Musical beds

There are a number of persons in this household who do not sleep as much as they ought.

Kate has the best excuse.  She only has ten months of practice, and she is dealing with razor-sharp assaults to her gum line.  I totally cut her some slack, especially because she mostly sleeps through the night...and in her OWN bed, no matter what.

Then there's Lexi.  Oh boy.  This girl says her "woom is scawy."  No amount of ambient light makes that place safe after sunset.  And, since she shares a "woom" with Kate, certain amounts of ambient light aren't very practical anyway.  I got pretty sick of an extra bedfellow kicking me in the ribs every night after 10 p.m., so recently I hit upon the idea that Gavin and Lexi should take up nocturnal cohabitation.

Turns out Gavin's room is scary too (I got tired of all the w's and quotation marks, mostly because I'm too tired in general).

The trouble with the Littles sharing Gavin's queen bed is this: when one is scared, the other is scared, and then two crying kids show up at my bedside in the middle of the night.

Mostly, however, the new arrangement is working.  This sleep-through-the-night thing is a work in progress, but I think we're moving in the right direction.

Except for last night, that is.

See, it's Garry's crazy time at work: the end of Wells Fargo's fiscal quarter.  He came home for dinner last night (which is good, because I left in a rather dramatic fashion and didn't come home for two hours, which is another story entirely) but went back to work at 8:30 p.m.  Gavin and Lexi were not content with this arrangement and extended their already-past-bedtime bedtime much longer than necessary.  Lexi came upstairs in such a dither that she peed her pants all over the floor, which started another epic trantrum, which I could only soothe with the promise of letting her sleep on Daddy's pillow until he got home.

Well.

Eventually she went to sleep so that I could go to sleep by way of TV reruns (my nightly sedative).  I zonked out.  Then around 1:00 a.m., Gavin joined the party.  He turned on all the lights and said, "Hey, Mom.  Move over."  So I did, and we all went back to sleep.

Then around 3:00 a.m., I woke with a start.  I had been dreaming something ridiculous about hiking with my kids and sending them down a slide as a shortcut to hiking down the mountain we had climbed.  Trouble was: I was too fat to fit on the slide, and they were waiting for me at the bottom with a strange lady, and I couldn't get to them, and I was completely distressed.  ACK!  So I woke up, and in my bed were two children I would have been pleased to see sleeping in their own beds, thankyouverymuch.  

Moving Gavin to the couch upstairs wasn't hard.  He stirred during the transfer but didn't complain overmuch. But Lexi, even though she weighs half and is therefore vastly easier to heft, is the lightest.sleeper.ever, and she woke up and wailed when I attempted to put her in her own bed (which is on the other side of my bedroom wall).  Her screams woke up Kate.  So, if you're counting, that makes four of us awake at 3:00 a.m.

And Garry was still at work.  Which makes five. 

I would like to take this moment to thank Zach and Tyler, ages 10 and 8, for learning the important life lesson that sleep is valuable and their mother really appreciates it.

Lexi spent the night on Garry's pillow.  I watched another episode of Monk and conked out around 4:00. Garry came home and crashed just after 4:30.

And kids started getting up just after 6:00.

Are you tired yet?