispered, "I love you, Mommy" as he then gets back onto the bed to snuggle against my back again.
That does it. After a huge moment of self-restraint to savor the pure sweetness of the moment, I heave the blanket off my body, whisper what is the best "thanks" I can offer at this moment of sleep-deprived raging heat to my darling little boy and stumble into the bathroom, whipping the door closed behind me. Glancing at the clock I see: 5:26 am. Super. Grumbling about "no way I am getting any more sleep tonight!" I deal with an awake momma bear.
The shower beckons.
Enter the final player, Chugger-dude:
As I turn the shower on, I remember a conversation I had with my sweet fifteen year old son just a regretfully short hours before as we both prepared for bed. He commented on how since he started taking cold showers, doing the Polar Bear Plunge on Jan 1st into Lake Ontario hasn't been as hard.
Inspired, I thought about how refreshing that sounded considering my over-warm, heat-generating current condition, pulled on the shower and stepped in. "This is horrible!" I exclaimed as I struggled to catch my breath.
Yes, he didn't force me in.
Yes, he would have probably encouraged me not to.
But somehow it was a very fitting "end" to my "night" that I should be cursing Chugger-dude, as I had all the other males in my home...
...and all because they are so sweet.
I don't sleep well right now: allergies + heat + pregnancy = no bueno.
So even though I only had about 4 hours of sleep the previous night and fought off the evil nap demon courageously and victoriously during the course of the next 19 hours of semi-comatose "awakeness," despite going to bed around 11 pm, I found myself tossing and turning around 1:30 am.
Zsa-man:
Well, I tossed and turned myself face to face with a specter.
Enter Zsa-zsa, my cute little recently birthday-ed 5 year old.
"Mommy, I had a bad dream."
This seems to be somewhat a theme of the past three nights and I am sure that when I am again coherent enough to remember what a nice mommy is, I will try and see if I can help him deal with bad dreams. But for the moment, he just started my struggling-to-sleep body into full alertness.
Fortunately, years of dealing with the repercussions of "horrible middle of the night responses" that have given my older children PTSD from waking up the sleeping momma bear have helped condition me to temper my responses. It has actually been quite a while since I have gotten up angry. Well, it wasn't the last time this fateful evening.
Staring blearily into the beautiful cow-like brown eyes of my Zsa-man, I found myself grumbling something about: "go potty first then you can snuggle with me."
Fast forward 2-45 minutes and once again I turn over--again, semi-comatose--and am once again startled into full wakefulness by the 5 year old specter haunting the side of my bed. I stifle my grumbling marginally successfully this time as I lovingly pick him up to set him between Quinn and I.
And then I feel the moisture. My darling little bed-wetter has soaked through his pull-up once again and the process becomes infinitely more complicated.
The evil, sleep-deprived mom monster is beginning to make itself more asserted as I gently extract him from the bed before spreading anything to my own bed and say somewhat gruffly, "You need to change before you can sleep with us. Back to the bathroom to change."
He and I go across the hall, bearing new jammies and wipes and he sweetly proceeds to dress, apologizing a few times, bless his heart. I assure him groggily that he is a sweet boy as I try to convince myself to keep the bear in the cage, knowing he is sweetly innocent and just needs a little magic mommy snuggle to scare away the nightmares.
We stumble back through the darkness into the night of my very own room and face the bed.
Enter the baby and Q-dawg's moment to "shine":
I face the bed that despite providing no real deep sleep supplies infinite comfort for my pregnant body. I consider the size of Zsa-man's body. I consider the space left by my husband's sweetly intended snuggling approach to beyond the middle of our queen size bed in his sleep. I consider the space required for my over-large "pioneer stock" pregnant body to lay down. I whisper Quinn's name a couple times to no avail. I gently push-encourage his body to return to "his side" of the bed. I lay Zsa-man down right next to his father. I squeeze myself sideways onto the remaining strip of luxury bedding. For five minutes. I change my position so my head is at the foot of the bed and my overly large tummy has room beneath the space left by Zsa-man's short body. I am not left to only grumbling over my (possible) little infant son's ability to emanate large waves of heat and the continual block and flow of my allergy induced mucus in my head. So grateful to be pregnant...just not appreciating the extra heat of having the snuggling inside and without at the moment.
Fast forward two hours--Spooner's turn!
I wake up to heat. Lots of heat. Zsa-man has snuggled away from his father and is making his way down to my end of the bed. I bless the Benadryl I took during my last bout of awakeness that allowed me a blessed few more hours of sleep. I hear quiet little kid breathing behind me. All mothers know this sound. The sound of a child waiting watchfully over their parent, eagerly awaiting their wakefulness in a semi-quiet state: quiet enough to indicate they are trying to be quiet to let the parent sleep and noisy enough to not allow that slumber. Apparently, that is not enough for sweet little Spooner as he crawls onto the bed next to me, snuggling.
Going through my head is how sweet this moment should be, how it is truly special that my 7 year old is so tender-hearted and loving...as he gives me little kisses and puts his arm over and back and over and back and over and back off of my shoulder to snuggle.
Then, he gets the blanket.
I begin to feel the temperature escalate exponentially as he gently lays down a blanket over my pretending-to-sleep-overheating body. Tucking it up under my chin, draping it carefully over my body and even making sure my toes are under, I hear a happy sigh and whispered, "I love you, Mommy" as he then gets back onto the bed to snuggle against my back again.
That does it. After a huge moment of self-restraint to savor the pure sweetness of the moment, I heave the blanket off my body, whisper what is the best "thanks" I can offer at this moment of sleep-deprived raging heat to my darling little boy and stumble into the bathroom, whipping the door closed behind me. Glancing at the clock I see: 5:26 am. Super. Grumbling about "no way I am getting any more sleep tonight!" I deal with an awake momma bear.
The shower beckons.
Enter the final player, Chugger-dude:
As I turn the shower on, I remember a conversation I had with my sweet fifteen year old son just a regretfully short hours before as we both prepared for bed. He commented on how since he started taking cold showers, doing the Polar Bear Plunge on Jan 1st into Lake Ontario hasn't been as hard.
Inspired, I thought about how refreshing that sounded considering my over-warm, heat-generating current condition, pulled on the shower and stepped in. "This is horrible!" I exclaimed as I struggled to catch my breath.
Yes, he didn't force me in.
Yes, he would have probably encouraged me not to.
But somehow it was a very fitting "end" to my "night" that I should be cursing Chugger-dude, as I had all the other males in my home...
...and all because they are so sweet.
