The Quandry

My Turtles had a terrible night last night.  Wait, that's not totally accurate.  Jude had a terrible night last night which means that I had a terrible night last night.  I don't know what it is with this child but she is kicking my ass.  Jude is not a sleeper and in a family full of good sleepers, I am having a hard time coping with her irregular schedule.  I have accepted that she is...ahem... more "spirited" than her twin but the inconsistency with her sleep has us all on pins and needles.  Will tonight be a night where she sleeps soundly or will she be screaming her head off for no apparent reason for hours at a time?  I never quite know what to expect and it is wearing on me.   

Ellie seems to have the twin equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome.  Jude can scream all night long (which is what she did last night) and Eliya still wakes up smiling and babbling with her sister.  I have come to understand that Ellie tolerates Jude's fussiness but she is in no way immune to it.  All day today she has had the same glazed-over, exhausted look that her mother is also sporting.

The person who seems to suffer the most when Jude has these sleepless nights is Vivi.  Vivi doesn't usually wake up to Jude's wails but it is she who bears the brunt of my exhaustion-induced short-fuse.  I feel like all day today I have been threatening and yelling over bullshit.  Did it matter that she took the liner out of her winter coat while I went out to warm the car up?  Not really but I sure behaved like it mattered.  And now we are ten minutes away from the start of Vivi's dance class at the Y.  Are we going to make it?  Not likely because I don't have it in me to wake up my three sleeping girls.  Yet, I know she will be devastated if we miss it.

What to do?

Comments

  1. SnickolletJanuary 13, 2010 at 7:03 PM

    I have a good sleeper and a historically poor sleeper. Knock on wood, my poor sleeper has been doing great lately, but it took him until he was 3 to reliably sleep well.

    I know just what you mean about the unpredictability of it all. Of course, any parent knows when he or she goes to bed that things could go haywire on any given night. But there are also trends, and if you're in a 50/50 bad/good situation, it can be hard to sleep even on the good nights, when you should be maximizing what you've got.

    I have no pearls of wisdom, I'm afraid. Time cures all, but sometimes it takes more time than you feel like you have, and sometimes there are casualties in the intervening moments.

    I'm sorry. Sleeping is so hard. And I'm not being helpful at all, so I'll stop now.

    ReplyDelete

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