The Siren has never been a good nighttime sleeper. In fact that’s where the nickname comes from: She sucks you in with her sweetness by day and wails at you by night, all night. I sincerely don’t know how we as a family made it through the first year of her life. And while, at the ripe old age of three, she has greatly improved her ability to sleep longer than one hour at a time (perhaps due to getting over her acid reflux issues), she still awakens to scream at least once, usually twice, sometimes one hundred times per evening. Generally she has had a bad dream or was frightened by a shadow or has to go potty. Whatever the reason, she absolutely refuses to exit her bed, as if an invisible force field activates at bedtime rendering her unable or unwilling. So what we get is a very loud Siren screaming until someone responds. As I sprint to her room, I pray she doesn’t awaken the sleeping Kraken or we will be up for the duration of the night. That son of mine seems to be charged and ready to conquer on 3 hours of sleep. The momma, not so much. And thus I have been trained to react quickly to The Siren’s screech.
The Kraken has always been a champion sleeper. He goes down easily, generally midsentence, and if left undisturbed is good for 8-10 hours of silence. If however his little bladder wakes the sleeping beast, he calmly gets up, does his business, and then makes his way downstairs to inform me of his activity. I could calmly send him back to his room, roll over and fall back into dreamland, but I know from personal experience that he needs a chaperone back to his room. Somewhere between my room and his, the battery in his body alerts him that he is at full operating capacity. There are things to do, potions to make, towers to build, toilet paper to shred, sweets to eat and mayhem to produce. And so I have been trained to walk him to his bed and tuck him back in.
I love my kids, have always functioned on minimal sleep and have some extra calories to burn so all this walking around at all hours of the night really isn’t the problem. The problem is the path I must walk. I call this portion of my life: Running the Gauntlet.
First are the 19 deadly throw pillows that all beds need to make them look awesome when they are neatly made. Generally however ours are strewn about randomly on the floor creating not so awesome stumbling blocks during my nighttime escapades.
Next I must traverse the wood floors leading to the stairs. Sounds rather benign until I step on one of 12 silky, satiny, princess dresses The Siren models then abandons throughout the day. Those mothers are slippery as heck, and I have found myself on the losing end of that battle more than a few times. I can play match that dent in the floor with my hip, knee, elbow or earlobe. Perhaps I should pick up the dresses in the evening, but I kind of enjoy that natural weathered look I am creating on my floors.
By now I am bloody and bruised, but I have reached the stairs where I know I am basically safe as long as I keep count. The staircase curves around creating a tooth chipping hazard if I skip a number on the way to fourteen. But my brain function is totally back to normal after two children sucked most of the life out of it. I mean, it’s been awhile since I found my hairbrush in the oven, my car keys in the freezer or my credit card in the bathtub. I can’t remember my name, but everyone knows me as The Kraken’s mom anyway so why confuse people?
I’ve made it upstairs and after kicking the desk chair that’s always in the same place, I only have a few things left to say: Legos, Matchbox cars and Barbie shoes. The trifecta of terror. The trinity of doom. The triplet of torture. OUCH, OUCH and OUCH again. It would be so much simpler just to pick up the crap at the end of the day, right? I agree. But sometimes nothing makes me feel as alive as digging a tiny shoe out of my foot like a splinter at two in the morning.
Besides, stepping on an unsuspecting Lego is really good for testing other words to replace the curse words you don’t want your five year old to repeat. Seriously, you should try it sometime.
No comments:
Post a Comment