Oh Sleep Where Art Thou?

I have been taking "a mild sleeping pill" (name that movie =p) for the past month or so because it was taking me an hour or more to fall asleep every night and when I was awakened in the middle of the night it took me that long to fall asleep again resulting in one TIRED, EXHAUSTED saggy-eyed mommy! This pill has to be a new wonder of the world--at least for me! It really has brought *some* sanity back into my life.

Last night, I popped my pill about 10:45 and went to bed hoping for a good night's sleep. Around 11:30, Olivia woke up crying. I decided (since Sage is working nights) to put her in bed with me. She fell back to sleep but only momentarily and was awake banging her head on the wall and dropping her bottle behind the bed, etc. Well at 1:30 (mind you Olivia has not gone back to sleep yet), Kyle starts to cry. He usually only does this if he is sick. So in order to keep him from waking up Aubrey, I put Olivia (still awake) back in her bed and put Kyle in bed with me. He was complaining of his foot hurting on the bottom and I suspected a sliver but there was NO way I was going to squint my eyes at 1:30 IN THE MORNING to retrieve a piece of wood. He fell asleep not long after that. Olivia, however, did not go back to sleep until 3:30! =0 =0 =0 =0 I am sure there had to have been some dozing on my part but not sleep. I changed her diaper three times in the four hour "happy hour" she was having because I just kept hoping if I gave her a bottle, she would go back to sleep---which obviously didn't work until bottle # "who knows".

The past couple of days I have been filling in at the doc's office so I had to get up early (for me) and tried to carefully get out of bed so as to not wake Kyle. Well, that didn't work and he started crying from exhaustion I am sure and I tried hard to get him to be quiet because I didn't want him waking up Aubrey. Too late. So now I have both of them up and I am trying to get into the shower. Not too long after I get in the shower, Aubrey has to go potty. Seeing as she sleeps in blanket sleepers, I had to hang myself out of the shower to undo her. I asked Kyle to please help her but he could get her on the toilet so I again had to hang out to get her on. Well, what comes off must go back on and of course she couldn't get the sleeper back up and that really upset her. I hurried out of the shower, got her dressed, and proceeded to get myself ready for the day. As I walked past Olivia's room on my way upstairs, I heard the light switch going off and on, off and on. I thought Olivia had awakened and started playing with this so I opened the door only to find that it was Aubrey doing the switching and as you might've guessed Olivia was NOT sleeping!

So can I tell you how happy I was to "have" to leave to go to "work!" My dear mother had these sleep-deprived kiddos until I got home. So I am right now going to attempt to pop my pill and have a VERY good night's sleep! Did you hear that kids? S-L-E-E-P! (please)