Friday, October 23, 2009

Oh What A Night

I envision those words being said on the silver screen by a giddy girl just waking up in the morning after spending the night of her life with a very dreamy, handsome young man. I also hear that song by The Four Seasons. Unfortunately, I did not spend last night painting the town and having the time of my life, quite opposite actually. I have two kids home sick with the flu and we had one heck of a night!


9:45 pm. My six year old, Avery, has been sick since Wednesday with classic flu like symptoms. She got it from her eight year old sister who has been sick for seven days with this nasty flu. After being asleep for an hour, Aver wakes up hysterically crying. I rush down the hallway to find her stand at the end of it. I ask her what is wrong and she says she is scared. I ask her of what but she tells me she doesn’t know. I figure it’s just a bad dream. I take her to my room, calm her down and then take her back to bed.

1:00am. After being asleep for about two and half hours I feel a tap on my arm and keep hearing the word, “mom…mom…mom…” I fully wake up and realize I’m not dreaming, there is a child in my room. It’s Avery again. She is carrying a blue plastic bucket we have dubbed the puke bucket. She tells me, “Mom, I thought I was gonna throw up, I think I’m gonna throw up now, nope I’m not, can I sleep with you.”

So I selfishly say, “There’s no room.” I know, I know, heartless, but I NEED my sleep and every time there’s a kid in the bed I don’t sleep well. Just then, by what seems like an act of God, my husband rolls over. I say to Avery, “I guess there’s room now, come on.” Yeah, I felt bad for telling her no in the beginning. Avery climbs in and I try to go back to sleep but I can’t. I’m one of those people that take forever to back to sleep.

1:40 am. My one year old, Gracie, starts screaming like something is wrong. I get up and make my way to her crib which is in our room. When you have five kids and only four bedrooms you have to start putting them in your room, plus she wakes up at night all the time and I don’t want her to wake up others by sharing a room. But I am looking forward to when she does sleep all night consistently and I can get my room back.

I look into the crib and she stands up. I’m thinking she had a bad dream. Seems to be going around. I give her a hug to assure that everything is fine. I then proceed to lay her down and cover her with her blanket. I opt out of looking for her pacifier because I figure that she is still sleepy enough to just go back to sleep. WRONG.

As soon as I get back to my bed she cries. I get back up, turn on the bathroom light, find her pacifier, give it to her, lay her back down, turn out the light, and go back to bed. Gracie never really goes back to sleep, just stays quiet, thank God. I hope she will soon fall asleep so it’s one less child to have to handle in the middle of the night.

I lay in bed wishing I could just go back to sleep. My husbands snoring and when Avery inhales you can hear all this snot in her chest and when she exhales she makes a whining noise. I realize I’m probably not going to be falling asleep any time soon and I start thinking about grabbing my pillow and a blanket and moving to the couch. I NEED SOME SLEEP!

2:40 Gracie is awake again or never went to sleep, I’m not sure, either way she is making it know that she is awake and wants someone to entertain her. That will not be me. I do not get her out of her crib because I do not want to start a habit. So I lay in bed until my three year old, Faith, comes into my room and wakes me up…here we go again, and she’s not even one of the sick ones!

So Faith comes into my bedroom and hands me a cup of milk that she says Gracie left in her room. I’m thinking to myself, “doesn’t this kid know it’s the middle of the night and she should be in bed sleeping??” I take the cup of milk from her, thank her for bringing it to me and then place it on my dresser. I then tell Faith it is still night time and she needs to go back to bed. I take her to her room, put her in bed and turn out the light.

I decide that since I’m already up and moving around the house that I should take this opportunity to change some sleeping arrangements. I wake up Avery and tell her that she has to go back to her bed. I hated being mean to her, with her being sick, but I could not sleep with her snoring and it wouldn’t stop! So I walk Avery back to her bed, tuck her in and head back to my own bed.

Gracie on the other hand is having a great time in her crib, laughing, babbling, screaming. Every once in a while, when she gets too loud, I say, “shhhh” and she quiets down for a bit. I think well maybe if I tell her to lie down she’ll do that too. Nope. Eventually she does lay back down and falls asleep and I finally fall asleep too.

3:45 am. I wake to the sounds of Avery screaming at her eight year old sister, Kaelyn. I think, “What in the WORLD is going on NOW??” My next thought is that I better get down there and quiet Avery down before she wakes the whole house back up, especially Gracie! I can hear Avery telling Kaelyn to stop and I wonder what on earth they would have to fight about at this time of the night.

I get into the girls bedroom and Avery is sitting up in her bed hysterically crying. I say, “shhhh, shhhh” to try and get her to quiet down and calm down so that I can figure out what is wrong. After she settles I ask her what she is crying about and she says that there are people running all over her room and she is scared. I think the fever is getting to her.

I tell her there are no people running around in her room. She yells at me, “Yes there is, I saw them with my own eyes!” I tell her that she is having a bad dream and that the fever is making her see things that are not there. I tell her to lie back down and get some sleep. I never did figure out why she was yelling at her sister, maybe she woke Kaelyn up with her crying and Kaelyn told her to shut up, who knows.

Thankfully this is the last time the kids wake me up. I get to sleep for three more hours before I have to get up and get my ten year old off to school. I am hoping I might sneak a nap in today to make up for the lost sleep in the middle of the night. By the way, my husband has figured out how to sleep through nights like this, or he fakes it well. Motherhood…


This t-shirt is over at zazzle.com (no affliation)

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