Zombie

Napping has been the bane of my existence for the past four years.  When Pumpkin was born, Peanut immediately stopped napping.  She stopped being a super easy sleep through the night kind of kid too, but that's neither here nor there.  So I had this brand new baby who screamed a lot, and a two year old who had never screamed a lot who was now pretty much always tired and kind of pissed about her little brother taking up all of the attention.  So all of that nonsense about sleeping when the baby sleeps was out the window since no one slept and if they did it was one or the other.  I think we had a few days where both kids slept at the same time, but nothing spectacular. 

We have gone through lots of ways to try resting - quiet time, me sleeping on the couch while the kids put stickers on me or drew on the wall, me screaming at them to rest then crying about what a terrible parent I was...  We tried family naps where we all lay down together.  Room darkening shades, sound machines... We tried everything.  Every now and again I'd think I had hit upon the answer and we'd have a blissful week or two of glorious resting.  And then boom.  It would be over and it felt worse than before because then I had a taste of the elixir that is naps and me time. 

I have been sleep deprived for years now.  I almost don't know what it feels like to not be tired.  Now, I think the sleep deprivation would not have been so bad and forced me to obsess about naps if Pumpkin had ever slept through the night, but that seemed to be elusive as well - really it still kind of is.  We seem to be making some progress in the overnight department - Pumpkin has been sleeping until 7:30 in the morning instead of his usual 5am or bust.  And more often than not for the past few weeks he has woken up once or less a night which is really amazing. 

But napping.  Oh napping.  I know people with 5 year olds who nap every single day.  I am beyond envious.  These days we have been doing rest time where we all go in our rooms and rest.  Typically this is about 5 minutes before someone comes out of their rooms and starts asking me questions.  Or just making noises.  Or goes to the bathroom and yells for assistance of some kind.  Just enough time for me to begin to drift off and then have all possibilities of actually sleeping dashed in an instant.  Today we even did a guided visualization - which I enjoyed but the kids started playing rabbit hole where they burrow down to the bottom of the bed and pretend to be bunnies.  Sigh. 

Someday, I am told, they will be teenagers and I will struggle to wake them every day.  They will sleep and sleep and sleep and I will be trying not to nag them to get up.  This, my friends, is really hard to believe, but I'm going to bank on finally getting some sleep in about 6 or 7 years...