The Elusive Zzzzs

Cooper woke up before four o'clock this morning. Oh how I envy parents that can simply put their children in their beds and have them sleep soundly through the night.

Last night was rough at our house. Really rough. Part of the roughness stems from Peter still being a nap-needing-child but at the same time not being able to take naps. We discovered a few months ago that if Peter took a nap during the day then he wouldn't go to sleep at night. Yesterday he needed a nap. He was grumpy, kept throwing tantrums, and had great big dark circles under his eyes. So, we had him take a nap. He woke up a much happier little boy.

Fast forward to bedtime. He wasn't as cranky as usual, but I could tell from his exponentially growing level of zaniness that he was tired. The more tired Peter is, the greater the likelihood of him running endless circles around his room. I kept reminding myself that he had had a nap and probably wouldn't go to sleep as easily as I would like. He didn't. I won't go into all the details, but I will say that towards the end of our much-derailed bedtime routine I pushed Cooper's bed into my room and told Peter to go to sleep on his own. This was for everyone's sanity.

I held Cooper in my room and listened to Peter's hysteria escalate. Once Cooper had dozed off I went into Peter and comforted him. He calmed down, but still wouldn't sleep. Bryan got home from work and took over Peter-duty while I went into the now awake Cooper. Both boys were finally asleep by ten at night, three hours past their normal bedtime.

When Peter goes to sleep late he will often wake up late. Not so with Cooper. That boy's internal clock is tightly wound and rarely lets him sleep past seven in the morning. Except lately he's been waking in the middle of the night. He screams and cries until one of us rescues him from his crib-confinement and then holds him while he actively sleeps in our bed for the rest of the night, resulting in a refreshed Cooper and two dead-on-our-feet parents. This morning he wouldn't go back to sleep.

Let us do a little math, shall we? He usually goes to sleep at seven at night and awakens at seven in the morning. That's twelve hours of much needed rejuvenating slumber for our small man. Last night he was asleep by ten (well, I think Cooper zonked out by nine-thirty, but we'll say ten for math purposes) and woke up at four. That's six hours of sleep, okay for an adult, but six hours short for a growing seventeen-month-old.

And that brings me to now. Here I sit at 6:42 in the morning, listening to Cooper cry because I've put him back in his own bed and very sweetly told him to go to sleep.

It's going to be a long day.