Wishing for Sweet Slumber

A few mornings ago I was in the kitchen cutting watermelon only to come out and find this exhausted little man curled up and fast asleep. He was smack dab in the middle of the others doing their thing and it hadn’t mattered. He was done for.

He had woken up quite early for him (5:30ish) and hadn’t slept super well the night before. I was going to wake him up after only an hour so that he would still take an afternoon nap, but when I went to do so he was sleeping so hard I left him be. Three hours later he roused himself. He has been battling a cold that just is hanging on tight and I know that all the rest he can get is precious and only aids in him getting better. (No, no afternoon nap was forthcoming after that marathon morning nap. : ))

I wish I could say it is only Zeke that has been depriving me of sleep in the middle of the night. He isn’t the main culprit. His next oldest sister, oh mercy, can she scream in the night. I can’t explain it but Katie has become terrorized by things in the last 6 months or so that didn’t bother her before. And as with most things involving small children there is no logic to her terrors, no trigger either, they have appeared almost out of nowhere.

The terror that is affecting sleep is her terror of The Train. We live a hop, skip and a jump from some railroad tracks. Have all her short life. Trains come through during the day and night. When the operator lays on that horn…that is it. She comes running for me. And in the night she comes screaming down the stairs. I wake hearing her and The Train simultaneously and leap from bed to meet her halfway. Thankfully all she needs for me is to hold her until The Train has completely passed by and we can no longer hear it.

It used to be that the operators working through the middle of the night would ding the bell more so than lay on the horn because, I don’t know, with the traffic lights programmed to shift to flashing reds and yellows at 11 p.m. it is safe to say not many people are out. It doesn’t seem to be a shared philosophy with the current operators. They lay on that horn something fierce.

I have tried to take away her nap (it has been coming, this just sped up the time table) in order to have her go to sleep more exhausted and hopefully less easily awakened. It works sometimes and others not so much. On particularly rough nights when she pleads with me to sleep with her, I do. I have a rough time of it and now I only give in if, after putting her back to bed after a Train episode, she returns because she can’t sleep.

Thankfully she cuddles into my back and doesn’t thrash around too much. And her bed is on the lower bunk. : )

Like all things…this too shall pass. Let’s make it soon, ok?