sleeping late, getting up early

james-franco-127-hours

Normally, I get up pretty early in the morning.

It’s my developing “old man” style. I think that I’m trying to work up to the day when I can make a Saturday morning call to the kids at 6:30 AM. I’m working up to that….I know that if I get up early enough now, that later it will feel like the whole world should have been up for hours if I give them until 6:30 to sleep.

Maybe I just can’t sleep.

Sparrow couldn’t sleep last night…upset stomach and congestion were a bad combination for her….so I walked with her for a couple of late night hours while Jenny tried to get a couple of hours of sleep in between bouts of trying to comfort her.

The baby was fine as long as I kept moving…when I stopped walking she would wake up and start to cry.

When she finally got fairly vocal and didn’t fall right back to sleep, Jenny came out of our bedroom and got her and took her back in with her…and I finished sleeping the rest of the night in Zoe’s vacant bedroom.

With our oldest children, it was like that for what seemed like a long time when they were babies. We never knew what room we were going to wake up in.

When we heard a child cry out, we’d move wherever we needed to go.

It wasn’t really sleepwalking…but it was as close as you can get and still be kind of awake.

It’s better now…we just have one really young baby who is actually a good sleeper to deal with…but last night was a reminder of those harder days.

It’s good to sleep…so even though I slept in more than I usually do this morning…I felt like I got up early.

Maybe I sleep too much, anyways. Maybe I’m missing stuff when I’m asleep? Maybe it’s a blessing to miss some sleep and get to spend some time trying to comfort our newest child? Maybe that’s the spin I need to remember when it all feels blurry and exhausting?

I do have some pretty interesting dreams, though.

Maybe that’s what it’s all about…the dreams?

This blog isn’t only about me. But I’m the only one looking out through this skull, seeing through these eyes.

I’m no robot…nobody’s working me through remote control.

So I guess that it may be “all me” after all.

No matter how I interact with the world…or walk for a while with a hurting baby….it’s all about me.

Dang…it’s all me…and I’m kind of boring sometimes. I need a distraction from me for a while.

Like a crying baby.

It’s raining here this morning…coming down hard and steady…wet after a sunny, nice day yesterday.

That’s a good kind of day after a tiring night…you don’t feel guilty for being lazy and recovering when it’s wet outside…and it’s awkward to get out and be active in the sunshine.

And the funny thing about staying up walking with a crying baby is that, all over the world, no matter the religion or political situation, no matter what the culture is like, there were probably hundreds of thousands of parents doing the same thing we were doing at the same time we were doing it…. trying to comfort their own version of Sparrow.

This is all about me…but we’re not so different.

So what’s all the fighting about?

“I’m So Tired” the Beatles

 

 

About Peter Rorvig

I'm a non-practicing artist, a mailman, a husband, a father...not listed in order of importance. I believe that things can always get better....and that things are usually better than we think.

Comments are closed.