The Night Owl

One of my children is a night owl. In hind-sight, I can see that this one has been this way from the very, very beginning. This child is the one who would happily doze off for a nap alone in the crib and sleep for hours with no troubles whatsoever. We congratulated ourselves for being great parents and recognizing that the baby was tired and needed a nap, and for putting the baby down awake but drowsy so he/she could learn to fall asleep without us nursing/rocking/walking/intervening. This worked great for the first couple of weeks, and always during the day. Unfortunately, the baby never wanted to sleep at night. 
We went through a period with The Night Owl from about 6 weeks to 3 months old where we went through this ridiculous cycle of wake/feed/change/put the baby down asleep/the baby wakes up and cries because it realizes it's alone in bed/rock/feed/lay down/walk/soothe/change the crib sheets because The Night Owl is also The Baby Who Spits Up After Every Feeding. And Can Sleep In Until All Hours Of The Morning, Even Though You Can't. It was exhausting. There was some discussion between myself and Matt one November night that we sort of understood how the Romans could just expose their children and start over with another fresh one. Lack of sleep will do that to a person. (especially me).

Time passed, and we seemed to get the sleep issues worked out with The Night Owl. All was peaceful, until the night wandering began. Once The Night Owl was out of a crib at around age 2 - because that's when He began climbing out - things got hairy again. Lots of bedtime struggles, and late night visits. (Have you figured out who The Night Owl is yet?) We had The Apple Juice Story, and other things I'm sure I've forgotten at this point. It just seems that this particular kid goes through phases of insomnia, or just has too many big ideas rattling around in his head that he can't get to sleep.

Matt came downstairs Saturday morning at around 5am because he couldn't sleep anymore (knee surgery on Wednesday) - he discovered William already in the basement playroom playing video games. Who knows what time he got up? All game controllers are now being collected before Matt and I go to bed at night and are hidden until we pass them out again at a reasonable hour.

Tonight, after saying goodnight to Evie, I heard a thump from Williams room - I found him on the floor attempting to do origami next to his nightlight. I of course took all that stuff away from him. Not 30 minutes later, after more suspicious noises, Matt hobbled up the stairs and discovered him at his desk trying to fill out the 'about me' card from his wallet - in case he ever loses it, you know. Important things to be done on a Sunday night. On various nights we've found him playing his Nintendo DS, working in the multiplication book he had to have from Borders, and playing games on his iPod. It seems no matter what we remove from his room, he finds something else to occupy himself with. I have no idea how much sleep he actually gets, but we seem to go through phases like this where he's up until all hours of the night and then at the crack of dawn or earlier. Then we'll have days where I'll have to light a bomb next to his head to get him up for school - have I mentioned how pleasant he is to be around on days like this? Or not.

I really, really believe that people are just born to be morning people or night people, and that William is a night person, much like me. As much as I want to be a morning person & get up bright and early and tackle things before everyone else is up, I'm just not wired that way. And here it is, going on midnight after a long, long, work-filled day, and I could probably go another hour or two & get stuff done. Unfortunately for me, Monday morning is fast approaching and the rest of my house doesn't run on the Night Owl schedule - much as William and I might prefer it to :)

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I am very, very happy today -after a particularly busy afternoon, my bedroom no longer looks like it belongs on an episode of hoarders! The bathroom remodel is in a lull while we wait for the counters to come in, so I made Matt rest his knee in our room while we sorted through all the closet vomit that's been laying all over the place - he gave up his closet so we could move the laundry upstairs (which I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE!!!!!) Anywho - 2 big bags of trash and a huge pile of Goodwill later, I was actually able to clean our bedroom (have you ever renovated a room and had tile work done? dirty, DIRTY work.) Matt is no longer able to write notes to me in the dust on the dressers, thank you very much. Things are coming along, and I'm hoping to share fresh pictures soon - the bathroom counter is being measured on Thursday, and we may actually have a functioning bathroom again in maybe 2 weeks or so - fingers crossed!