Decaf Just Ain't Cutting It

Sleep deprivation has reached a new low in our house this morning. Or should I say MY sleep deprivation has reached a new low. M was working late last night so, after my fill of blogging and on-line holiday shopping (less than 80 days you know), I took myself to bed for some TIVO lullabyes. About 20 minutes after falling asleep the phone rings, and we all know that when the phone rings at 11+am the news is never good. The upside was no one was dead, the downside, M was still in the city with his parents now in tow and was spending the night at their apartment.

Up I rise to put out the trash, convince the cat he did not want to stay out in the rain, turn off lights and set the alarm. By the time this was all done I was wide awake. And so was A. After getting her back down I dozed back off, only to be wakened by a silent C staring at me. "Hi Mom." "Huh? What? What's wrong?" "Elmo fell out of bed and I need you to tuck him in." "You can't do this yourself?" "No, he asked for you." Unable to refute Elmo logic at midnight, I escort C and Elmo to bed, conduct the elaborate tucking in ceremony that seemed like such a good idea at 7pm one night, and return to bed only to find the cat whining because her usual sleeping partner was happily snoring away in a bed many miles away.

At this point I debated returning downstairs and finishing up my holiday shopping as it is probably only a matter of minutes before A is up again, but the lure of my pillow won. Unfortunately, A set a world record for night wakings last night, apparently she doesn't find the lull of rain falling on the roof as relaxing as the rest of us. I finally called it a night at 5:30ish when C wet the bed.

I tend to play down the fact that my almost 17 month old (or is she 18, I can't do the math yet today) has not slept though the night since she was four months (no you are not reading that wrong, it's backwards, I know). It is a tad, well, embarrassing and I am afraid it points to my self-proclaimed parenting style of "whatever's easiest." In this case, what was easiest was getting up in the middle of the night, as instead of being up for hours listening to her cry herself to sleep I could be done in five minutes. As I sit here sipping my decaf coffee, I fear that I made the wrong choice many months ago but can't quite wake up enough to figure out how to rectify the situation. Hopefully her love of being up in the middle of the night will lead to a more stellar academic career than mine....