Brutal

I should have known that the night was going to be bad when the alarm clock the kids had been playing with earlier in the day went off at midnight. No, it wasn't a nice song on the radio it was the blaring beep. I have lost the ability to fall immediately back to sleep like I did when Ben and Lauren were newborns, so I lay awake in bed thinking of everything I needed to get done today. At 3am I heard another piercing sound, but this time it was Lauren screaming. I went upstairs to check it out. She was burning up. I gave her some Tylenol and went back to bed. When I got back to bed Travis had seized the opportunity to take his half of the bed out of the middle. I squeezed in hoping he would get the hint and move over, but he was dead to the world. How he was able to sleep through the screaming I will never know. As I lay there thinking that if I would have administered the Tylenol faster Travis wouldn't have had time to acquire so much new territory. As the saying "you snooze, you lose" crossed my mind, I stopped myself to recognize the irony; Travis was the one snoozing and I was the one losing. The crazy circle thoughts kept coming; I could not turn my brain off. Just as I was starting to relax, Lauren started screaming again. I decided on my way up the stairs that I would just bring Lauren back to bed with us like we used to do with Jack. As I picked Lauren up I could feel Ben staring at us. As so as I started to walk out the door Ben came running after us. I ushered him back to bed and started out of the room again to no avail. I guess they aren't ready for their own bedrooms yet! I decided to take both of them to sleep with me in the guest bed. Lauren laid spread eagle on top of me and Ben decided to use my face as his pillow. Needless to say, it wasn't comfortable. Our guest bed is so uncomfortable I am surprised that anyone comes to visit us. I lay still until I couldn't take it anymore; the bed is so hard my ass was actually falling asleep. I had to move. I slowly did the hug and roll just as it was taught on 'Friends', but it didn't work, Lauren woke up. She was crying "ouch, ouch, ouch" which in turn woke Ben up. Ben started chanting, "own bed, own bed" so I took them back to their room. Ben lay down right away, but Lauren started crying. I hoped she would cry herself to sleep and went back to my own bed too. I listened to Lauren cry for about five minutes when Travis angrily told me she had been crying for an hour. Are you kidding me? I was up there for an hour! She didn't stop crying. I finally took my pillow up to their room and lay on the floor and rubbed Lauren's back. When I finally got her back to sleep and went back to bed it was 5:15am and Travis alarm was going off. He let the alarm go off every nine minutes for at least an hour because "he was exhausted!”