It is entirely possible that last night brought me the most sleep in one shot that I have seen in the last six months – maybe since even before I got pregnant with Truman….

Six hours! I was able to sleep – while sharing a room with a snoozing newborn – for SIX HOURS! In our world, that is amazing, in case the caps and !s didn’t make that point quite clear.

Somehow, I was in bed before 10, which again, in my world, is a beautiful thing, and TJ did not wake me until 4:00 this morning. I was astounded. B was self-congratulatory and almost giddy, trying to talk to me as I settled in to nurse about how great we did getting the baby to sleep that long; however, even though I had slept longer than I had in ages, I was in no mood to celebrate and quickly shushed my hubs (who got to go back to bed in another part of the house, mind you)…perhaps because my subconscious knew what was coming??

You see, my brain has not forgotten just what my pregnancy insomnia was like and it clearly knew that just because Little Dude waited until 4 to wake me did not mean all was going to remain fine and dandy once he nursed. And bummer, because that is exactly what happened, as I was up with him until well past 5:30, and everyone else in the house wakes at 6:30, so you know – that’s fun.

Six hours! I am not complaining about six hours (and please, Truman, do that again!). But when six hours of sleep then results in being up for the day at 4 a.m., the rest of the morning can seem rather, um, LONG.

Trying to get two kids and one husband ready and out the door by 7:30/7:45, too, whilst in a before-the-rooster fog was an interesting experience, to boot. 

One kid was proud and wanted to show off the swimsuit she put on all by herself (this is a good thing – she had swimming lessons at preK today, so it was not at all counter-productive for her to be wearing the thing).

Another determined child came up and busted my chops as I made his lunch because he wanted to “help” (which meant he wanted to pick between one Hershey’s Hug or one Hershey’s Kiss for the dessert in his lunch box and of course he wanted the Hug because they “taste more better” to him and of course I balked at this because I totally agree and wanted to bogart those for myself, thank you very much).

A third kid wanted to load his own “pack pack” even though he’s still too little to actually go anywhere during the day (except to a chiropractor appointment with me and the babe, which is what we had to do this morning (which also meant no morning snooze on the couch for me, which may have added to my foggy brain funk)).

And a fourth Little snoozed through it all (until we were waiting for the Oldest’s ride and then he decided to wake up and be cranky because he wanted to nurse, but I had to wait to see HD get out the door), which is exactly what I would have liked to have been doing, but you don’t get to sleep when the baby sleeps when you have other kiddos with waking hours in your house (an obvious statement that I never appreciated or took advantage of when I had just HD, although I’m blaming dogs for part of that, too). And this is why giving up caffeinated coffee only lasted for three days last week, and that was when Ben was still home all day!

And yet we all got where we needed to be this morning and this afternoon I squeezed in two frantic catnaps (yes, a catnap can be frantic), and we did another day. I’m beginning to think there is nothing like four kids six and under to keep a person focused on the present moment (an element of yoga) because when is there possibly time to think/worry/plan for the future?

Oh, yeah. 4 a.m.!