Sniveling

Last night Lyla only woke up once, at 1:30 to chug six ounces and paint a Monet in her pants, but then I stayed awake until 4:00 because I had every song from Sweeney Todd running through my head at the same time. It's impossible to sleep when your brain is teeming with "They ALL deserve to DIE! Tell you WHY, Mrs. Lovett, tell you WHY!"

Plus, school starts up again in a couple weeks, and every August I get anxious about it. I don't necessarily dread it or look forward to it, but there's an intense anticipation that makes it harder to get to sleep--and much harder to get back to sleep. To be embarrassingly honest, the thought pattern is along the lines of "I hope the kids will like me."

So it doesn't help that Lyla has suddenly stopped sleeping through the night. It has made me tired, irritable, and borderline mental. Poor, poor, poor me.

Someone Julie works with told her today, "Last night I cursed at your husband's blog." Needless to say, I was delighted. But Julie said this woman's kid wakes up all the time, always has. Here I am sniveling about losing sleep on a night or two, and a full night of sleep isn't even on her radar.

I suppose in one way, writing about parenting is like parenting itself: I pretend like I know what I'm doing, but pretty much I just make it up as I go. One thing Lyla and I have in common is that sometimes we act like big babies.