My current inability to sleep is really starting to tick me off. If it’s not me and my brain, it’s the boys or the babies. I honestly don’t remember the last time I was able to sleep more than three hours consecutively. I’m a big fan of powering through, but it’s killing me in the attitude department.
This summer, in an attempt to help the boys, I bought this clock that changes color when it’s time to get up. It’s shaped like a bear and the bear’s belly turns green when it’s ok to get out of bed. This is all well and good until you discover that the buttons on the bottom of the bear reset the clock entirely. It also sets an alarm that goes off at completely random intervals and which I cannot figure out how to disable. I call this evil little device Satan’s Teddy and he’s a real butthole. He functions about 85% of the time, which is just often enough to psych you into trusting his backlit, smiling little face. Then you walk out of the room and Teddy grows fangs, cackles wildly and plots how best to ruin my night.
Last night, the little bastard went off at midnight on the dot.
We had gone to bed early because Pook is sick and fussy, which means nobody’s sleeping much aside from Bean. When Teddy started blaring the claxon at 12am, I though perhaps we were under attack from the North Koreans. I was still completely disoriented when Melissa came back to bed from ripping the batteries out of the little sadist, muttering about kids and sleep, punctuated with various curse words. We had maybe three minutes of silence before Roo walked into our room, asking to go downstairs and play on his iPad.
And thus begins the four hour process of playing lullabyes and retucking in, giving consequences, whisper -yelling about selfishness, realizing Roo’s physical inability to dial his volume below a bellowing wail, raging when the wailing wakes up the babies who also begin to wail, pulling him into bed with us, being pummeled/kicked/asked about quantum physics and the mechanics of vehicles in the Star Wars franchise by a seven year old tornado in my bed, him finally falling back to sleep directly atop my head, lying there in my own sweat under a 98 degree, 60 pound weight terrified to move until 4am when Roo woke up and again asked to play on his iPad.
This time I said yes. ABSOLUTELY. Don’t let the doorknob hit ya where the Good Lord split ya and don’t come back for two more hours.
For his part, Roo then went downstairs and prepared himself a snack. Apparently, staying up all night works up quite the appetite and required an entire bowl of skittles and two Jolly Ranchers. He felt the proportions were only fair since he’d prepared the same snack for his twin, who didn’t wake up until 6am. Noodle and I went downstairs together at six to find Roo in an F5 hurricane made entirely of sugar while we I just stood there watching in stunned amazement. Wow. Just… wow.
People often ask jokingly which twin is my favorite. I have always replied with the utmost sincerity: whichever one sleeps the most. Roo’s losing ground in this race. Sleep has always been a struggle for the boys, but Roo is on medication now that makes it hard to sleep and his doctor just upped his dosage, soooooo… Noodle is looking like my preferred child for the foreseeable future. I don’t feel even a little bad about that, either. I had to be out of the house at 7am for a doctors appointment with Bean, plus we have physical and speech therapy with Pook today. It was looking like a long day way before Teddy launched his plan for world domination. Man, I need a nap.
Believe me when I say that Teddy is going in the garbage tonight. I’ll be swinging by Home Depot today to pick up some ropes and chains to tie this dang kid to his bed along with earplugs for the rest of the family. It’s a six shot latte kind of day.
My Five Ring Circus 