Thursday, March 06, 2008
Perchance to Dream
Here's the family hierarchy:
1st place: Ellie
2nd place: Annie
3rd place: Shelly
4th place: Me
That's the ranking of how much sleep we each get. And I'm a distant fourth. It's become particularly apparent this week, as I'm swamped with work (which I should be doing right now as I sit at my office at 10:30pm), but I think it's generally true no matter how my schedule is going.
Ellie will sleep for 12 or 13 or sometimes even 14 hours at a time at night - or at least sit in her crib in her room quietly. Plus, she gets naptime in the afternoon for about two hours, during which she usually sleeps. That is one well-rested girl.
Annie is still learning how to sleep, so she doesn't go for long spurts at a time. Her naps, while more frequent than Ellie's, don't last very long, and she's generally up long before Ellie is. Of course, there's the late-night awakenings too.
Shelly goes to bed before I do much of the time, and stays in bed after I get up much of the time. These days, as we've established a weekly schedule that boots one or the other of us to the gym at 6:00 on weekdays, she's done better on the getting up part. But many is the day when I have left for work - at the not unreasonable hour of 8:00 or so - leaving a house of three sleeping girls behind me.
Even during a good week, the schedule now calls for me to go to bed at 11:00 and get up at 6:00 every day. That's enough to make me the last one down and the first one up every day, even when it's a tie with Shelly. And of course, in extenuating circumstances, my sleep is curtailed even more. Plus, there's the periodic wake-up calls with Annie every night, whether it's my turn to feed her or not.
I'm not really bitter. I'm not even feeling especially tired in general. I just want to point out to the world that, in general, there is not a time when I am asleep and any one of my three girls is awake.*
* Shelly insists this is not true when she's feeding Annie in the middle of the night, but I wake up even when it's Shelly's turn. While she's feeding, I'm trying to go back to sleep. If I fall asleep before Shelly does, it's a matter of minutes.
1st place: Ellie
2nd place: Annie
3rd place: Shelly
4th place: Me
That's the ranking of how much sleep we each get. And I'm a distant fourth. It's become particularly apparent this week, as I'm swamped with work (which I should be doing right now as I sit at my office at 10:30pm), but I think it's generally true no matter how my schedule is going.
Ellie will sleep for 12 or 13 or sometimes even 14 hours at a time at night - or at least sit in her crib in her room quietly. Plus, she gets naptime in the afternoon for about two hours, during which she usually sleeps. That is one well-rested girl.
Annie is still learning how to sleep, so she doesn't go for long spurts at a time. Her naps, while more frequent than Ellie's, don't last very long, and she's generally up long before Ellie is. Of course, there's the late-night awakenings too.
Shelly goes to bed before I do much of the time, and stays in bed after I get up much of the time. These days, as we've established a weekly schedule that boots one or the other of us to the gym at 6:00 on weekdays, she's done better on the getting up part. But many is the day when I have left for work - at the not unreasonable hour of 8:00 or so - leaving a house of three sleeping girls behind me.
Even during a good week, the schedule now calls for me to go to bed at 11:00 and get up at 6:00 every day. That's enough to make me the last one down and the first one up every day, even when it's a tie with Shelly. And of course, in extenuating circumstances, my sleep is curtailed even more. Plus, there's the periodic wake-up calls with Annie every night, whether it's my turn to feed her or not.
I'm not really bitter. I'm not even feeling especially tired in general. I just want to point out to the world that, in general, there is not a time when I am asleep and any one of my three girls is awake.*
* Shelly insists this is not true when she's feeding Annie in the middle of the night, but I wake up even when it's Shelly's turn. While she's feeding, I'm trying to go back to sleep. If I fall asleep before Shelly does, it's a matter of minutes.
Comments:
I don't know if it's even worth commenting but when work is involved, there is no question, Matt gets less sleep than me. It is what it is. But I will state the truth that at times it is Matt's choice to stay up later than I do. He reads or does personal projects. So he's not always a martyr.
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