Sleeping Through the Night, Green, and Pink

You might think, now that I am several years removed from having a baby in my keep, that I would be reveling in full nights of sleep. Alas, you would be mistaken. Just the other night I was woken once by Mette—who came to tell me that Starling was out of bed and wouldn’t get back in. And then by Hans—who was scared. (Mike paid him twenty whole dollars once to stay in his bed for a stretch of nights. The other kids complained bitterly over such unfair exorbitance. They’d never gotten twenty dollars for staying in bed. [Admittedly that was a very hefty sum. But then, we were desperate.] He’s been paid out now, however; and we appear to be right back to where we were.) Lastly, I was woken by Summer—who was feeling sick (and who continued to wake me with sighs and moans—from the little bed I made up on the couch in our room—for the remainder of the night).

And a night like that, I’m afraid, is not atypical.

Have I been addressing all those types of nighttime needs along with newborns the last two decades, I wonder? I suppose I have. But it’s all blurred into one long, 22-year-spate of tiredness.

Ah well. As Mike has said before, “We can always sleep when we’re dead.” (It’s a poor comfort really—neither of us being at all sure that sleep is one of the pastimes of heaven.)

Today is St. Patrick’s Day. The kids have been choosing out their green clothing and creating leprechaun traps cleverly disguised as houses and hotels. And this morning Starling came running to me—in a full sob: “Hans says I have to wear green!"

Tears. Agitation.

And what a horrifying prospect! A day of not wearing pink or yellow? Unthinkable.

I assured the poor, teary-eyed, weeper that I wouldn’t dream of foisting such a burden upon her. Dear girl. Sometimes, after snuggling herself down for a rest, and wriggling cozily into her blanket she will simply whisper, almost like a sigh, a contented, “pink”.

Now. If only blanketing herself in soothing tones of pink would allow her (and the rest of her siblings) to sleep through the night! ...

The End.