I am exhausted.
I need sleep people. Quality sleep. The sleep expert, from the late night advertisement for Obus Forme mattresses, agrees. He says that I should be getting eight to ten hours of quality sleep a night.
I think I just choked on something that was intended to be a guffaw, but was poorly executed due to sleep deprevation.
According to Mr. Sleep Expert himself, if you aren't getting the hours of sleep your body requires, then you slowly accumulate a sleep debt.
Pffft.
Stick him in these extreme anti-sleep conditions and see how he fares. I'm sure that he would be a hell of a lot less concerned about debt and would be choosing more appropriate words like drastic-recession-causing-severe-irreversable-trauma-likely-to-cause-death.
Just saying.
Mr. Sleep Expert has never had kids, guaranteed. Or, he's like Rob, and is able to sleep through a tsunami as it violently washes him out to sea. Either way, he has no idea what a night with children is really like.
My eight to ten hours? They look a little more like this:
10:00- Bedtime for moi.
10:30- I finally fall asleep.
12:00- There is crying. I am all disoriented from the deep sleep my body is trying to relax me into and fumble with my duvet. Desperate to rescue my distraught child before he/she wakes up the other sleeping child, I catapult myself from the end of my bed across the hall, making it into Payton's room in record time. Payton looks up sleepily, wondering what I'm doing. Ryker is now sobbing.
12:02- I leave Payton's room to get Ryker tylenol for his teeth. She is immediately hysterical, as it's conveniently come to her attention that I am not, in fact, lying right beside her.
12:06- I get Ryker settled in and join my daughter, smashed up against her wall as she lazily stretches her body in ways I don't believe I was ever able to contort. I am told that if I leave? She will cry, cry, cry.
1:00- I slowly get up from my crunched position, as my entire body is now in agony from the awkwardness. I quietly make my way to the door, and Payton sits up, wide awake. I am instructed to "No leave me."
1:15- Bravely, I attempt again. Success. I crawl into bed.
1:20- Abner has been startled awake by my presence and needs to relieve his bladder. He stands up, shakes and trots downstairs to pee. I am to follow, or clean up a mess in the morning. I'm not going to lie, sometimes I opt for the latter.
1:50- I have just fallen asleep and am woken to a tiny tongue licking my face. I had forgotten to snuggle Abner under the covers and he cannot seem to move the sheets high enough so that he can forge his way underneath. And he likes to be spooned. I should know this.
3:00- There is crying. I move to jump out of bed, but I am trapped. There is some kind of professional restraint in place to limit my mobility. Have I finally been admitted into a psych ward and fitted into a straight jacket? No. My struggles have induced a groan of disatisfaction that I recognize as Jewels, our pit bull. She is sprawled on top of me. I get up to go to Payton's room, who asks me, "Where Woody and Jesse go?" All kinds of important issues to deal with at this time of night, I tell you.
3:45- Again- I attempt to remove myself from my daughter's grasp. SUCCESS! Back to my room.
4:00- Abner needs to pee. Again.
6:15- A glorious two hours and fifteen minutes of straight sleep and Ryker has turned his music on in his crib and is jumping to the rythm of the song. He is awake and ready to party it up with his blankie, but wants Mommy to join him. Note: Mommy is not interested.
Add them up people, because if this whole sleep debt thing is accurate? It's a damn good thing that Rob gets a few weeks off when he finally returns. This will conveniently provide child care to coincide with my hibernation.
Speaking of which, that is SUCH a good excuse to eat the blueberry custard sealed away in the kitchen. You need to store calories for such a long endeavor, am I right?
I so am.
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