Waking Sleeping Babies.

Another post from Before, the oldest I had in my Drafts folder. I’ve been so reluctant to publish it… it feels like the end of something. I miss this, what I describe, in a round about way, here- the simple camaraderie I had with Tony against the drudgery of raising small children.


Enjoy.

Woooot,

Good morning, my lovely jellybean people. How we doing? I am in a bleeping fantabulous mood. Happy happy joy joy and all that jazz.

Whatever. In honor of this joyous, happy bum-slap-dance mood that I’m in, I thought I’d share with you a very special, very sentimental event that happened in the life of the Man and myself just recently.

We got to wake up our toddler.

I know. Cool, huh? Total awesomeness.What’s that…? You were expecting something way betterer than that….?

You’re a f*cking fussy bunch aren’t you? Work my fingers to the bone at the keyboard and look at the thanks I get.

Allow me to explain.

The Chop is almost three years old. He only just started sleeping through the night about six months ago. Yes, you read that right, no need to go back. Two and a half years before he slept though the night. Shock, horror, welcome to my life. Jump right into my nightmare, the water is warm (OK, that’s probably a light exaggeration…)

These days? Still no guarantee. At least a few nights a week, he’s up and about at all hours. Meanwhile, the Bump, bless her, sleeps like a log most nights. (Excuse me here for a moment while I frantically go touching wood).

Whoever coined the phrase “sleeping like a baby”, certainly didn’t have my first baby. The Chop was not a peaceful, curly, sleepy newborn. The Chop woke, and screamed, and fed every two hours, round the clock, for the first eight months of his life.

Every two hours. For eight months. There were no bottles in this equation, it was all mummy milk.

I was so tired, I wanted to cry most of the time. The thought of six hours of uninterrupted sleep could quite literally, make me weep. Every bit of me- my skin, my eyes, my fingernails- was dipped in fatigue.

I very nearly lost my mind.

As you can probably tell, I’m still slightly traumatized over it. So, is it any wonder that, when given the opportunity to wake the little Chop at 5:30am, the Man and I relished every second of it…?

Remember, when we went to the Zoo a little while back? That adventure involved a very early start (and resulted in a very grumpy child. But that’s not the point of this post.)

The Man and set our alarm for 5am, and jumped out of bed as soon as it went off, bright eyed and bushy tailed, lest it wake the kidlets prematurely and thieve all our pleasure and anticipation. We snuck downstairs, had coffee (two sugars and milk for the Man) and tea (same for me, thanks) and a *ahem* *splutter* sneaky cigarette.

And then, veeeeeeeery quietly, we snuck back up the stairs, and into the Chop’s room.

We had discussed various methods of waking him up. Including jumping on his bed, turning his radio on and up as loud as it would go and the Man farting on his head, well…. various other things.

In the end, poking the Chop awake seemed like the most entertaining option. So that’s what we did. We sat next to his bed, and whispered “Chop.. wake up…”

And poked him* in the arm until he, eventually, and quite grumpily, sat up and rubbed his eyes.

Ahh. The satisfaction. The vengeance. I almost feel like I should feel bad about it, but I don’t. I’m going to be one of those horrible mums who wakes their teenage son up by vacuuming directly outside his bedroom door at 6am. When he has girlfriends staying over. And after waking them, I will burst into the room wearing a polyester negligee with a polar fleece dressing gown and my hair in curlers, screeching that I “Told him I didn’t want any strumpets in my house!” Or something.

My revenge will be served piecemeal, cold, and sweet. Just the way I like it.

There is nothing quite so sweet as waking up a sleeping toddler. Except, perhaps the anticipation of waking a sleeping teenager (and his girlfriend).

* Yes, I know, I’m a terrible, terrible mother. Whatever. I told you the sleep deprivation had left me severely traumatized.  As usual, hate mail/ offers of counseling/ letter of support/ spam asking me to give me your bank details so you can transfer me money because I am trustworthy, God-fearing person can be directed here. Thank you.