(Not) Sleeping Through the Night

Despite my best efforts and the fact that I really think I have read just about every book on sleep published in the last 10 years, no living thing in my house slept very much last night. The sleep that did happen did not occur in the right places-the baby slept with her older sister, my sweet son's sleepy head just briefly touched his pillow before his ascent upstairs-honestly, we should have saved our money instead of buying them "good" mattresses. Even the kitten slept in the dog bed while the dogs slept panting next to me. I am trying to resign myself to the fact that my children always want to sleep on the couch or in some one's arms. That little Serta "counting sheep" on my son's shelf just mocks me when I pass by... still not sleeping through the night.

Last night, I hunkered down alone (hubby travelling) underneath the quilts at around 1am to finally get some sleep. My oldest staggered in to my room moments later passing off her baby sister who had kicked her in the face. What seemed like a half second later, I heard the slamming of the baby gate falling down as my son climbed the stairs-such a delicate little pitter patter. 4am found my bed filled almost to maximum capacity-two dogs, one kitten, two children, one cat hissing at the kitten from the top of the bed-and me not sleeping.

I miss sleeping through the night, there aren't words for how much. It takes a lot of lattes to get me through the day on less than six hours-consecutive, please. Without a doubt that is why I promptly and immediately weaned the baby on her 12 month birthday-back on the bean I had to go in order to function during the day. We have tried everything from Ferber to Sears to the Sleep Lady shuffle to Grandma Gibson's "close the door at seven and open the door at six" approach to try and grab a little sleep. No matter, we will still see two children at least once a night, the teenager will still peek her head in just to say hello around midnight or so-no end to the nighttime visitors yet. It's like a gravitational pull back to us each night. Maybe just for right now that is okay and doable-they did just open another Starbucks a hop, skip and a jump away.