Annnnndddddd this is why I'm tired all the time.

Here's how a typical night goes for us (this is what I can remember of last night's events. And yes this is fairly typical for us and doesn't even include other common extra wakeup calls like Levi complaining that he wants his blanket pulled up again, or he's dropped his rabbit, or Jett wanting an extra 2am bottle etc). So here's how last night went:

In bed by 8.30… all the early mornings around here tend to take their toll. Sleep, however, does not always recognise this issue and come to the party, despite the fact that I had been struggling to stay awake since 6pm. Thus I am left to pass the time playing sodoku on my phone while Geoff happily snores beside me, having passed out approximately 86 seconds after hitting his pillow. (For the record, he does not actually snore too often - cause I know he will read this - hi honey!)

9.30 – I give up on the phone as my eyes are no longer focussing at the same time and thinking becomes more difficult. Not to mention that I have no discernable upper body strength and my arms are tired from holding my phone up. Sad, I know. I lie in bed and contemplate the universe….. or something....  while imagining various methods to either kill Geoff in his sleep or at least “accidentally” wake him up so he can share in the fun that is my insomnia.

10.40 – still awake. Looking at the clock every now and then thinking, I’ve been lying here for 1 hour. I’ve been lying here for 2 hours etc. Realise how futile this is and resolve not to look at my clock again.

Sometime around 11pm – I’m not really sure because I did manage not to look at my clock again…. But some time around then I assume I fell asleep.

2am – wake up in a panic of bad-mummy guilt because I’ve been dreaming that I just realised I’ve been forgetting to feed my baby girl Tilly and the poor thing is going to be taken away from me. It takes a surprisingly long time for me to realise that I don’t even have a baby girl and the closest person I do have to a baby girl would be Jett who has been bottle fed for quite some time and is showing NO signs of being malnourished whatsoever. I lie back and wait for bad-mummy guilt to subside but it never truly does because as we all know, there’s always something to feel guilty about as a mum right?

3am – have just gotten back to sleep (it takes me around 30-45minutes minimum each time I am woken up) and Finn starts crying. Its that terrified, bad dream type of cry so I leap out of bed, re-adjust my trajectory so that I won’t hit the wall next to the door quite so head-on, and go in to settle him. I never did manage to understand what the bad dream was about but he seemed fine after a little while of rubbing his back. I did manage to break his bed while sitting on the side next to him so I shift him away from the broken part so he won't fall through the bed during the night and resolve to fix it in the morning. Or at least to tell Geoff about it.

3.30am – Finn has started crying again. I figure its Geoff’s turn so I nudge him (read - elbow him until he notices me and yank off the blankets) and say Finn is calling him. (Which was actually true the first time I went in, I can’t remember if it was true the second time but lets just say it was ok?). Geoff is slightly less enthusiastic about the leaping out of bed part. In fact it takes him a few moments to come to terms with what planet he’s on and what his name is, before he can actually acknowledge that he has children and one of them needs him. Now Geoff always maintains that since he sleeps through everything and I wake up every time, that I might as well just handle these things all myself and let him sleep. However since it takes me so long to get back to sleep each time I get up, I reason that if I can just wake him up and stay in bed, then I might be able to get a little more sleep. It rarely works out that way but I still hold out hope each night. So Geoff finally realises where he is and gets up. By this time all 3 boys are crying. Levi stops on his own. Yay – first win of the night! Geoff settles Finn again and comes back to bed. Actually he kind of launches himself towards the bed from the general vicinity of the doorway and is asleep again before his second bounce.

Which leaves me listening to Jett still crying. Its one of those in-between cries, right on the line between something he will stop himself soon and go back to sleep if we wait a minute, and something that needs a little comforting. I wait. It becomes clear that comforting will be required. I sigh and stare daggers at the back of Geoff’s snoring head one more time to make me feel better (seriously, I don’t know how he does it – I would love to fall asleep like that!) and get up. Again. After a few minutes of cuddles on the rocking chair, Jett is soothed & is happy to go back to bed. It is now 3.45am. I have had approximately 2.5 hours sleep.

5am – After another weird dream which thankfully I cannot remember in such detail, but which leaves me feeling like I haven’t had any rest at all, I hear Levi running down the hallway as fast as his little feet can go. Luckily his ability to run fast has now exceeded his need to pee in the morning and he wins this race most mornings. After this urgent matter is dealt with, he bursts into Finn’s room, banging the door open and generally making enough noise to wake up a small herd of elephants. Finn, however, has been putting up with this for about a year now and is developing Geoff’s amazing sleep-deafness in defence. Amazingly he sleeps through it and Levi gives up. He then moves on to Jett’s room. I hear him tip-toe past my door and start to open Jett’s door – I put on my scary mum whisper and manage to tell him to get away from there without actually using enough volume to wake Jett myself.

After a little while of trying to get back to sleep while trying not to think about what other mischief Levi is getting into, I see a little person sized shadow in the crack of my slightly-open bedroom door. Now I’m not wearing my glasses, its only a tiny crack open, and I’ve had about 3.5 hours sleep all night. So the little person shadow moves around. I hiss at it to stop it, go away, cut it out etc. Geoff is kind of awake by this point and asks me if I’m sleep talking. I tell him about the little person in the doorway and he still thinks I’m sleeping. I tell him, no, I swear there was a little person in the doorway dancing around. With no clothes on, no less. He laughs. I repeat – there was a naked baby ninja in my doorway. He explodes in laughter with his well-rested self at my sleep-deprived, bad eye-sighted self. I have to laugh at myself at this point but I swear there was a naked baby ninja there. We concede defeat and he hands me the baby with his bottle, and the other 2 climb into our bed too while Geoff heads for the shower. And I am left to sleepily cuddle my 3 little ninjas. And to hope I’ll get a little more sleep tomorrow night. 

And here is a less than flattering photo of that group-hug moment. Because as un-glamorous as those first thing in the morning pictures are, I love this time of day when the boys all pile into our bed and are sweet and calm for a few minutes before insanity takes over again!