sleep sleep sleep

We made it back from Florida yesterday morning in what I like to think was our final Christmas miracle since we were technically celebrating the holidays. I guess that you could say that the theme to my weekend was sleep. Especially since by the time we arrived, we were in dire need of some solid hours of sleep.

On night two, we let Lucy cry it out. I did give her some Tylenol because she was waking up every hour chewing on her fingers SCREAMING! At this point, I still can’t say that she is teething. I mean those teeth are going to come in at some point. Right? After I feed her again and gave her some Tylenol, she slept all night long. I am sure that she was completely exhausted, as was I.

When I first put her to bed, she was sleeping in the den area. Everything was great until the phone rang and then the answering machine answered right next to her head. She gave me this look, like who was that. Then I tried to calm her again only to get a second call. And an even quicker pick up by the answering machine. So we picked up the bed and moved back to our bedroom. I plopped her down and left. She was not happy. And I was at the end of my rope. I sat crumpled on the couch, hoping that Henry would return from the car rental place as soon as possible. I was writing in my journal about how miserable I was and Martina sat stoically reading a book. It was rough.

I had no idea that she would sleep all night. So by the next morning when she woke up at 7:15 to eat and we fell back asleep until 9, I had a dream-come-true dream. Not a dream-within-a-dream-with-coinciding-events dream. But instead my fantasy came true. It was wonderful. I guess that I was super relieved.

I am sure that my dream was inspired by my wishful thinking because the same night that Lucy slept all night, I could not sleep. Maybe our sleep habits were affected by the fact that we were both wrapped in a lovely blanket of 80% humidity. By 3:30, I started praying that the rain would finally come through and get it over with. The next morning all of my books were warped. Ughh… But the night before I wasn’t able to sleep either. It is very hard for me to sleep in the same room as Lucy because I listen to her every noise. And there are a lot of noises.

The night before I had started counting all of the beds I was going to have in my theoretical next house. And these were all beds that I could sleep in. Not beds for my children, unless you count the one that I want to have in the nursery so to speak. I want it to be a little nook that is essentially surrounded by three walls with space for books on one wall, a window as another and an escape route for me to slip away once the baby/toddler/child is asleep and then lock them in a safe place. I told Henry that I am sure there is some kind of version of this in a Swedish home. He said it sounded like I needed an architect. (And needless to say, not very pleased.) In addition to that, there is the guest room with our current bed and our bedroom, which will have a king-sized bed. I was always anti-king-sized beds, until I got pregnant.

I have loved living in a small space and I don’t really want to give up the economy of stuff that comes with it. You have to love everything in your space. And you have to periodically purge. But the greatest sacrifice I have found is not having enough options of places to sleep. And for a fragile sleeper like myself, I need a few more places for retreat.

So in my dream, I have a large family home with a brick exterior out in the woods. There may have been a golf course in the back. Although neither of us play golf. Come to think of it, I think it is a home from Travel & Leisure magazine. It was beautiful and I was so happy to host a group of people. I realized that our photo shoot for the National Geographic was going to turn into a family birthday party. How fun! I was so happy. My mom, my aunt Jeannie and my cousin Jennifer were there. Then all of a sudden an old friend from college walked up. I greeted her with half of a hug and forgave her for our silly falling out of 13 years ago. I was about to ask her to be my Facebook friend before Henry woke me up.

We are still letting Lucy cry it out. Right now, as we speak. We have gotten this far, so I hope that this will be the last night. Or tomorrow night. But I have decided that the night in Florida was going to be THE low point of our sleepless nights. At least, I hope.