sleeping

just days to go (note crib in lower right of photo)

that's either a big YAWN or a screech

i'm not going to say i've always been good at sleeping.  but i will say that i've always been good at sleep on my terms.  i think it's fairly safe to say that, since day one (or thereabouts; i made my first appearance at high noon), i've been an early-to-bed and early-to-rise kind of girl.  my poor mother.  a night owl with an early bird baby?  & her new mother dreams of rocking her sweet baby to sleep?  no, thanks.  apparently, that wasn't my thing.  she says i would practically dive from her arms into the crib, desperately ready for my solitary slumber.  and, then, to top it all off, it is reported i gave up naps at a rather young age.  maybe age two?  but, listen, there were places to go, people to see, things to do!  my mother recalls that, as a preschooler, i would head to the door each morning and ask, "where are we going today? what are we going to do?"

glamour-rock with my maternal grandmother

ready for the DAY with my mom

 i developed into a highly unusual creature:  a teenager who went to bed at 10 and woke up to the very first beep of the alarm, eyes wide open, ready for the day to begin!  it didn't, exactly, lend itself to being the life of the party.  i became (why am i using the past tense here?) seriously cranky if kept up past my bedtime.  as you can imagine, sleeping during my college days was best accomplished if i lucked out and got a roommate who, basically, lived elsewhere.  i was never on the same schedule as most other undergrads.  i had one roommate (sweetest girl in the world) whose best term paper writing and printing seemed to occur at about 2am.  (in those days, printing on a portable word processor was extremely loud.  especially to someone trying to sleep in a cement-walled, non-carpeted dorm room.).  we're still friends.  but should, never again, be roommates.

this all might lead you to believe that i was (am) a light sleeper.  not at all.   in my preferred conditions, i fall asleep quickly, sleep through everything (although that changed to most things once i got used to being awakened by babies - see below), don't remember my dreams (on a rare occasion, i will), and almost never hit the snooze button.  i sleep well...and then i am done.

as i mentioned, becoming the parent of a newborn was quite an adjustment to my sleeping.  i think my friends who were night owls and good nappers (the mom, not the baby, necessarily) had it a little easier.  but, then again, maybe nobody does.  when i had babies, my mantra each evening (or one of them; you need many as a new parent), when i laid my head down, was, "i'm going to get a good night's sleep.  i can feel it."  it generally turned out to be wishful thinking.  i used to leave my husband incredibly grouchy notes taped to the bathroom mirror telling him i had been up with the baby at "10pm, 2am, 4am, and 6am."  i'm not sure what, exactly, i was expecting him to do with that information (no bottles ever were successful in our house).  but i wanted him to share my frustration...and understand my exhaustion.

Samuel asleep

by the time i had my second baby, i had figured out that the only way for me to survive the chronic sleep-deprivation was to go to bed when my preschooler and baby did (that meant around 8pm).  and, although i have never been able to nap without waking up worse than before, i, at least, did nothing during the afternoon nap (or 'quiet time,' once they stopped taking naps).  my own children were, like me, done with naps by around age two; however, this also meant they slept roughly twelve hours at night.  so, for my purposes, this was most excellent.  and, once i had recovered from the years of sleep-deprivation, this also meant at least two hours each evening that the children slumbered and adult conversations could wander, unchecked and uninterrupted.

Joseph asleep

then they turned into teenagers and everything reversed itself.

so, now i am middle-aged and they are strengthening their wings.  unlike myself, they seem to enjoy typical teenage circadian rhythms.  these days, i am, once again, keeping to my early-to-bed and early-to-rise lifestyle (although, during the school year, because i still am somewhat involved in my boys' morning routines, those rising hours are slightly earlier than i would prefer).  and they are, when they can, staying up late and sleeping until noon.  or just staying up late.  i don't see how they do it.

i got to thinking about this whole sleeping thing yesterday, a Friday.  as the evening waned, i started to feel this delightful anticipation.  no homework to oversee, no lunches to pre-pack, no last-minute panics about a last-minute project.  a joyous "who cares when they go to sleep?"  a completely freeing chain of thoughts.  and no morning alarm.  no waking up in darkness - or worse, at 5:30am, when it is a toss-up between falling back to sleep for an hour or lying there thinking about the upcoming day of work.  i usually strike a compromise.  but, Friday night.  and, better yet, Saturday morning.  ah, bliss!

so, maybe this is actually more a post about sunshine and mornings and waking up.  i think i enjoy the falling asleep mainly because, then, i get to wake up!  and that means i'm going to do something!  while i love sleep and prioritize it in my life (it is, after all, about a third of my day), i think i approach it like i approach food.  i eat because i'm hungry; i sleep because i am tired.  and i go from full to famished and from alert to drowsy in precisely three minutes.  so just don't get between me and my fork - or between me and my pillow - and we'll get along just fine.

~ Good Night & Good Eats ~