True Story

You may recall the night, a few months ago, when my kids woke to start the day at 4:30am. Well, my daughter has beaten that record. And I hope her brother doesn’t try to outdo her.

She woke at 3am and DID NOT GO BACK TO SLEEP.

I can tell you think I’m exaggerating. I’d think I was, if I wasn’t there in the room watching her wriggle around and sing softy for THREE hours in – literally—the middle of the night. I thought to myself, “There is no way the child won’t go back to sleep. It’s not a borderline situation, the kind that occurs at 5am, where some people might actually consider it early morning. At no point in the year does the sun EVER consider 3am to be morning. And the sun is a morning expert."

. I tried to point this out to Seconda. I showed her the darkness that lay around us. I kept repeating the phrase “middle of the night.”

She was unconvinced. And I know why. Primo was also awake at 3am -- in fact I think it was his blood-curdling nightmare scream which woke her. And when Sec sees that Primo is awake, she will not stand down. She does not want to be duped into sleeping when he is awake. This is why she dropped her nap just after turning 2. So while Primo was coaxed back to sleep, she was not.

To her credit she stayed pretty still and quiet, but I knew she was awake because sleeping children do not sing all the words of “Whole New World” on repeat play,

It's pretty awful when you know, at 5:45 am that how you are feeling, after having been awake for three hours, is the best, is the most well-rested you will be feeling all day From that point on, your perkiness will only get more and more degraded, not only because you will have been awake more hours but because you will be taking care of a three year-old who STARTED HER DAY AT 3AM! A child who is intractable on a full night’s sleep does not grow more manageable after half a night’s rest.

But I did manage to do two things which saved my ass. A. I sent her to her Nonnie’s at 5:45 for two hours and got to sleep then (Nonnie had been up for hours, incidentally, and already cooked a pot of marinara sauce).And B. I miraculously persuaded her to take an hour nap at 2:30pm by telling her I would not take her to the end-of-the-year class party if she didn’t. I literally can’t remember the last night she napped in a place outside of the car, but I guess that’s what waking at 3am will do to a gal.

The only upside to these abysmal sleeping habits is that it affords me more of an opportunity to feel like a martyr. And I’ll have better baby stories to regale her with when she’s grown and brings boyfriends over for dinner.