Insomnia and Puppy Love

I haven't had a good night's sleep in, oh, say two months. I fall asleep just fine. Rather, I collapse each night with weary exhaustion, sleep blissfully for a few hours and then am WIDE AWAKE each morning before the crack of dawn. I don't know if I can blame kids or chickens or what but once the faintest light of dawn begins to infiltrate our windows, I start stirring and can't fall back asleep.

(I am starting to wonder if I need one of those black, silky eye mask thingies. Where do you get those?)

The children are most unhelpful. They generally rise by 6 or 6:15, so even if I attempt going back to sleep I am only playing a waiting game- who will start yelling for me first? These kids do not have any concept of sleeping in. They are up and attem and immediately start making demands. As in PAAAANCAAAAKES! MAMA! PAAAANCAAAKES! I've heard from some people that they actually have to coax their kids into eating breakfast. My kids wake up ravenous and usually have seconds or thirds before I finally cut them off.

Payback for this early rising will be a bitch when they are teenagers. I am keeping score.

Except that I wonder if over the past four years this chronic sleep deprivation has taken its toll on me. Have I lost the ability to sleep in? This is certainly a possibility, and a dreadful one at that.

Yes, yes, I know some people keep their kids up late so that they will sleep in. Ha. This technique DOES NOT work for us. We just get extra grouchy kids when we do this.

And yes, I know I should go to be earlier, but it's so hard when there are beers to drink and chocolate cherry brownies to eat and what if it's a Netflix night? We are in the middle of Mad Men Season 2 and I just might have to stay up extra late to find out what will happen next for Don Draper. And I am pretty sure that I was a 1950's housewife in my previous life because I can TOTALLY picture myself wearing one of those high waisted dresses and heels while drinking sherry and making a pot roast. Okay, maybe not so much the pot roast part, but the drinking sherry in heels part for sure. And having a housekeeper. Totally down with that.

But back to my sleep deprivation issues. On Monday night I stayed out until midnight drinking red wine and eating chocolate cake with some amazing girlfriend sistas from way back in the day. For a couple of hours I was nineteen again and drinking Carlo Rossi with the girls and then suddenly it was midnight, I am sipping Pinot Noir, I'm thirty four and OH MY GOD I HAVE TO WORK IN THE MORNING. Oops. But see? All the sleep disruptions for the past four years have enabled me to function on very little sleep. Which is a good thing when you've stayed out until midnight on a work night.

The silver lining. Sometimes I remember to look for it.

And I'm realizing in rereading some recent posts and comments that probably it's time for me to put on my big girl pants and stop dwelling on what I've lost so that I have room to appreciate everything I have. I need to stop feeling sorry for myself about losing my mom. So I'm going to work on seeing the silver lining more.

Photographs this week are brought to you by Jack, who commandeered the point-and-shoot for an afternoon and came up with some pretty decent shots. These pictures make me laugh. I like seeing the world through his eyes.

(OMG! So embarrassing! I am totally going to go wash this mirror right now. Or the next time I am WIDE AWAKE at 5:30 in the morning.)

And I'm also going to keep trying for that optimism I was telling you about earlier. When Sawyer woke up at 6:40 on Saturday morning, I really struggled to find the silver lining on that one. But after I'd stumbled to the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee I noticed that the sunrise was brilliant and so we put on boots and trudged out to the backyard in our pajamas. The world is very quiet before 7 am on a Saturday and the sunlight cast that early morning hue over the garden that I rarely get to see. We fed the chickens and listened to the birds and I pulled weeds while Sawyer dug around in the dirt. By the time Jack rolled out of bed at 8:40 (!? a PR for him for sure) I had amassed a significant pile of weeds, Sawyer was covered from head to toe in dirt, and I'd already laundered and hung a load of laundry.

(Don't get me wrong- I'd rather be sleeping. But I'm working really hard on the cup being half full.)

Oh, and also...

CAN WE GET A DOG? CAN WE GET A DOG? CAN WE GET A DOG? CAN WE GET A DOG? CAN WE GET A DOG?

Yes, Jack. Yes we can.

PS: Her name is Lulu.

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