The Sleep Joke

I love Tuesdays. You know why? Because we have nothing to get up for. No school, no nothing. This used to suck when the boys got up at the crack of dawn, but recently they have BOTH developed the ability to sleep past 8 a.m. It rocks. So where is the joke? The joke is that come next August Henry will be in kindergarten every day, Quinn will be in preschool, and if my plans go as I hope I will be teaching part-time in the mornings. No more sleeping in! After 5 long years of getting my children to sleep through the night with no nursings, no bottles, no puddles, no poop, no crying, no nightmares, no mama-sleepus-interruptus (that's Latin), my glorious accomplishment will be ripped away from me in less than a year -- eight months to be exact. Five years of training them to sleep past dawn will be gone in a flash. There will still be weekends and holidays, I know, but still, I put in FIVE LONG YEARS for a moment like this. A moment where I am sitting and typing at 8 am with a nice hot cup of coffee (that for once, I have not had to reheat a dozen times when I leave it to go make a sippy of milk or a cut-up bagel or put a Dora on TV). A moment of absolute quiet in the house when the sun is actually up.

Still, I can't help but think of how soon they will be teenagers and how I will be dragging their sleepy little heads out of bed and complaining about why don't they get up at 6:30 a.m. so they have time to get ready for school. They are starting to grow up so fast. I keep putting Henry's clothes on him and checking the size to see if they are Quinn's clothes because his pants are starting to look like capris on him (not a good look for a boy). And Quinn has so much more wisdom in his big, round blue eyes every day.

...

They both woke up at 8:05. I just left the computer for about twenty minutes to go make milks and bagels. I answered a dozen questions about the roaring space heater I set up in the living room. I found a few Lite Brite pieces on the floor, put a Dora on TV, and of course reheated my coffee. I was kind of starting to miss those little buggers, anyways. Happy Tuesday!