The Definition Of Vicious Cycle

I can't already be too old for staying up til five in the morning, right? And then getting up again at nine-ish? That's still four hours of sleep; it's not as though I completely missed an entire day's worth of rest. Plus it was two nights ago! I should be recovered. But sleep deprivation is a sneaky thing. I think the day immediately after, you get a bit of adrenaline to get you through it. Then later it sneaks up on you and leaves you feeling all bleary eyed and nauseous and stabby.

Especially after last night, when I was trying to catch up on sleep, but was instead awakened at one thirty by a GARBAGE TRUCK loudly emptying our neighbor's trash. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. They use a different waste removal company than we do, but I've never heard them come before seven AM. We have heard weird nighttime crashing noises in the distance before, so I'm guessing it's this same company, which apparently runs a night shift. And now the night shift has come to our neighborhood. Great.

I was up so late 'cause my sister and a couple of our old high school friends were all simultaneously in town Saturday night and congregated at our house while Jim was out of town and the kids were sleeping over at my mom's. It was totally fun and totally worth it, but geez, I clearly needed to nap yesterday to make up for it. I tried, too, but Addy never naps anymore and Jim was still out of town at a soccer meeting, and... Well, you can see where this is going. I shouldn't have even attempted to lay down, because getting THIS CLOSE to sleep five times in a row only to have your kid suddenly start shriek/singing along to her movie or jump unexpectedly onto your shins is far worse than just drinking some coffee and sucking it up.

All that to say that this post is brought to you by my profound and, as of today, renewed dread of someday having another newborn who's just as poor a sleeper as Eli was. I can't believe that for the first year of his life, I was pretty much feeling like this EVERY DAY. While trying to sell our house. If there was ever a venture totally contraindicated by nursing a fussy baby round the clock, it's trying to sell your house. This seems obvious to a sane person, probably. But: the sleep deprivation makes you CRAZY, which makes you think it's a totally DOABLE idea and NOT really crazy! And then all the cleaning and the laundry hiding and the nursing nursing nursing makes you a little MORE crazy! Ha ha ha! It's a carousel of crazy!