Sleep, Glorious Sleep
In order to properly explain the current state of affairs, I have to go back. Way back.
If you dig deep in the archives of this here blog, you'll land on this post. It perfectly demonstrates what I mean when I say that Alexis had an enabler when she was little, which led to the fact that I have slept with a kid wrapped around my head for the majority of the past eight years.
It looks like this, by the way.
Except that is the 2-year old version of Alexis, which I referred to as "Toddler Helmet." Now she's longer and ganglier and takes up even more of the bed, but she still TO THIS DAY wraps her little self around my head when she sleeps in our bed.
Which is all the time. Unfortunately.
I'm no longer nice about it AT ALL. I threaten the kid with all sorts of horrible punishment if she doesn't stay off of my pillow. Sometimes it works, but not always.
It hasn't been working recently.
That means the kid who doesn't sleep is all up in my business when all I want to do is sleep. I shove her away, she comes back. I tell her to go away, she returns. It's a vicious cycle that isn't going anywhere. I've come to terms with that.
What I haven't come to terms with is that it's possible to end up with two bad sleepers in one family.
I have for YEARS convinced myself that wasn't possible. No kid could suck at sleeping as much as Alexis does! No way! The only way we can go from here is up!
But I think I might have been wrong.
The Tiny Human seems to always be awake. I can't prove it, obviously, but I'm absolutely certain that there is no sleeping happening, which is an exact repeat of history. Alexis was always thumping around, too.
Always.
All the time.
Now there's two of them.
And. AND. AAAAANNNDDD. They have already started tag-teaming me. Earlier this week, Alexis was forming the 8-year old version of the Toddler Helmet. She would occasionally fall asleep deeply enough to quit playing with my hair. It was a beautiful sort of "occasionally" that should have meant I finally got some sleep.
But that's not what happened.
Every time Alexis quit being a pain, the Tiny Human picked up the slack. Back and forth. Alexis' turn! Tiny Human's turn! Alexis' turn! Tiny Human's turn! Over and over they took turns being the one keeping me awake.
I'm never going to survive the next few years.
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Reader Comments (7)
This graphic, when originally posted, made me fall in love with Burgh Baby. Thanks for reposting it.
There's a reason I was always glad the Howler is not a cuddler...this would be it. No way I could fight off Mr. Octopus all night & deal with that. Luckily, at 11, while she doesn't sleep much, she does like the quiet alone time in her own room, in her own bed.
Unfortunately we have had 3 bad sleepers in our family. I hope for your sake that the tiny human decides to be a better sleeper.
That image is the best thing ever.
(And OMG I hope that the Tiny Human is not as bad as Alexis.)
You might, alas, have to do something along the lines of what we did to our no-longer-welcome-cosleeper: After ample warning, he woke us up diving into the bed once too often. My wife was yelling like a madwoman "Get your coat! Get your boots! Hurry Hurry!" and when he looked to me, I simply said that we had told him that if he kept it up he would have to sleep out in the snow on the deck.
I think we had him partway out the door before he thought to ask whether it might possibly maybe be OK if he stayed in his own bed just once more, just for that night. :) and that was the end of it.
NB that was age 5 or 6, I think. I don't know if an 8-year-old is susceptible to the same pressures, but one would hope so.
Maybe Tiny Human will sleep. Maybe. Eventually. By the time college rolls around?
i just cannot fathom not sleeping. it is one of my favorite things to do.
and i love your mad computer drawing skillz, yo.