Bedbugs and other visitors

My daughter has been coming into our room every night since she could walk basically. I had set up a little blanket for her on the floor by my bed a while back so she could come in and not wake me up. But now that it's winter we use that blanket also so if I don't remember to set out another blanket then she comes in wanting a blanket or wanting in our bed. Either way she wakes me up. Every night. But thanks to what I can only imagine is a bed bug infestation in her sleeping bag, I may have broken her of this habit. Here's how it went down.

My brother came to stay with us for two nights around Thanksgiving and ended up sleeping in her bed, the lower bunk, since my mom was in the Murphy. So both kids slept in their sleeping bags on our floor. My daughter woke up the next morning covered in bites. Little ones. Dozens of them. Poor girl. My son got a few too so we thought either it was from putting them in the yardage bin while raking the leaves on Thanksgiving - an annual tradition - or the bugs came home with us from our last camping trip and have been living in the sleeping bags in our attic. Or there are just bugs in our attic and now, via the sleeping bags, they are living among us. The next night night she slept on our floor and we had our spare duvet down there for her. She got more bites. That duvet had been in the attic too. And it had also been camping. So we've now washed everything and the carpet cleaners are coming tomorrow morning to hopefully scrub away anything else lurking in the carpets. But she's convinced that sleeping on the carpet gives her bites so as long as we can keep her out of our bed, she only has one place to go and that's her own bed. Which hopefully is not infested too because that would totally ruin my plan. And we'd probably have to burn down the house.

Aquaman

So finally tonight my son looked me right in the eye and with great pride spewed out the five sleep tricks and the three additions because the squirrel gave him back the key and now those things are all locked in his head. He went to sleep without a peep. The other one, unfortunately, received the baton. And for the next hour she went back and forth between sobbing for Mommy and sobbing for Aba. She doesn't play favorites. Around the third round of this I was with her in their room singing her a song when she starts calling for Aba again.

Me: Should I get Aba?
Her: I get Aba.

OK then. Meanwhile Aba is in the back room trying to prepare for a crack of dawn triathlon tomorrow. I follow her a few paces behind so that I too can pass the baton and out walks Aquaman in the tightest wetsuit I have ever seen on anyone who doesn't actually live in water. And he's holding her and she's looking at him, like WTF. Naturally, several minutes later, she re-emerges asking for me because Aquaman's been called off to rescue a polar bear stranded on an ice-chunk in the Arctic Circle. I move her to my bed. Five minutes later she starts calling for Aba again. Aquaman returns to rescue this lovely thirty-five year old mother of two from her over-tired toddler. He falls in love with her despite the bags under her eyes and they live a long and happy life together. The end.

Sleep tricks

Every night when my son goes to bed, after the bath and the pajamas and the snack and the dessert and the stories and the teeth brushing and the whining and the singing and the whining for more singing and the drink of water and the pee pee break, I ask him if he remembers the five tricks I taught him about how to fall asleep. And every night he doesn't remember. So every night I tell him these five things again and I tell him to put those five things in his head and lock them in there so he doesn't forget and then the next night he wants to hear them again because even though he locked them in his head they got out. A squirrel opened up his head with a key and took out all of the sleep tricks so he needs to hear them one more time. And there's a squirrel somewhere sleeping soundly.

So what are these tricks?
1. Count up to 100 and back to zero.
2. Look at your alef-bet quilt (hanging above his bed) and make up stories for every picture.
3. Have dreams about sheep jumping over a fence and count each sheep as it jumps in your dream.
4. Make up a pinky and pongo story.
5. Dream about everyone in the world that you love and everyone in the world who loves you and give every single one of those people a hug in your dream.

I mean I'm about to fall asleep just typing about these five tricks.

Tonight, ten minutes after I put them both to sleep and went over, again, the sleep tricks, he came padding into the office and sat down on the floor asking for new ways to fall asleep. For the love of ginger, just close your freaking eyes! But no, I threw out some more suggestions. Dream about folding all of mommy's laundry. Dream about mommy losing ten pounds on her new Nutella diet. He was not happy with these suggestions. Then I offered that I would give him one more suggestion and Aba would give him one more. So Aba said he should think about how much he loves riding his bike and I told him he should think about how great it was to swim using the noodle without holding on to any swim teachers (!). He still wasn't happy so that's when I started writing this blog entry. And three minutes into the period where I'm ignoring him and typing, he says I will do those two things and then he mentioned a third thing that I can't remember now because a squirrel came and took it out of my head. I'll go wake him up to ask him so we can start this whole exercise again because it was so much fun the first time around...

Scared sleepless

Last night I went to sleep right after I put the kids to bed which was around 9:30. I've been staying up late the last few days watching episodes of Arrested Development to fill the void caused when Lost went on hiatus in May. Aside from being incredibly funny and situated right near where I grew up in southern California, it is especially satisfying for those of us who always loved the Jason Bateman character on Silver Spoons. Way more than the Ricky Schroeder character. Finally, a little love for the wise ass best friend.

So of course I woke up at 2:00 am because what on earth would I possibly do with eight, dare I suggest nine, consecutive hours of sleep. That would be so indulgent. I was warm so I opened the window. And then, as though along with the night breeze, my head started to fill with all kinds of horrible thoughts namely about some awful monster breaking into our home (through the open windows) and doing terrible things to my kids. I won't freak you out with the details but let's just say I might have a future writing horror movies. My friend Ali says it's from watching too much crime television and she might be right. Although who needs crime TV when you can just watch the news.

But back to my insomnia. So I literally was lying there imagining all of the horrible scenarios and finally I got up and locked all the windows in our house. That helped a little. Then I started singing show tunes - always mood lifting. Unless you sing Les Miserables. Which I did not. And then my daughter arrived at around 3:30. I hadn't set out any bedside blankets for her because she had sort of given up the habit of nightly visitations, but there she was. So I told her to come on up and we spooned ourselves back to sleep.

Tonight we sleep with the windows locked.

Houdini

The night before last my daughter woke me up at 3am moaning for me. It was kind of a muffled maaaawmy...maaaaawmy...I finally hauled my 600 pound ass out of bed (that's how heavy my ass feels at 3am. Like I might need a forklift). I walk into her room and see her head and half her body is under my son's bed. She's stuck under there. She's basically unconscious so you can see how it would be difficult to shimmy backwards in that state. How did you she get in there? Good question. Their beds are catty-corner. His bed is in the corner of the room and her mattress is against the back wall, flush with his, but on the floor. They make an L or a lower case R. So there's a space where she might be able to crawl under his bed. But why she scoots herself in there while she's sleeping is a mystery. Anyway, I pulled her out and put her back in her bed and since she was asleep this whole time there was no protest. And I hauled myself back to bed.

Last night, same thing. Only when I went into their room, she was missing. And just as panic was setting in I took a breath and realized I could still hear her mommy moaning. I waved my hand under my son's bed and came in contact with a xylophone, a roll of butcher paper, grandma's neck pillow, a stack of puzzles and a tool box but no toddler. But I could hear her in there.

Now, just so we all understand, this is a twin bed (with a lot of large items stored underneath). It's not a queen or a king. I finally get on my belly and really reach my whole arm under the bed where I feel her leg. She has inched herself all the way over to the wall, navigating between the aforementioned obstacles. I can't really comprehend how it's all possible. I decide at 3am that she must have magical powers beyond my tired imagination. I pull her out, put her back in her bed and barricade what we now refer to as the crawl space.

Sleeper

At 5:00 this morning I heard my daughter shouting and crying from her room. I figured she was asleep because if she was awake she would have just climbed into our bed. I went in there and as suspected she was curled up in child's pose in the middle of the room with no blankets and likely freezing. But she was sleeping for sure. Usually by 5:00 am she's already snuggled up with us for more than a few hours so this was a pleasant surprise. I put a few blankets on her and went back to bed but then thirty minutes later she came in first with her pillow, then her blanket, then her other blanket (I'm serious, she made three trips) and then she crawled into bed for her last hour of sleep. I can't figure her out. But literally every time I blog about how she sleeps half the night with us, she ends up sleeping basically the whole night in her bed. So I am going to dedicate this blog entirely to her sleep habits so I can continue to get some rest. Just the thought of that is putting me to sleep so it's already working.