Busy in Brooklyn

I noticed I’ve been neglecting the “coping” category for some time now. I guess that’s a good thing. It means I’m handling things. But not today. Today I need your help with a little something I like to call musical beds.

I’m sure you are all familiar with the game of musical chairs. Well in my case, the chairs are beds and the music is the sound of children’s cries in the middle of the night.

Let me explain.

After a long, hard day of taking care of house and home, tending to the needs of my kids, and maybe squeezing in some blogging time {if I’m lucky}, I want nothing more than to crawl into my comfy bed and get a good night’s sleep.

But as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, more often than not, things don’t go exactly as planned.

Take last night for instance. After completing our bedtime routine of bathing, storytime, and some soft music, I was hoping for a quiet night as my cold had gotten increasingly worse throughout the day. But my son would not have it. Try as I might to get him quiet, he just screamed and screamed. So I took him out of his crib and put him in my husband’s bed. I thought I had it all figured out. My husband would tip toe in late from his work meeting, and quietly transfer him to his crib.

Give or take an hour or two, my oldest daughter ran straight into my bed mumbling something about monsters and a bad dream. So I let her stay. Until she started poking and prodding me from all sides.

By this point, I suspected that my cold had turned into a full blown sinus infection and I needed some rest. So I did what any desperate mother would do. I went into her bed. After about 20 minutes of twisting and turning, my husband came home and tried to move my son over to his crib as gently as possible. But being the light sleeper that he is, he woke up and started bawling. You know that full on desperate cry that tugs at a mother’s hearstrings? (and wakes up the whole house, including the tenants?) It was that kind of cry. I couldn’t take him with me into my daughter’s bed because it’s too small for both of us, so I helped her sleepwalk back to her bed and went back into mine, taking my baby with me.

And then the middle one woke up. That’s right. I said the middle one. As my bed was occupied, and more importantly, since my husband could sleep through a four alarm fire, I sent her to his bed.

I don’t know what time it was by then, but I had gone through an entire box of tissues, and I was at my wit’s end. Not only was I terribly congested, I was achingly tired. I rolled myself up on the corner of my bed (so my little prince could have ample room to move around without kicking me), barely sleeping a few short hours.

When my husband left early for work, I climbed into his bed so that I could try and get a little more sleep until the kids woke up. It wasn’t long before they were crawling in next to me to tell me about their terrible night of nightmares and sleep walking!

In all seriousness, I appeal to all the young Mama’s out there. How do you keep your kids in their beds at night? I can’t really let my son (the major culprit in this game of musical beds) cry it out because I have tenants upstairs.

So I’m all ears. Please. Help. A. Tired. Mother. Get. Some. ZZZZZ’s.

And now for the coping part.

I may not have had sleep last night. And I may still be congested with an earache, throat-ache and headache. But I still had to take my oldest to school (her first day in 1st grade, talk about butterflies! [me, not her!]), drop my son off at playgroup (thank G-d for those few quiet hours), and start my round of pickups at 12, then 1 and then 2.

To get through the day, I sat down to a steaming hot cup of chamomile tea with honey and a splash of milk (no, I’m not English, but I like me some milk in my tea!) I throw in a little mandelbread for good measure, and I take a few minutes to breath in the peace and quiet.

It also helps to drink from adorable tea cups. I love this set from Ikea!

How do you like your tea?

1 year ago: candy sushi

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