Less "Co", More "Sleep"

For someone who doesn't embrace co-sleeping at all, I sure seem to do it a lot. I never intended to be a co-sleeper, nor do I like it, but my kids seem to feel otherwise. 

This morning I woke up in the guest room bed, sleeping alongside my two-year-old. How did I get there? It was a long, sleepless journey to that guest room bed... It started somewhere around 2:00 a.m., when my four-year-old climbed into bed with me and then took over my sleeping space. This is a near-nightly habit for her. Can I just tell you, I pity her future husband. That girl is a bed hog. Not only is she a bed hog, but she's a sleep snuggler. Me? I'm a snuggle-separate-then sleep person. 

Having someone rubbing my arm, then yelling at me when I try to roll over, is not my idea of a good time. Finally, exhausted and exasperated, I couldn't take it anymore. I had two choices A) carry her, kicking and screaming back to her own bed, or B) sneak off the guest room for a little snooze, all on my own. I chose the coward's route. And, for a while, it was great. Really great.

Then, 5:00 rolled around and my little guy woke up, demanding to sleep in Mommy & Daddy's bed, which was fully-occupied. So, I took him back to the guest room bed with me. Which was fine, until he woke up wanting water. Then, we went back to sleep for a while, which was fine, until he woke up wanting more water...

The night before last, I slept on the floor of my son's room, because he was suffering from cold-induced asthma and I wanted to be close to him. The night before that, my four-year-old again found her way into bed with me... Long story short, it's been about 4 1/2 years since I've had a truly decent night's sleep. Sure, we get a few uninterrupted nights here and there. Sometimes even a month at a time, but overall I'm downright sleep-deprived. 

I know I should do the responsible thing and cart them back to their beds on a nightly basis. But, at 3 in the morning, all reasoning and responsibility goes out the window. That's when I either don't fully wake and don't even realize that I've even let them into my bed or I simply make the decision that will (hopefully) get me back to sleep the fastest in that particular instance, disregarding potential long-term impacts.

My mom loves to tell me all of the harms that come from sleep-deprivation, mainly weight gain. Joy. At least I have something to blame that on, I guess...

When I was visibly pregnant with my daughter, I was in the elevator at work. Someone I'd never met before got on, took a look at my protruding belly and, like an evil witch in a Disney movie, told me it'd be 18 years before I slept through the night again. At the time, I called her a crazy, evil witch (in my head of course), except witch started with a "b." Now, I just know she was a prophetic truth-teller...

Well, one day they'll go off to college and I can sleep through the night again. Until then, I guess I'll just invest heavily in under-eye cream. Kiehl's, you can thank my kids for the uptick in sales.

The REAL classes expectant moms should take

A message to all of the pregnant gals out there -- when you go to the birthing class and they tell you to stick your hand in a bowl of ice-cold water to help prepare you for labor pains, you tell them to stick it where the sun don't shine. I am here to tell you that experiencing cold and discomfort for five minutes doesn't help with your labor. Nope, you just had a freezing cold hand one day and insanely painful contractions another day.

When I was pregnant with my daughter, my husband and I went to every baby-preparedness class our hospital offered. Labor and delivery 101, check. Hospital tour, including special late-night arrivals directions, check. Newborn care, featuring swaddling and breastfeeding, check. Infant CPR, check. There were at least four classes we took, not including the Happiest Baby on the Block class we took when my daughter was three weeks old (okay, actually that one was totally worth it and the best $40 we ever spent -- now there's research to prove it).

But, now that my kids are a little older, I wish I would have skipped "how to bathe a baby" and instead found a class that would prepare me for life as the mother of a little boy. So many of his interests are foreign to me and I'm already finding myself out of my league. My daughter's hobbies are easier for me. Having been a girl myself, I'm up-to-speed on the Disney princesses and I know the basic positions in ballet. These things I get. My son's interests, not so much.

Not too long ago, he asked me a pretty basic question about how a car runs. The only answer I could come up with was to point and say "Oh look, a deer!" There was no deer.

Like most two-year-old boys, he's fascinated by all kinds of trucks and construction equipment. But, no matter how many times I read him his little truck book and point to diggers, scrapers, mini loaders and tractors, damned if I can recognize any of them out in the real world. Aside from concrete mixers and car transporters, I'm at a complete loss. Generally, I just call them all bulldozers and hope that there's at least one bulldozer in the mix.

Again, like most two-year-old boys, he loves Thomas the Tank Engine and can push his little cars around those little wooden tracks for a long time. Then, he gets bored or frustrated and breaks up those tracks. That's where I come in, I have to reassemble those tracks. Except I'm terrible at it and can never get the darn thing to connect back into itself. It's a one-way road.

Why don't they offer moms classes that will help prepare them for a life of boys? Classes like: Train Set engineering 101. Introduction to emergency vehicle parts and identification. Advanced cars and trucks...