zen.org Communal Weblog

Even though he falls asleep in his own bed, just about every night our 3 year-old wakes up somewhere between 10pm and 1am to come into our bedroom, climb over me, and snuggle down between us. Many a morning we’d wake up to find him there, neither E nor I with any memory of his arrival.

As comforting as it is to feel his warm little body cuddling up to us, I think he’s forcing us to come up with a strategy to make him opt for his own bed more often. The last few nights a combination of accelerated feet swinging out of nowhere, “Dad I wanna go downstairs,” and head-butts have made us get little sleep. It’s as if he were 6 months old again. If he slept through the night in a civil manner, he’d be more than welcome. But our kidneys and heads can’t take much more of the abuse.

Last night I think we can count perhaps 3 hours of real sleep. I’m up at 6 today while E sleeps in, and this afternoon I expect I’ll crash for a couple of hours to be in even close to a decent mood for the evening.

There’s plenty about a young P that we’ll miss in a few years, seriously regretting not keeping a more active journal of his funny quirks, new discoveries, and happy moments. We’ll lament our poor memories, knowing for any one tidbit we kept we let a dozen disappear forever. Yet somehow I suspect this random sleep deprivation isn’t going to be as quickly forgotten.