Oh Those Crazy Sleepless Nights

I've gotten to that scatterbrained state of mind that comes from a lack of sleep and too much to do. The one-on-one coverage with the kids has us both feeling drained. In fact, Brandi's been snoozing on the couch for almost an hour now while Ava's down for her evening nap.

Ava is sleeping through the night, and has been for a while now, but she is a night owl, much like her older brother was at that age. Most nights, she's up from 11:30 to 1:30 and sometimes later. When she's up during that time, she tends to be pretty specific about what she wants. She does not want to be rocked and held on the horizontal. Playing under her jungle gym thing is fine for short stretches but she prefers being upright. Sometimes I zonk out when Ava's getting her final feeding of the night, but most nights we're both up together.

Then over the past few weeks, Logan has been getting up in the middle of the night. He'll call out for us and is usually pretty upset. Since our room is right next to his room, and the walls are unfortunately thin, we can't just let him cry it out, especially when he decides to pound on the walls or come into our room. So then I end up in his room, trying to get him back to sleep. I don't want to end up sleeping in his bed, but I'm so tired that I will fall asleep sitting up if I sit there long enough. Logan has also developed spider sense when it comes to Brandi or me sneaking out of his room. He could be completely asleep for 20 minutes, but as soon as I set foot out of his room, he rolls over, realizes I'm not there, and starts crying.

I have a few theories as to why he's getting up in the middle of the night. We're still having...uh...poop issues. As one of the few things he can control in his life, the boy has decided that he does not want to poop under any circumstance and holds it in. It could be that at night, when he's deep asleep, he doesn't have the complete control over it any longer and he starts to cramp up or feels some other kind of pain.

Then there's the jealousy angle. As far as he knows, Ava gets to stay up later than him. For all he knows the three of us are down here living it up, watching Curious George and eating fruit snacks until we're ready to burst. Some nights it seems like he's trained himself to listen for the sound of us coming upstairs and that's his cue to wake up.

Then there are some nights when he seems like he's genuinely frightened of something. Maybe he has developed a fear of the dark, or maybe he's having nightmares.

The only nights that he doesn't seem to wake up in the middle of the night are the ones when he's going to bed late and is completely exhausted.

When I sleep in his room, I am able to fall asleep, but his bed is uncomfortable for me and some mornings I ake up with a lot of aches and pains. Most mornings, I wake up an am able to sneak back into our bedroom, only to see that I have no more than an hour before my alarm clock goes off.

I think this song about summs it up.