Thursday, October 25, 2007

OK, That? Was Not Fun

Yesterday my writing got derailed twice. Andrew woke up from his nap forty-five minutes earlier than usual, giving me only fifteen minutes of writing time after my work day ended. I wrote about 250 words. Then I imbibed at dinner on a stomach that was emptier than I had thought with a margarita that was a great deal more potent than I had thought. Brain was not coherent after that. No words last night. Going to bed under these circumstances never makes me happy, but there's only so much prodding I can force my brain to endure, and there's only so much sleep I'm willing to sacrifice. So I retired with my measely 250 words for the day.

Then the Drew Monster woke up screaming about thirty minutes after we had turned out our light for the night. (This means Mark had been asleep for roughly twenty minutes and I had not even begun to drift off; inebriated or no, I take at least a half hour to fall asleep.) We tried to calm Drewbie down for a good 15-30 minutes, but he wasn't having it (we're pretty sure he had a nightmare). So we snuggled up with him in the living room and put an episdoe of his favorite show on. It still took him over five minutes, but he finally did calm down.

Only problem was, in calming down, he also managed to convince himself that it was morning and he was up for the day. Cue screaming when we tried to put him back to bed after the episode was over. We tried to calm him down for another 15-30 minutes. No joy. So back we went to the TV. Lather, rinse, repeat.

After the second round of TV watching, I took him outside to show him the moon in hopes that he might understand that it was, in fact, night time. He still squawked when we returned him to his bed, but it was brief and it was followed by thrity minutes of actual sleeping. (I may or may not have grabbed a few Zs during this time; it certainly didn't feel like I did.)

Then he was screaming again, and I went to his room and thought maybe if I crawled into bed with him he would settle. And he did, only he didn't settle very deeply, so every time I thought I had heard steady, sleepy breathing for five minutes or more, I would ease out of the bed...only to have him wake up, usually as I was shutting the door behind me. Back to his bed I would go. Lather, rinse, repeat. Finally at about 1:45 I was able to leave him asleep in his bed and crash into bed myself.

Trudging through the day on four hours sleep? Do not want! Likely I'll have to use Drewbie's nap time today to get some sleep myself instead of write. This does not make me happy. It's times like these you really wish your child could communicate exactly what's going on in his head. If he could've just told us exacty what was wrong...

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Support vibes sent your way.

Kellie said...

Thanks, Joel. It's much appreciated. Although, if you could send me sleep in a bottle, I'd like that too!