All-night "Open House"

I usually write about the events of our days, but in truth sometimes our nights are only slightly less eventful. So I thought I’d jot down a summary of our nights these days, for future reference. Years (or months) from now when I’m looking back and wondering “Why were Pete and I always walking around looking like brainless zombies?” this will help provide some explanation.

Miles has always been our good sleeper… until the past month or 2. Now he likes to wake up everyday between 5 and 6:30, and sometimes a few times during the night as well. Usually he just wants hugs, so it’s hard to get angry, and we usually end up bringing him into bed with us, which he greatly enjoys.

And often Colsen comes in at some point of the wee hours to announce he’s either a.) cold, b.) hungry, or c.) thirsty. We can usually just persuade him to lie back down – but usually he insists he must stay with us, too.

On the nights when Pete and I are both squished in with 2 children laying either on top of each of us, or between us, we start whispering about how it might be nice after all to have a king-sized bed. One morning recently I woke up to find that Pete was gone (having long since surrendered any hope of sleep), and Miles, Colsen and Rayna were all sleeping next to me.

Rayna spends many nights on our floor. Sometime after midnight she must trudge in with her pillow and blanket, or sometimes without them, and lies face-down on our floor just inside our door. We’ve had to be careful to not trip over her when we’re going to rescue a screaming Miles.

Strider, thankfully, does not awaken us during the night much anymore (although now that I just wrote that, I’m pretty sure he will tonight), but he does plague us with his hyper-ness until sometime between 9:30 and 10:30 every night. That boy does not need much sleep.

But I do. And somehow I keep acting like an idiot night after night. It is some sort of unhealthy feedback loop wherein I am so tired I do not think straight, so every evening I want to stay up late! I can rarely physically make myself lie down before 11 pm, and on weekends Pete will almost always hear me whine, “But you can’t go to sleep at 10:00! It’s the weekend for crying out loud!” -- as if my children actually slept in on the weekend.

So we are foolish, sleep-deprived managers of this household… But we should get positive points, at least, for having an “open door” policy, even at night. I distinctly remember hearing in my business classes that that was a good thing for managers to have. Of course those excellent managers probably were able to go home and shut the door for some sleep at night…. Unless they had kids, too.