When I'm awake, I fantasize about sleeping

Saturday evening/Sunday morning
10:45 p.m. Check on Ben's fever
1:30 a.m. Check on Ben's fever, 103.9, administer Motrin
2:15 a.m. "Maaaaaamaaaa!" Check on Ben, provide water, check temperature, take to potty
2:45 a.m. "Maaaaaamaaaa!" Check on Ben, adjust sheets, provide additional water
5:25 a.m. "Waaaahhhhh!" Prepare a bottle, feed Aidan, check on Ben
6:15 a.m. "Maaaaaamaaaa!" Check on Ben, give up, go make coffee

I am not a morning person. Remember? But when I have nights like the one described above (and Sunday night was not much better), I am not a Morning/Noon/Night Person either. I like to sleep. A lot. Always have. And soooo many of my helpful friends would tell me, "Oh, get your sleep now, because once you have kids you'll never sleep again." (That is always such an encouraging thing to say to a pregnant woman, by the way.) If it actually worked that way, if we could rack up sleeping hours the way we do frequent flyer miles, I'd be set. 'Cause I used to sleep. A lot. But then I had kids. And it seems I suffer way more than hubby does. (It seems I suffer more than hubby about a lot of things, damn it. Where does one buy one of these eternally optimistic dispositions and endless Box-O-Energy anyway?) He keeps insisting that I just have to find some way to come to terms with the fact that I am, for a while anyway, going to be chronically sleep-deprived. Because even when your kids sleep through the night, they never sleep through the night every night and no matter how many black-out curtains you buy or how late you make their bedtimes, they are always up at the crack of frickin' dawn.

Oh, how I miss my Saturday mornings and how they would turn into Saturday afternoons while I would lay in bed, only half awake, running through the list of neighborhood restaurants that still served breakfast passed noon...
The nights of staying up till all hours, watching a movie or dancing or doing something even better, and not caring how late it was, because after all, I did not have a "morning curfew"...

When you have children, you gain so much, but you lose a lot too...sleep being at the top of my official Things I Miss Most From My Pre-Parenting Days list. It has gotten to the point where I actually fantasize about sleeping...the kinds of fantasies usually reserved for topics like Hawaiian vacations, calorie-laden desserts, the shoe department of Nordstrom, and encounters of the passionate, heavy-breathing kind. You know that sleepy trance-like feeling you get when you're watching TV or reading a book and you start to doze in and out and your eyes are shutting of their own accord and you try to fight that urge and shake yourself awake? Well, lately, when that happens, (and I am not driving or feeding/bathing/holding a small child) I succumb. I do. No matter what I'm watching or what time it is or how badly I want to finish the movie or read the next chapter or whatever, I just give in. Usually this occurs around 9:00 p.m. on a weeknight, when I'm supposedly beginning the portion of the evening that is labeled as "Grown Up Time." And that moment right before I put my book down or give up on the TV and close my eyes...sadly, pathetically...has become my greatest indulgence these days. Yup. Knowing that I am about to fall asleep has become my favorite thing to do. I know. I'm a wild and crazy girl. Woo Hoo. Now please turn off the light.