I’m carrying a little extra baggage today. It has settled in a most unattractive place. It’s not flattering. I don’t like it.
It’s under my eyes.
I haven’t been sleeping well lately. It is likely due to the fact that I have so much going on it is hard for my brain to unwind and calm down at night. Combine that with an almost three year old who has developed wonky sleeping habits and you have…baggage.
Landon is a crafty little bugger. I go back and forth as to whether I should put him in a big kid bed or keep him in the crib. I’m not sure I’m ready for the battles of a big kid bed, but him laying in bed and whining “Mommy” over and over throughout the night (and starting most mornings around 5:45), is killing me softly. Purple under my eyes is not my color.
Dangit.
This is what I hear many mornings and, recently, in the middle of the night as well:
“Moooommmyyy…I’n firsty.” “Moooommmyyy…I needa go potty.” “Moooommmmy? Tan you tome hewe pwease?”
I don’t know what it is with our boys but both of them have been difficult sleepers in their toddler years. I’ll have to share sometime the nightmare we went through with Sloan when he was 3. Just thinking about those months makes me shudder. I’m praying we don’t have to endure that kind of difficulty with Landon too, but his recent nighttime behavior is scaring me a little. The biggest problem of all is that he is so dang cute! And he knows it and is workin’ it. And me? I’m just really, really tired. There is no rest for the weary.
Take last night, for instance. I had a rehearsal at church for our upcoming Christmas Musical. It was a pretty intense scene we were working on with lots of movement and singing so it took me a bit of time to unwind when I got home. At midnight Landon started crying. Thankfully he fell back asleep after only a few minutes. At 12:49 Sloan came into our room with an issue that needed to be dealt with. Fifteen minutes later I crawled back in bed determined to fall asleep. I did, thankfully, only to be awakened at 4:00 by a massive wind storm that shook our walls so violently I found myself wondering if I should move everyone to the basement. And at 4:30 the smoke alarm in the basement started chirping every 30 seconds indicating a dying battery. At 5:27 Landon started calling for me and intermittently singing Jesus Loves Me. By 6:30 he was done being patient and his cries escalated to the point that I knew I needed to drag my weary body out of bed.
And today we start all over. There isn’t time to rest, no time to sleep and it will be another late night.
Please…someone tell me I’ll sleep again someday. Please? Puh-leeeeeze?
I have noticed more purple baggage as well. And the sad thing is that I HAVE been sleeping well! Oh, age, we defy you in the name of Jesus! 🙂
Ok I have one question for you, where is Lee? I am sorry but he needs to be enjoying all this with you. 🙂 We also woke up at 4am to the wind blowing and Claire coming into our room saying she had a bad dream. I have my kids pretty well trained to go to daddy’s side of the bed when they need something in the middle of the night. I know that is horrible especially since he has to get up and go to work in a few hours, but he is able to fall back to sleep so much easier than I am and I may not have a desk job but I do have a pretty demanding job all day and need my sleep, so there you have it why the kids go to daddy.
Actually, Lee gets up a lot of the time and I don’t. 🙂 He’s great like that. Our kids are funny. Sloan ALWAYS goes to Lee first. And sometimes Lee can handle it himself. Last night took both of us though. 🙂 Tia ALWAYS comes to me. And usually I handle her in the middle of the night (thankfully she RARELY wakes up at night though! Wahoo!). And apparently Landon ALWAYS wants me. I need to retrain him. The problem with me is that even if I don’t get up witht he kids but stay in bed while Lee handles it, I still end up having a hard time falling back to sleep. It’s a terrible, terrible curse.
hugs to you sleepy friend. next chance you get, tell Lee you need an early night. Take a bath around 7 pm. Go to bed at 8 pm. It’ll help. When Jeremy was deployed I had to do this every once in a while. Chase and Cooper would both take turns with night time stuff and Mommy was the only option in those days. So I just took a night to recover. I seriously got out my calendar and made the time. You’ll sleep again and you’ll be so freak’in tired you won’t have to worry about how long it’ll take you to actually fall asleep. 😀
P.S. Sometimes, I just tell my kids that I’m really tired and I need them to help me by leaving me alone for a little while unless they are bleeding or throwing up. 😀
All great ideas. Thanks Tiff for that encouragement. I try to make light of it but the fact is it’s miserable to be so tired isn’t it? Love you, friend!
Awww that’s rough! It DOES get better, but sometimes it’s hard to believe that time will ever happen!! If he goes to a toddler bed, he’ll be at your door saying all those things instead of in his crib saying all those things. lol
This is one of those nasty little secrets (like hemorroids) that everyone fails to tell you about mommyhood. Why was I under the impression that after 12 weeks when they ‘sleep through the night’ that everything would be blissful unless they were sick? I would have laughed in the person’s face who said that I would be able to function after a night like you had, in my younger days that would have been grounds for a sick day from school or work!
Ha! So true, Dawn. I guess no one tells you these things because if they did none of us would ever have kids! 🙂