The feeling of sleepiness when you are not in bed, and can't get there, is the meanest feeling in the world. ~Edgar Watson Howe
Whether it's late nights or light sleep interspersed with random periods of sleep and awakeness, there has not been one night in two weeks that I've managed a sound six to eight hours of sleep. The girls are waiting. The family is not complete and going to bed with such an important member of the family away, the girls have not slept well. My emotions have run the gamut of insomnia. Frustration, irritability, denial, ignoring the situation, humored by it, etc. I am sympathetic to their main reason and after fifteen days of this ridiculousness, their various other reasons for not sleeping are laughable.
- They are hungry to the point of starvation.
- Their thirst is insatiable (which also has other ramifications).
- Yes, trips to the bathroom. With Caelan in the midst of potty-training, it's hard to decide when the potty trips should happen and when I'm totally being played. She may play me on occasion, but she always goes. And laughs.
- The sounds of little feet and giggles as they think they have gotten away with not staying in bed.
- The concern about monsters in the bedroom. Well, if you didn't sleep with Gollum, you would be fine.
- "Evelynn won't go to sleep."
- "Caelan won't be quiet."
- "Evelynn's not in bed." Neither are you, dear, if you are in here tattling on your sister. "But she's not in bed." That reasoning must work for her.
- "I'm cold. I need covers." Then cover up. Their arms are broke and they are incapable of pulling the covers up. Their covers are not on them because one of them slipped into the other's room and they are wrestling on the bed.
- "I'm trying to sleep." Then be quiet. "Mom, shhhhh, I'm trying to sleep." Then be quiet. "I can't sleep because you are talking, Mom."
- "Caelan took her pants off."
- "Chaucer won't stay on my bed." Wonder why?
- "Can I sleep in your bed?" You are in my bed. You are just not sleeping. "Oh, yeah."
