My Chronic Sleep Deficit

Yippee! It's morning! I can hardly wait to get started!

Yeah, right. I haven't had a decent night's sleep in 10 years. No wonder I'm depressed. All of my children, ages 4 to 9, still occasionally make their way into my room in the night. But Evan, the youngest, is a permanent resident, or so he thinks. He usually goes to sleep in his own room, but the first time he wakes up, he stealthily makes his way into my bed. He is very good at going undetected for quite some time. He comes in quietly, slowly until he's at my bedside. If there is no response from me, he lays his head on the bed next to me. If I still haven't noticed him, he puts a hand up on the bed, and then very slowly, a leg. No sign of life from Mom, and he quietly rolls the rest of his body up and lies motionless on the very edge of the bed. I have to give him credit because it's quite a skill. I don't usually notice him until he has fallen back to sleep and managed to take over 1/2 the bed. I will be smashed up against my husband, who will wake up and say, "Is someone in our bed?" The bed hog strikes again.

When I attempt to put him back in his bed or on the floor, he sometimes goes without a fight, but sometimes he freaks out. Multiply this by 2 or 3 times in a night, and add at least one other sibling, and that equals ONE TIRED MOMMY!

You'd think after 10 years, I'd have become accustomed to less sleep. Quite the opposite, actually. I'm very selfish about sleep. I take naps regularly as I'm still trying to recapture lost snooze time from 2003.

So begins my day and my week. I'll survive, with a lot of God's grace and a lot of God's gift to Moms - coffee!