So, with two toddlers, I certainly expected to be sleeping more. I expected to get somewhere around 8 hours of sleep a night – which I would expect to be a bit more than a parent of a newborn and a bit less than a grandparent. Somehow, that isn’t really happening lately. The kids have been a bit rambunctious– ice cream and dance parties after 8pm don’t really lend themselves to early and peaceful bedtimes.  I’ve definitely been an instigator).  Still, they’re generally down by 9 pm. So, not sounding so bad, right? Well, it’s after 9 pm that the madness starts. Generally around 1am Zubs is up and sauntering into my bedroom. It must be something about his sleep cycle or his diaper that can’t hold all the fluid he apparently eliminates in that 4 hour span. If you’ve met Zub, you know he’s a big 4-year old (I think our pediatrician said something at his 4-yr visit along the lines of Zubin being the size of an average 6-year old, reaching above the 95^th percentile in both height and weight).  Either way, every morning and 1 am I get a visitor.

One night Zubin was clever enough to sleep with his archaeology inspired headlamp (courtesy of the gift shop at the Museum of Natural History) close by knowing he could use that to navigate the darkness between the bedrooms. Well, you can imagine my shock waking up to a glaring light atop my 4 year old’s head.  After getting him into some dry clothes, he climbs into my king size, 1000-thread count sheet bed and snuggles. And, I pray that he won’t leak again. Give it a couple of ours, and usually around 4am, I hear Yash. Still confined by the walls of his crib, Yash just screams until he is attended to. And, well, usually it’s me that’s doing the tending. Probably having realized his older brother’s midnight escape strategy, Yash has his own plan in place. Sometimes he too has had a ‘leak’, but usually he just wants someone to hang with him. I pull him out of the crib and the two of us go back to sleep in Zubin’s toddler bed. There’s something endearing about Yash and I at that hour as I tend to spoon him and his compact, almost monkey-like size allows him to full extend his legs so his feet rest on my thighs. And, well, that’s how we stay for a couple of ours. Usually until 6ish.

6am is the time that Zubin usually realizes that I’ve left his side. Somehow Zubin’s habit of rubbing my arm helps him to fall asleep. It keeps me awake, but it helps him.  Once he realizes that my arm isn’t in the place he last thought it was, he comes looking. And, is quite usually upset to find me with my other little man. So, naturally, Zubin climbs into his bed. So, now Zubin, Yash and I spend some time getting comfortable in the bed originally intended to fit only 1 very small sized human. We shuffle positions, exchange some words, and then all come to the realization (all still before the sun has risen) that we won’t be sleeping again until the next evening.

So, yeah, that 8 hours of sleep I thought I could/should be getting, is well, something that exists only in my mind. And, while sometimes I think the broken sleep and the midnight constant changing of urine-soaked diapers might leave me angry and irritable all the time, the truth is that I’m only angry and irritable some of the time.  I think the cuddling and the spooning does me well. And, when Yash and I are trying to get back to sleep during our 4am shift, he calls me ‘mama’ and somehow that makes all this madness somewhat okay.

But what happens when EVERY kids salon is like that?  Well the kids get used to it.  And then they get bored of it.  So enter Yash at the salon/toystore for his haircut yesterday.  He surveys the scene while twirling his pre-cut lolly and opts to sit in the regular chair NEXT to the firetruck.

Then from behind his sprayed wet bangs while glancing at Caillou, he tells me that our preferred stylist (Allison at Kids Cutz on 29th Street) is doing a great job and that “it doesn’t hurt too much”.

We’ll see how this goes.

Day 1: The boys have boycotted their afternoon nap.  Everyone is on fumes.