Are You Sleeping?

The days here begins at 4am, which is a good time if you are living in an ashram, but I am not. Wouldn't it be nice to start my day with meditation or perhaps reading the newspaper or some chanting, but no, I am frantically grading papers or posting discussions trying to squeeze in as much work as possible before everyone is awake at 5:30am (I teach online). Yes, 5:30am is when we all wake up, well, except for the baby (surprisingly enough)who doesn't wake up until 7am. How is this possible? She goes down at 5pm for the night and wakes up at 7am. That's it. No crying. Nothing. She gives me a smile, sticks her fingers in her mouth and starts sucking. She does this at nap time too. In fact, I can count the amount of times she has actually cried on one hand - birth, once when she enountered a stranger, and at my contact lens exam (dark room, large machine in front of mom's face). I call her my little Buddha because she is so content and at peace.

Draigh, my 11 year old wakes me up more than the baby does. He wakes me up at least 3 or 4 times a week. He has insomnia, which means everyone has insomnia. Reasons he wakes me up: he's scared; it's raining; there might be a tornado; he has a sore throat; his knee hurts; he has had a nightmare; he is having trouble getting his electric car to work; there is something wrong with the cable at 2am. Well, you get the picture. He has not slept in his bed for over a year now. He sleeps on the couch in the family room because, he is convinced, there is something living in his bedroom walls. It scratches. Now, my hearing isn't very good, but I have not heard the "scratching" myself. Tim (also 11 and they share a room), his soon to be step-brother, has in fact heard this scratching. While I have suggested it might be a mouse, a vole, or some other small creature, they are both convinced it is either something supernatural or an alien and I can't seem to convince them otherwise.

Maybe it's a cricket - day 2, no gecko but I went out and bought crickets anyway (my fiance bought them; when would I have time to shop) and put them in a cricket keeper (funny looking contraption with holes). I put them in the middle of the floor, near the bookshelves where we last spotted the gecko, hoping I could entice it with a tasty meal. No such luck but that's okay because the sobbing has stopped and now they all want hermit crabs. I wonder what time hermit crabs wake up, perhaps they too suffer from insomnia.

Another reason we are up at 5:30am is that the HS bus arrives at 6:20am. Yes, that's right folks 6:20am. Who can learn at this hour? Certainly not teenagers. Taliesin, for the most part complains but seems to do fine with this time. He is a morning person. He was my first and my baby from hell (if there is such a thing). So now, we have 1 Buddha baby and the anti-Christ. Taliesin never slept. He screamed all night long (well, and all day long for that matter; he is my child with Aspergers, which we didn't find out until he was 6). The only way to get him to sleep for even two hours at a time was to put him in one of those battery operated baby swings. Yes, that is where he slept for two hours each night until he was too big to fit in the swing. Then, we were all screwed. At this time in my life, I worked in the corporate environment. So every day, I went into the conference room and stole one hour of delicious sleep, on the couch, in the conference room, at work. Don't worry, he did finally sleep four hours at a time when he turned two, which was just before......my next child was born.

I remember 13 years ago I asked my friend Margy, who had children before me, if they ever slept. She laughed. I should have known by the laughter, but back then I was still young, naive and hopeful. So, here I am typing away (rather than teaching - oops). It is 5:26am and I have 4 minutes of silence left. Just enough time to post this blog.

Addendum - you may notice it is slightly later now...my computer wouldn't copy and paste, so I retyped this by hand, every letter. Hope to get copy and paste working by tomorrow.