Sunday: William achieves runny nose. Yeah, buddy. Begin herbal remedies, introduce trick used from infancy: prop up one end of his mattress with thick, cushy blankets to elevate his head. But no matter what the incline on his bed is like, lying flat is a problem. He can't breathe, his ears hurt...yeah. He's sick. Boo. Daddy does not sleep at all this night.
Monday: Two zombie parents manage to not collapse during work day. William stays home from school and falls asleep in my arms, finally, around 11am. I take him to the doctor, because if I don't, my husband and mother will kill me and make my hide into a rug for the living room. I bring home prescription to have on hand just in case the herbal remedies don't take care of it this time. He sleeps perfectly. This is probably over.
Tuesday: Perfect morning. He's exhausted after therapy. A full hour attempt at rocking to sleep a 35-pound monster who will do anything to escape my grasp. Nap does not happen. Worried that the herbs are too little too late, I start the antibiotic and ibuprofen. Falls asleep at 7pm, easily, but then wakes up at 11:30 and sleeps badly until 1:30, when apparently, he's up for the day.
Wednesday: Since Mommy and Daddy traded shifts the night before, parents were only half-zombies, but still may or may not have wanted to eat someone's brain. William is still mysteriously acting perfectly fine until it's time to sleep. Night sleep: off to bed at 8, woke up at 9:30, off to bed again at 2:30. Daddy will probably fall asleep on his keyboard at work.
Thursday: Spend day explaining that sleep deprivation is not due to infant of any kind. Again, happy kid who won't nap. We devise a plan. Surely, it's his ibuprofen wearing off that is waking him, but shouldn't the antibiotic have taken care of it by now? We'll figure that out in the morning; let's just get him through the night. I will go to bed at usual early time. Daddy will go to the office to catch up on emails and return at 2am, when he's due for another dose.
So I say goodbye to George and head upstairs to bed. William cries out ten minutes later. So I pick him up out of his crib, and as he'd been the other nights, he's barely awake, and I again try to soothe him in my arms, which again seems to be as uncomfortable as it had been the previous nights. Then it occurs to me. I could lay him in my bed. I snap the light out, lay him down on my bed, curl up next to him, and pull the covers up. After shoving me aside and making sure he has a clear three-foot radius around him, he falls soundly asleep. Feeling brilliant, I fall asleep also.
I wake up at 3am. Hm, I think. George isn't back. William's still sleeping. He hasn't gotten another dose. Weird. Then I realize that it's sort of amazing that my three-year-old is commanding an entire queen-sized bed, while I'm scrunched up in the top right corner. Hm, I think again. I guess he really just wanted to stretch out.
Hm, I think. Is that what he's not getting in his crib?
Oh crap!, I think. He's outgrown his crib. Well, we knew he wanted a bed and we were devising a plan for a big boy bed this summer, but shoot. Do we have to do this now? Like rightnow?! Oh geez.
No wait, I think. It's not too small at all. He's got a good foot on either end when he's stretched out. I just saw it last week. I haven't seen it much this week because he's been sick and his mattress is all propped up and....
Oh.
He woke up because he'd slid down to the bottom two feet of his inclined mattress. That. That is not big enough at all.
Oh.
Wait.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
So I take the blankets out from under his mattress. And right around then, my husband reappears, feeling a little sheepish about having been caught having never left the house because he'd gone downstairs, and heard five seconds of my footsteps above him followed by complete silence. He sat down on the couch waiting for a sound or a phone call, and woke up there four and a half hours later.
Super Parent Power!
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