Sunday, March 14, 2010

Sleep Disturbances

I have a long and storied history of insomnia.

Sleep is not my friend.

Apparently, I have passed on this affliction to my youngest child Benjamin.

He is nearly two years old and he is the worst sleeper of The Triad. Where the other two were sleeping through the night well before their third month on the planet was completed, Ben was over six months old before the first time I woke up to sunlight instead of late-night baby cries.

Last night, he went to bed at 8 pm. A completely normal bedtime for him.
He surprised me by going to sleep rather easily and quietly, without the usual 15 minutes of protest and indignation.

I was then quite UNsurprised when about an hour and a half later he started crying.

I went upstairs and took Dylan with me. The boys share a room. I laid down with Dylan on the queen bed in their room. Dylan was asleep in five minutes. Snoring.

Benny, however, went through a truly ingenious series of sleep evading moves over the next 45 minutes.

While I laid there quietly, trying to pretend to be asleep, Benny sat straight up and began clawing at the fitted sheet on the crib mattress. When it proved too snug to be removed even by the most Herculean of efforts, he resorted to punching the mattress like he was in a Tae Bo class for angry insomniac babies.

When the sucker punches yielded no results, he started punching at his own feet.

Then he threw himself onto his pillow, grabbed it in a giant bear hug, stood up and tossed it out of the crib. Shortly thereafter, he lowered out his blanket.

I broke the fourth wall so to speak, got out of bed, put his pillow BACK in the crib, laid him on it and covered him with his blanket.

That scene repeated about five times until he adopted a new tactic: Trying to take off his shirt.

He got one arm all the way out of the sleeve before I got out of bed, replaced his shirt and laid him back down.
That scene repeated three more times until I discovered that the only effective counter move was to actually remove his shirt. Problem solved.

The then turned his attentions on his giant stuffed Mario Bros. mushroom pillow. First, he hugged it like a favorite son heading to war. Then he threw it down to the bottom of his crib under his feet. Then he went Van Damme and kicked the crap out of it. When the mushroom was flung over to the side of the crib, out of reach of his feet, Benny alligator rolled over it pinning it up against the side of the crib slats over and over.

Then he tossed it out onto the floor.

It wasn't long after that when I got tired of the show and fixed him a small sippy cup of milk which put him to sleep rather quickly and I was then able to go lay in my own bed for an hour reading a book which only made me slightly tired.

Then I laid in my own bed, kicking at blankets, hearing noises that weren't there and fighting the urge to start punching the mattress in frustration.

I get it baby, I get it.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, thank goodness I am not the only one with a baby who 99.5% of the time cries in protest when I put her to bed. Even though the majority of the time now it lasts 10 minutes or less, I seriously think I have PTSD JUST from the crying. Sometimes I wig out and put the IPod on full blast, and won't even take it off when David is gesturing at me that she stopped crying 20 minutes ago.

Is Ben at least quiet when he is attacking things in bed? I really wouldn't give a crap what goes on in bed if the babies are at least quiet about it.

Anonymous said...

P.S. Why is Elizabeth sitting in a cooler?

Jessica said...

I think 99 percent of the babies in the world just DO NOT want to go to sleep!
He did it last night again, but it was because he was poopy. I didn't think he was poopy, so went I went up there to check him I said are you poopy and shook my head no. And he widened his eyes and very vigorously nodded his head and said "Pooooooooo"
And he was right!
It's so nice when they can communicate more effectively!

Elizabeth is in the cooler because she's crazy! It's Bob's new lunch cooler and she (and all the kids) tested it out to see if they fit into it. They all did. LOL.