Sleepless nights with the kids

Starting positions for a night of sleep with the kids in bed.

Just because my kids have fur, doesn’t mean you sleep through the night. Here is how my sleep went the other night. I usually am in bed at a normal hour, somewhere around 11pm. I start out by positioning Gladys on one side of the bed and Taz on the other. I do this because they have been known to battle. It was YEARS before they would even be on the same bed together. I have a king size bed so you would think that would be enough room for two cats and me, but it seem I am the one who ends up in a tiny ball with no space. You will notice in the picture, the pillow pile. That is placed there to keep them from laying on my head or pillows. They must be touching you at all times.

So last night everyone was in their spot before I fell asleep. Somewhere around 2:00am Taz moved to the side of the bed where Gladys was sleeping. She proceeded to pick a fight for Gladys’ space. Of course this woke me up. I had to mediate. I moved Taz back to her spot. However, she went back after Gladys’ spot. I ended up having to kick Taz out of the room. Now it is 2:30am and I have to try to fall back to sleep. The last time I noticed the clock it was 3:10. At 4:15am thunder rolled in. This puts Cute Girl into a panic. She knows that all she needs to do is clank her tags on her collar to wake me up. I got up and put her back to bed. I had to sit with her for about 20 minutes until she calmed down. Fortunately, the thunder lasted only 10 minutes. It is now close to 5:00am when I attempt to return to my sleep. Taz is back on the bed in her spot. By this time I am totally wiped out and fall right back to sleep. By 5:30, Taz has moved into my leg space. She weighs in at 15lbs. It is like having a lead brick on the bed. I try to move her with my legs but never get much out of that. By 6:00am I am so annoyed that I just get up to start my day. You can see from the picture how much leg room they left. You might be thinking, why don’t you move to the other side. The problem is, they will move too.

So the parenting lesson from this story is, if you bring your kids to bed with you, they will always want to be there. It is your sleep that suffers, not theirs. After telling James why I am so tired he says, “you call that good behavior?”