A baby, a four year old, and a dog

It’s funny how after six-and-a-half years of marriage Vickey and I now find ourselves responsible for two kids and a dog. And what’s not so funny about this scenario is the number of nights we actually get to sleep through the night.

As a single person I don’t think I appreciated how easy it was to sleep through the night. I definitely took that luxury for granted. And it’s amazing what a good night’s sleep will do for your temperament and patience.

Vickey’s still breast feeding Dominic, so she’s up once or twice a night with him. And although I don’t get out of bed, I’m usually awakened by the activity.

The dog sleeps in our room since Vickey discovered a tic on Eliana’s neck one morning in the bathtub. Tank used to sleep on Ellie’s bed — it was her preference — until the tic incident. But now it’s licking, scratching and shaking of a big dog’s head and floppy ears that wakes me up at night.

Then there’s Eliana. I’m starting to wonder if she has some kind of sleeping disorder. Since Dominic was born I don’t think there has been one single night that she’s not awake. We warned her for months that if she kept waking us up in the middle of the night we were going to lock her door so she couldn’t get out. Finally this week, I did it. I had had enough of those 3 a.m. “Mom, I love you.” comments.

And keep in mind that those interruptions were in between being wakened by a crying baby or obnoxious dog. Seriously, there’s only so much one can endure.

So this week we’ve had to put up with middle-of-the-night screaming, pounding and kicking fits for 20 to 40 minutes until Ellie realizes her parents aren’t getting out of bed and aren’t coming to help her. Vickey got up the first night when Ellie insisted she had to go pee (we had already ignored that the Grinch was coming, and that she couldn’t breath with her door closed), but when barely a tablespoon of pee trickled out, it confirmed our suspicion that it was an excuse to get let out of her room and be tucked in again by her mom.

Even last night there was kicking on the door in the middle of the night, but no screaming, and I’m the only one who heard it. Like I said before, I’m starting to wonder if Ellie is sleepwalking. Perhaps tonight, since Vickey wasn’t awakened by her last night, we’ll leave the door unlocked and we’ll see if she ends up in our bedroom.

The gist of all this is to appreciate a full night’s sleep while you can. I know I didn’t.