Tag: Sleep

  • Missing Sleep, and Snuggles

    Last night was a rough night of sleep for me. The wife went to be at 10, and I was going to follow her at 10:30, which is normal for us. (She needs a head start, because if we go to bed together, I will fall asleep first, and I will snore which will cause my wife not to sleep, and you can see why I don’t want this to happen.) And right as I was about to get off the couch and go to bed, the kid got up.

    She was sleep walking, and mumbling, and I quickly put her back into bed. This happens from time to time, so no big deal. Other than the fact that I was awake, and had trouble falling asleep. Then the kid did this three more times, and by 1:30 in the morning, I started to wonder if I was ever getting to sleep. We all did, but my total for the night was four hours of sleep.

    To say that I am dragging, well, that’s accurate. I have nodded off twice while trying to write this. Sure, doesn’t help that I am sitting on my bed, but still – nodding off over here. I might do a power nap before I leave to get the kid from school.

    When all of this was going on last night – the kid sleep walking and try to coax her back to bed – I thought about when the kid was a little baby, and getting her fussy little butt to calm down and get some sleep. We had a rocking chair then, and even though we normally got a few hours of sleep during that period in our life, there was an understanding that fussiness with sleep was a temporary problem, she would grow out of it eventually, and also that her being tiny and snuggly was also a limited timed offer. She wouldn’t be a snuggle bug for long.

  • Leap Year

    Today is the Leap Year Day. My kid is very excited about it, and I think her school is doing something to “celebrate” the occasion. I get the excitement, as I remember when a kid was, at this odd occurrence that happens once every four years. You know, like the Olympics or a Presidential Election.

    When I was her age, we debated over and over again about people who were born on the Leap Year Day, how they would get robbed and only have a birthday once every four years. Or how they couldn’t buy beer for at least eighty-four years. I’m sure if we knew somebody who was born on the Leap Year Day, then we could get all of our questions answered. But being that we didn’t, these questions were left up to a continuous debate that only raged quadrennially.

    Even right now, I could Google it and get an answer. Honestly, why would I do that? Why would I kill all the fun?

    A big part of childhood is being confronted with these conundrums of life, and then trying to puzzle your way out of them. Most of the time they were solved by asking an adult, but first there was always the debate on the playground, or on the bus, or at the lunch table. There was always a kid who had a cousin who was born on a Leap Year who had to lie about their age to get a drivers’ license, and if the cops found out that they had lied, they’d go to jail. Or if you stay up three days straight, your heart will explode and die. This one kid’s dad was in the navy, and that why there are three shifts on a ship, so everyone gets a chance to sleep and no one will die.

    My daughter was telling me some rather strange and far out explanation about people and their birthdays when it falls on Leap Year Day.

    Good to know that kids are still kids, even in this day and age.

  • The Nap Backfired!

    I just want to sleep forever somedays.

    I just took a fifteen-minute power nap, which normally does the truck of zapping me back to normal. But today, my nap back fired in my face.

    I didn’t get a great night of sleep, and I was up early as the kid needed to be at school early. Then there was alt side parking, and grocery shopping, and I made lunch for me and the wife.

    As I sat on the couch to eat with her; WOOSH! All my energy just sloughed off and out the door.

    Thus, I thought the power nap would do the trick.

    Now, I’m just sitting on my bed, forcing this out because I will stick to my… Habit? Routine? Goal? I can’t even think of the word that I want to use…

    Anyway… I just have the foggy head, and everything seems a little far out of reach.

    I am beginning to see that Mondays and Tuesdays are difficult days for me to do all the chores, blog, journal, write and read. Something has to give, and I always pick working on fiction as the disposable one.  I’m not sure what that says about me? Or if maybe it says nothing about me and I’m just over thinking everything? Should I forgive myself, and try again tomorrow? Or is this one of those “you only got one shot at this life, don’t waste it,” moments?

    I should do dishes and pick up the kid from school.

  • Lack of Sleep

    Oh, lord in heaven… we did not sleep last night in our home.

    The kid had sleeping issues, and it was difficult for her to fall asleep. Every half hour she was up, and it went on until 1am. This doesn’t happen very often, as the kid is a great sleeper. She always has been. Even as a baby, once you put her down, she was out. In fact, we stopped telling other parents about how well our daughter slept because we could just feel the red-hot hatred and contempt that would get shot at us from our sleep deprived friends.

    But this was hard. I think a little of it had to do with the Sunday Night Blues, and not wanting to go to school after a fun weekend. Also, I think she got a little too wound up after dinner with TV, and video games. Normally we turn screens off a half hour before bed, but we slipped up as parents. And once the kid starts having difficulty sleeping, it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. She gets so worked up that she’s not falling asleep right away that she starts worrying that she’ll never fall asleep.

    What we were left with was a family all worn out in the morning, but we powered through it.

    For me and the wife, who seemed to have lived most of our life without enough sleep, it just felt par for the course.

    But, oh, the kid… poor kid. This was a special kind of awful that she wasn’t sure how to deal with. She was quiet, this morning, but she got up, ate breakfast, and got ready. We left on time, and made it to school early, in fact. But, it was her being quiet the whole time which was the tell that she was not having any of this.

    I wish I could tell her that life as a grown up isn’t normally like this, but this is what life as a grown up is like. You never get enough sleep.

    And when you do sleep, you wake up early for no reason at all.

  • Sleep

    We are so tired in our home. Like, sleep isn’t working out for us. Lord knows I try to sleep, but my body just doesn’t want to go to bed. My wife is the opposite; she goes to bed early, but still wakes up tired. Though I feel like I could blame the kid on this one, it’s not her fault. She has started sleeping in on weekends, and even if she does get up early now, she’s old enough to work the tv and feed herself.

    Even when we were on vacation, and we slept hard, but it never seemed like enough. In fact, I don’t think I can tell you the last time when I was sleeping well. Somewhere in college, my grasp of getting restful sleep left me. Classes, long hours in the theatre department, building sets and costumes, rehearsing and performing plays, and then closing out the bar each night. Yup, I should have slept more.

    I keep thinking that someday, I will arrive in the promised land of sleep. That at 11pm, I will drift off, and then wake up at nice and early with the sun, feeling refreshed, and eager to take on the day. The only thing I am eager to do when I wake up is to go back to bed. I might need to start entraining the thought that there is no holy land of restful sleep for adults.

    Honestly, think about everyone you know. How many of them say that they get a good night sleep and feel refreshed in the morning? Now, be honest; deep down you know they are lying to you, right? There is just something unnatural about their behavior. It seems forced. Just like people who claim cross-fit is fun.

    Right now, the wife is sitting on the couch with me and we are both yawning. We are one little snuggle away from taking a solid nap. It won’t happen, but man, it is tempting.

    (Biddie-biddie-biddie! Give a like, or a share, or comment on this post, Buck! Or I’ll make more obscure references to old TV shows! Biddie-biddie-biddie!)