The thing about sleep is that once you begin to sleep through the night again, you want to repeat that every single night.  Your youngest child reaches four and a half and the memory of waking every two hours around the clock for eleven straight months seems like a grim fairy tale.  Everyone is capable of sleeping all night long and so you expect everyone to sleep all night long.

Silly you.

This youngest one, the one in curls, she is deaf to your pleas and when you beg, “Please, tonight, stay in your own bed, okay?” she says, “But I want to sleep in your bed.”  And then you warn, “If you come into my room, I will just put you back in your own bed!  So don’t come to my room!”  She says, “Okay.”  And you elaborate:  “When you wake up in the night, say to yourself, Mommy doesn’t want me to come into her bed and then just roll over and go back to sleep.”  

And then, at 2:00 a.m., you hear the door open.  (How is it possible that a door opening can rouse you from a deep sleep?)  You have two choices:

1)  Grab bathrobe and child and march her back to her own bed where she’ll whimper when you say, “NIGHTY-NIGHT!” or;

2)  Say, “All right.  Climb in.  NO WIGGLING!”

Last night, I foolishly chose number two and so, from 2:00 a.m. until 3:00 a.m., I curled with my back next to her as she rotisseried under the sheets.  She claimed this morning that she did not wiggle, but she did.  She wiggled and jiggled and tickled beside me until finally, in a fit of sit-com rage, I jumped from bed, scooped her up and plopped her back into her bed.  Once in my own bed, I felt my heart thumping its adrenaline-boosted huff.  It’s pretty hard to get back to sleep when you’ve just had a sleep-deprived, mini-meltdown at 3:00 a.m.

Tonight, I had a rational conversation with her and explained that mommy cannot sleep when the pink-pajama’ed one is near and she seemed to understand.  She will understand when I fly from my bed at the first door-knob click and deposit her back into her own bed without enduring the hour-long aggravation of Princess Wiggles demonstrating her Kung-fu kicks while I pretend I am asleep.

I am in a fragile decade, the decade of the forties when I am still able to sleep all night long without my bladder knocking at the door or my joints creaking me awake.  I want to sleep while I am able.  She wants to be with me twenty-four hours a day.   

I am so tired of being adored, especially in the middle of the night.