Revelation #3: Slobbering Tired

In honor of the book giveaway I’m going to spend this week revealing some of the things that are not How I Thought My Life Would Be.  NEXT UP: painful sleeplessness.

While I realized that having children would require sleepless nights at first, I had NOT realized that having children is like signing up for a course of sleep deprivation therapy.

And, sad news, friends: it never, ever ends.

After getting on my hands and knees and begging Uno and Dos to “Just Stay In Your Bed All.  Night.  Long.  PLEASE!”  they are doing much better lately. But the damage is already done; the permanent under-eye bags and plentiful gray hairs are parked on my head as a result of allowing them to get loose of their crib-cage and into the bunk bed.

If a year is equal to seven years for a dog, the one year with a toddler must be equal to 12 regular, normal, non-sleep-deprived years.

My worst days are when I have to be awake and “on” because the kids are up when every single atom of my body wants to be curled into a fetal position with sleep drool sliding down my face.

On really, really tiring days when I lay down in bed I start twitching and jumping all over as my body winds down. I’m pretty sure Lizard enjoys it about as much as he would enjoy sleeping with a woodpecker.

Rat-a-tat-tat, twitch, twitch.

Being exhausted makes me do crazy things, too!  For example:

• I once found a fistful of DVDs in my freezer with no recollection of how they got there…
• I brought my own grocery sack to WalMart and then yelled at the checker for not using them, only to realize in my sleep-deprived state that she was still bagging the groceries of the customer in front of me.  (I apologized.  Profusely.)
• I’ve lost the ability to be witty on-the-spot.  Now, you say something funny to me and I think, wow!  I should be sarcastic right now and yet… the… words… just… don’t… come… out… (That’s why I like writing so much.  I can write in fits and spurts and not have people waiting to see what’s about to come out next.)

Last night Dos had a bad dream and crept into my bed in the wee hours.  She made herself right at home, ending up spread-eagled and snoring by 6 a.m.

I woke up with my nose in Lizard’s armpit and two toddler-size-8 feet digging into my kidneys.

This was not the cozy dream I had hoped for.  In fact there’s much less dreaming in general (due to lack of sleep) than I expected…

Don’t forget to post a comment on the Giveaway post – the ruffians will draw a winner on Sunday and a lucky reader will receive a free copy of Kristin Maschka’s This Is Not How I Thought It Would Be: Remodeling Motherhood to Get the Lives We Want Today.  She may even autograph it.  How cool is that?!