If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought it was the night before Christmas instead of the last night of Christmas break. It began as most evenings do at la hacienda on Sixth Street, with two little boys who are never quite ready to call it a day, begging for a reprieve and scoffing at my declaration of bedtime. But this day was done, and with it the end of another holiday season, and an awesome two weeks of staying up late, sleeping in, and playing hard all day long.
Once the boys were convinced they had exhausted their last “just one more minute”, they conceded their loss and crawled into bed, one sad about the thought of having to get up early, the other devastated, imagining his day without his favorite playmate, best friend, and big brother. However, three trips to the living room, two changes of clothes and one bed swap later, they were finally out. But not for good.
It seemed I had only been asleep for a few minutes when I felt, more than heard, someone in my ear. “Momma. How much longer will this night last?” I glanced at the clock which said sharply, 4:12 a.m. and replied, “Until you see sunlight. Go back to bed.”
To my surprise, the buzzing bug flew back to bed with little protest, only to be followed by another little bugger about ten minutes later, the second of which didn’t even bother to tickle my ear. He simply crawled over my head--pulling hair and smacking me in the face with cold feet--until he found himself a place between me and his daddy to wait out the dark.
Less than a minute and a half had passed before the first little boy was back, asking, “Momma! Where’s Cooper? And, oh, I had a bad dream.” Now I love all three of my boys, but there’s no way I’m sharing one bed with all of them. So, I grabbed a pillow and went to bed with the night talker, assuring him that it was still the middle of the night and he had lots of sleep left in him.
We finally settled in, and I thought surely I would sleep this nightmare away when I felt someone staring at me in the dark. I moved over and made room for the older insomniac, wondering how it was that I was trapped in the middle of these two, cover-stealing knot heads while their daddy lay snoring in the other room with the triple coils of the king-sized Serta Perfect Sleeper wrapping him up in his own child-like slumber. Oh, the injustice!
As the clock on the wall ticked away the seconds of my much needed nightly rejuvenation, I dozed in and out of consciousness with thumb sucking and snot sniffing jolting me out of every coveted REM cycle. A final check of the time showed it was now 5:19 a.m., and I could see the eyes of both boys staring a hole in the ceiling.
I must have passed out sometime after that, because the next thing I remember was Dad, picking Cooper up out of the bed to get him ready for school, and me, rolling over to face the wall, with exactly zero intention of getting up to help.
Later that morning, as I awoke with an elbow up my nose and a leg draped across my backside, I realized that the nightmare had ended. I could see sunlight.
And even though it was barely past 8 a.m. and I had gotten nowhere near my Dr. recommended eight hours of sleep, I knew what I needed more than the measly 30 minutes of dozing that might per chance be allowed to me by my still sleeping second born son, was a moment of silence and a strong Cup of Joe.
So, ever so slowly, I rolled out from under my four year old’s death grip. I wrapped up in my best, comfy robe, poured myself the strongest cup of coffee I’d had in a week, and enjoyed sitting alone in our Sixth Street abode engulfed in the blissful sound of silence…all twelve and a half minutes of it.
And that’s All in a day’s (and night’s) work!
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