Sleep is Overated

What an aweful night! Despite my best efforts, I could not get to sleep at a decent hour last night. Everyone was against me.

Let me begin by saying that Breanne and I have been blessed with a wonderful sleeper. My daughter, Julia has been fantastic. At bed time we just go to her room, say a prayer, and sing a little song. Then we lay her down and she goes right to sleep. Not a peep comes out of her. It's the best ever. So now that I am used to this, the nights that she has trouble sleeping seem to be extra traumatic for me. I'm wondering if she isnt having a little bit of allergies because last night she was extra snotty. Not in character or disposition, but litterally snotty. Since she seems to be a big time thumb sucker when she sleeps the snottiness complicates the whole thumb sucking/breathing combo. So she was up about every 30 minutes last night between the hours of 11pm and 2am. What she really needed was to have her nose cleaned out with the ol' devil tool the nose sucker. Apparantly, this is the worst thing in the entire world to Julia. As soon as she saw me with it she started screaming as if I were threatening to do great bodily harm to her. So while I could have put her in a head lock and held her down to get her nose cleaned out, the hysterical crying that would ensue would only generate more snot than before. Thus rendering this entire exercise futile. I opted to just quickly wipe her nose and let her be stuffed up. It seemed far less traumatic. This bought me another 30 mintutes for her to sleep before she would be awake again.

The first time I laid her back down and got myself back to bed, the dogs (Safra and Jameela) started bothering me to go outside. They just went out an hour before, but apparantly they couldn't wait. There is no ignoring them either. They whine and scratch at my side of the bed until I let them out. Let the record show that these were not originally my dogs. They were adopted when I married Breanne. She had the dogs for a few years before we even met, so technically, they are her dogs. The girls seem to have forgotten this fact and only bother me when they need something. Not once in our 3 1/2 years of marriage have these dogs ever woken up Breanne to go outside in the middle of the night. Note my bitterness. Anyway, I let them out and back in a few minutes later and all was well... so I thought.

Baby woke up again... I got her settled back down and back in bed. Again, I thought all was well. Again, it was not.

Shortly after I laid back in bed I could hear that unmistakable disgusting noise that only a dog can make. Jameela was throwing up on our bedroom carpet. "Are you serious?" I say to her. Our dogs have a dirty little habit. Im sure that years of rehab could not cure them of their addiction. My dogs are dirty little poop eaters. It's disgusting. As much as I try, I cannot get them to stop. So you could imagine that this makes the vomit clean up exponentially worse. So I break out my carpet cleaner and spend some time scrubbing the carpet.

Baby cries some more. She gets control of herself and falls back asleep.

Ok... all is set. Carpet is clean-ish. Baby is asleep-ish. Now can I go to bed?

No. I lay down for a few more minutes and I hear Jameela pacing again. This could only mean one thing. I spring out of bed and try to usher her out the back door. We make it to the door and she throws up again on our kitchen floor, down the outside steps, and on the patio. Sigh. So I clean up the kitchen floor (at least it was tile) and then hose off the patio. Who doesn't want to be hosing off their patio at 1:30 AM?

Back to bed for one final time. Please can I get to bed now? Yes. Yes I could. However, that alarm at 5:50 am was awefully viscious this morning. I had every reason to skip my morning workout, but I perservered an went ahead and did it anyway. Now I am depending on my giant $5 Starbucks to get me through the day. Go caffiene!