Sleep is a precious commodity in our house. A scarce commodity. Whether by nature or nurture, my children, like myself, are not great sleepers.
A few days ago I had a hard time getting to sleep after helping Evie when she woke up at night. It was sometime past 4 in the morning. My neck was sore so I decided to heat up the hot bag. When I was in the kitchen I noticed the light to the stairwell downstairs was on. I went to turn it off and saw that the lights downstairs were on an so was the TV. I went downstairs and there was Alice watching t.v. She told me she had gone into our bedroom while I was getting Eve back to sleep and asked Andrew if it was ok. Her dad said "go ahead". If I hadn't gone into the kitchen to heat up the hot bag she would have watching tv till the rest of the house got up at 7. In Andrew's defence, he is quite blind without his glasses and for all he knew it was 6:30. And really, he is likely to say yes to anything if it means he can sleep a little longer. I was proud of Alice though, since she truly dislikes going to the basement alone and usually gets one of her sisters to go with her ( what help she expects Eve to give her, I don't know). That night she managed to brave the journey on her own, in the dark, equipped with only her flashlight (and of course the very strong desire to watch television.) To her credit, she did obediently go back to bed and was difficult to rouse at 7:30 for school.
As a kid I was an insomniac and might have tried that, but cable was different then. I had wait until 6:00 when the coloured bars would finally give way to reruns of Frankenstone. I sometimes resort to that now. Last night I couldn't sleep so I got up and did some work at the computer for a half hour. Then I still couldn't sleep, so I watched Design Inc on HGTV. I guess I watched that hoping to dream off home renovations...
Thursday night, around 9:00, I went to go check on the girls a third time and to tell them to please be quiet and get to sleep. I found Jackie up with Alice on her top bunk, all snuggled together in her blankets, talking and giggling. When I asked what they were doing Jackie said,"we are having fun talking and planning the crafts for my party". Alice hugged Jackie protectively and said that, "Jackie had to come up, because my neck was getting too strained from hanging upside down to hear her". After all, they were trying so hard to whisper so as not to disturb Evie (and also to avoid detection.) It made me hope that someday all the girls would want to move in to the one big bedroom downstairs so that Evie wouldn't miss the party entirely. Sister's are a great thing and I believe that bonding is often more important that sleep.
Maybe that's my problem, I think a whole lot of things are more important than sleep - working, reading a good book, spending time with my husband, Sometimes even house work. Can you imagine how much we could get done if we didn't have to sleep?
There are a lot of techniques for trying to get to sleep. I've tried them all. Jackie and Eve like the warm milk bit. Alice's favourite lately is moving to the floor when she gets frustrated with her bed. I find her in all kinds of crazy positions, like the one above. If Andrew isn't home, I wait until he gets home and have him lift her onto her bed. I wonder how she would sleep if I left her there. A couple of weeks ago she did try a warm bath ( my preferred method). Alice kind of dislikes baths so she thought I was crazy at first, but did find it relaxing. I told her that sometimes I have a shower before bed, and if I can't sleep, I'll have a bath too. I wake up very clean.
Last night Jackie found a ratty Santa hat in the dress up clothes and is wearing it as her nightcap. It looks adorable with her old fashioned petty coat nightgown. She also went to sleep with her new bracelets around her wrist and is is still wearing them now. Maybe all we need is the right accessories
No comments:
Post a Comment