Sleep-Deprived

Our boys are usually pretty good to us, sleep-wise. James was sleeping through the night practically from the night he was born. (Okay, not really) Owen has been a pretty consistent once-a-nighter, with an occasional all-night for a few months now. (And yes, I don't get up with him, so I don't really have grounds for thinking this is a good or a bad thing.)

Last night he blew it all up. He was up at 11, he was up at 1 in the morning, he was up again at 3 (I rocked him back to sleep that time) and then he was up at 5, at which point he just came to our bed and slept with us. I was supposed to get up at 5:30 for reading and exercise, and that didn't happen. When Owen popped awake with an eager smile at 6:30, I offered to take him off of J's hands so she could catch up on some more rest.

"Okay," I whispered to him as I made my coffee "you can get up impossibly early with Daddy if you want to, but you're going to do Daddy things. We're going to read quietly and sip coffee, and we're going to do it for a long, boring time. Got it?"

He smiled and tried to eat my bathrobe. The first part of the morning went okay. He gnawed on my highlighter (I think he likes the color yellow) while I read, and then got progressively whinier as I tried to continue reading. Some paternalistic instinct eventually reminded me to change his diaper, and when I took him upstairs I heard that James was also up an hour earlier than usual today.

When I brought Owen into James' room his feet began to kick and his whole body bucked with excitement. "Hey Owen, you're awake!!" shouted James at the top of his lungs. Owen was equally excited and wrapped his arms around James' neck when I held him up. And then they started yelling at each other.

"Boys, shhh, Mommy's trying to sleep!"
"Owen is yelling!!! AHHHHH!!!"
"AHHHHHH!!!!"
"I know, but Mommy is trying to sleep, let's yell with inside voices, okay?"
"OWEN, USE YOUR INSIDE VOICE!"
"AHHHH!!!!!!"

And so we went screaming down the stairs (J later told me she heard none of this) only to turn around a minute later because James needed to put on his rain boots before we went to the breakfast table. He absolutely refused to wear his rain boots for the first year he owned them, and just last weekend he finally took me up on my longstanding offer to let him splash in puddles if he wore the rain boots. He had a grand time and got his soaks socked despite the boots, and has wanted to wear them all the time since. Except, of course, when he's going to the potty, so I had to take them off again as soon we got downstairs "for good" and then put them back on again.

At that point James remembered that he had left something upstairs. I didn't pick up on exactly what he needed to get, so he went clomping up the stairs in his rainboots shouting back to Owen about how "I'LL BE RIGHT BACK AFTER I GET MY BUZZ-SAW LOUIE CAR THAT RACES WITH LIGHTNING MCQUEEN BUT DON'T BE TOO NOISY CAUSE MOMMY IS STILL SLEEPING!"
"AHHHH!!!!"
(J didn't remember this either.)

Owen looked around with a disappointed sort of expression until James came back. Apparently chewing on a highlighter while I read my books is not very interesting compared to James.

Once James came back and got out all of Owen's toys, he decided he wanted breakfast. I poured out some cheerios for Owen, and then set James up with his bowl of cereal. I even gave him some strawberries. I worked on cleaning up the last of the dishes until I heard James declaring "you DO like strawberries, Owen!"

When J came down they were both sitting in the living room hitting each other with sticks and laughing uproariously.

But she said it was her alarm that woke her up.