Sleep

As I'm getting ready to go to Wood Badge, I'm most excited about sleeping through the night! That got me thinking about how I'd like things to happen and how they actually are.

My Nighttime Fantasy:
I sleep through the night, oblivious to the baby crying because Cliff has heard her before me and gets up to feed her.

My Realistic Hope:
When the baby wakes me up, I wake up Cliff who gets up to feed her and I am able to get back to sleep. I wake up again when the baby is crying, but Cliff is able to finally get her to sleep so I can sleep again too.

Reality:
Cliff and Elizabeth go to bed at 9:00. Catherine dozes off at 9:30, but wakes up when I put her in bed. I feed her at 10, and she finally sleeps at 10:30. I get to sleep until 3:30, when she wakes me up to eat again. I get her back to sleep at 4:30 and go back to bed myself until the alarm goes off at 5. We’re all out of the house by 6.

My Nightmare:
Elizabeth falls asleep on the way home from Grandma’s and we think she’s tired enough to sleep through the night. Cliff goes to bed early and I stay up to put the baby to sleep. I’ve slept for only half an hour when Elizabeth wakes up. She’s crabby and hungry so we go downstairs to eat bread and watch Spongebob. When I finally decide it’s time for Elizabeth to go to bed, she whines and cries, making me drag her all the way upstairs. I can’t sleep until she finally stops crying. I get another half hour of sleep until I hear Catherine awake and ready to eat. She refuses to go back to sleep and cries when I do anything but stand in the middle of the room and bounce her. When she finally sleeps, it’s pointless for me to go to bed because it’s time to get up. I am now insane. (Thanks, Mom, for taking the girls a couple of nights so I could regain part of my sanity!)

Luckily, the nightmare only happened once. Sadly, the fantasy has yet to happen.