I haven’t been getting enough sleep. I can tell because the signs are there. I don’t get the regular signs of sleep deprivation like….sleepyness. The signs I get are strange. My legs start itching, I start craving pickle juice, and I can literally go into a coma when I brush my hair.

I don’t have any really good excuses for not getting enough sleep. I mean, I don’t have any toddlers or babies waking me up at night. My bed is fairly comfortable, especially when it has two kittens in it. There is no one snoring or kicking me in the night. (see kittens in bed) I don’t have anything pressing on my schedule tomorrow that would require burning the midnight oil. No, I really don’t have any excuse other than I am a night owl. I always have been. I remember staying up all night in high school just to finish a paper or other project. Those were the things I usually got the best grades on so….it didn’t really detour me from staying up late.

My kids are even worse than I am. If I am out late they are almost always up when I get home. They see no reason to go to bed if mom is not there to remind them that sleep is needed. Jared is a bit of an exemption to that rule at times.  When he was just a wee lad, around ten months old, we were living in Colorado. We had some friends over to play games one night and I could not get Jared to go to sleep! I rocked him, fed him, walked with him, sang to him,….everything I could think of. Nothing worked. He was frustrated, I was frustrated, and I’m pretty sure our company was frustrated. I finally just took him to his crib and laid him down. “You’re on your own buddy…” I remember saying, ( or something like that) Instead of crying, he sighed a very loud (FINALLY!) sigh, and rolled over and went promptly to sleep. I was amazed. All he had wanted was for me to just put him in bed! Let’s just say, life changed after that episode.

Thorin was even better when it came to nap time. I would lay a blanket out on the floor and say “Nap time!” And he would crawl over to it, lie down and fall asleep. It was awesome. Now the boy stays up til three in the morning and sleeps all day. His life it like a nap with breaks for consciousness. He could easily be mistaken for a vampire by his sleeping/waking patterns.

I think part of the reason I am such a night owl is because night time is when the kids were finally all quiet and asleep and Brad was finally home from work or church or basketball or whatever it was he was doing at the time. Now that it is just me, I find that the quiet time after the kids go to bed is even more needed. I need that alone time to decompress and gather my thoughts for the next day.

Doesn’t that sound great? Don’t I sound like the kind of person that would be so ready for each day? After a nice, quiet evening of meditation and reflection….whose day wouldn’t start out great? Well, truth be told, what I am doing is feeding my addiction to the Big Bang Theory. After I get all the kids to bed, I watch and laugh til my sides hurt and I’m crying. Not exactly the vision of calm meditation but….laughter is the best medicine they say. I’m up for a good big dose of it, every night! Cause I said so. 🙂