Connor stayed up until four in the morning yesterday, continuing his quest to drive his parents absolutely insane. Then we all slept in until an hour normally reserved for college students the morning after a particularly good fraternity party. I know that technically I should be waking Connor up the same time every morning regardless of what time he went to sleep so that we'll break the cycle, but that means I have to be awake too and neither Connor nor I function very well on two hours of sleep. So we'll just be nocturnal instead, I guess.
Here's the big problem I have with Connor's crazy sleep cycle-- he only does this sort of thing two or three times a week. All the other nights he goes down just fine. This doesn't really matter for me, though, because I am completely incapable of alternating between 8:00pm and 4:00am bedtimes at the drop of a hat. So on the nights he goes down, I usually end up staying up way too late anyway because my body is used to that sleep cycle. That means that when Connor wakes up bright and early on the mornings after he chooses not to invoke his Bedtime Strike, I am not a particularly happy camper.
Oh well. This is probably really good training for having a teenager.
I have developed some strategies regarding Things To Do While Waiting For My Child To Fall Asleep. These include, but are not limited to:
--watching ridiculously cute videos of animals and/or small children on YouTube.
--stalking my daughter on the Internet in a completely non-creepy way, I swear.
--playing Spider Solitaire on intermediate until I win a game, which usually takes a while (games played: 1347, games won: 249).
--discovering how many bon bons I can fit in my mouth at one time (answer: seven).
--watching my cats do things they are not allowed to do because they know I won't get up from my armchair to do anything about it.
--drinking too much tea.
--drawing highly researched, elaborately detailed plans for my garden that I have no intention of ever actually doing. The latest involved a multi-level water feature, a lovely Japanese maple selection and a seven foot high bronze sculpture of a velociraptor, which in my opinion should be right up there with the gnome as a beloved fixture in the garden. Please note that I have gone so far as to plug "garden velociraptor" on Google Shopping and have been extremely disappointed in the results, which seem to consist mostly of computer parts and the odd cookie cutter. What statues I did find were a scant six or seven inches tall or looked ridiculously non-threatening. And yes, I am aware of the fact that velociraptors were actually about the size of a turkey, but that's what poetic license is for.
Why, when people could choose to be sculpting terrifying sickle-clawed creatures of death they would instead decide to sculpt a small bearded man mooning people is a little beyond me. Clearly there is an untapped market here, people: bronze workers take note.
As you can see, I at least manage all the time I have to stay awake wisely and productively! It's amazing the kinds of things you can get done at 3:00am when you are completely delirious and also on a sugar high from too many bon bons.
Seriously, kid. Go to sleep before you drive your mother nuts.
~Jess
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5 years ago
5 comments:
Velociraptors were only as big as a turkey? I didn't know that. In that ridiculous Jurassic Park movie, they were much bigger.
Sorry about the no-sleep thing. I think this is all part of Connor's plan for world domination. He's training himself to need little sleep, and also learning sleep-deprivation techniques to use against his targets.
http://www.taylormadefossils.com/dinosaurs_velociraptor.html
Would you settle for velociraptor bones?
HEY. The small bearded man mooning people in our garden is ART, and don't you forget it.
Absolutely not. Skeletal velociraptors lose a whole lot of their intimidation factor, and would probably attract a lot of neighboring dogs. Also they would be much harder to clean bird poop off of, as there would be a whole lot of fiddly bones to deal with.
Don't worry, Mary. I know you're doing the very best you can with lawn gnomes. But admit it-- if you could choose between viewing a small geriatric's backside or seven feet of glorious carnivore, you know which one you'd choose.
But if you HAVE to have lawn gnomes, maybe we could compromise. A colorful pointy hat peeking out from between the velociraptor's teeth, for instance, would be a subtle reminder of who really rules the backyard.
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