Lately, a typical night at our house involves everybody in a different bed than they are supposed to be at any given moment. The nighttime shuffle is about as close to musical beds as you can get.
It goes something like this…
7:30pm – Addie is tucked into bed, she might talk for a few minutes, but is usually out pretty quickly.
8:00pm – Emma gets tucked into bed, and after a “cuddle”, one more drink of water, the nightly round-up of bear, blankie, and the “glow” watch, and a run through the myriad of other bedtime-prolonging excuses she has, she is off to sleep land, too.
11:00pm-ish – J. and I fall exhaustedly into bed and Tiger (the cat) makes herself comfortable between my feet.
So far, so good, right?
Then sometime between 1am and 2am, all goes haywire. Addie has been getting up (now we know because she has ear infections – in both ears, poor baby!) and J. and I tag-team trying to get her back to sleep. It usually involves Addie and I on the couch for awhile, J. on the floor with us in the living room, or I finally give up and hand her over to J. and return to bed to try to get a little sleep.
Of course, Tiger is still comfortably asleep in my vacated spot.
Then Emma will come and stand by my side of the bed and whimper until I pull her into bed. She’ll “sleep” (and I use that term very loosely!) with me for awhile and meanwhile, J. will get Addie back to sleep and into her bed. When the flailing and kicking get to be too much, I’ll move Emma out to the couch for the remainder of the night…and J. will still be on the living room floor.
Sometime between all of that and dawn, J. will crawl back into bed with me (and Tiger!) and around 7am, Emma crawls in bed with us, too. We try to be very quiet and let Addie sleep a little more – which is usually about 10 more minutes, thus ending our musical beds for another night as we all get up bleary-eyed and cranky.
Except of course, for Tiger. She gets up and stretches like she just had the most wonderful, dream-filled, uninterrupted sleep. And then she moves out to the living room – to continue her nap schedule.
Some days what I wouldn’t give to be Tiger. Each day I just keep hoping praying for a full night’s sleep.
Maybe tonight will be the night….
