This is probably pretty easy to guess but I'm not exactly a morning person. I'm more of a don't talk to me til 11 kind of person. When left to my own devices my natural rhythm puts me in bed around 2 and up at 10. Kids... How do I put this delicately... Kids would strongly outperform every military and CIA operative who worked at Abu Ghraib in its hay day of "enhanced interrogation". They would put Lynndie England to shame (I mean, ya know, if she aren't already permanently residing there). The thing is, firstly, they don't care that using extreme forms of coercion is simply not required to secure a sippy of milk and whatever frozen breakfast food I could blindly shove in a toaster. And secondly, they trick you into not realizing how bad this psychological warfare has really gotten.
They start even before they are born. In that last couple months of pregnancy it doesn't matter how exhausted you are from giving all of your nutrients and life energy to a parasite controlling your blood supply, you cannot sleep. There are zero positions comfortable enough, or that at least don't cause debilitating pain, that allow you to sleep. So you don't. And this is how it starts. You start thinking, "Gosh, I can't wait to eject this thing from my womb. At least I'll be able to get comfortable enough to sleep". And finally the day comes and it's out. But now, it's waking up every hour and a half to eat and any chance of a sleep rhythm is completely blown to pieces. It's useless and then this trick happens where your body starts to be grateful for two hour stretches of sleep. WHAT? That's like being grateful for a car with one wheel. "Gosh, I am so grateful I am paying for this car that makes me worse off than I was before I had it." It's the more extreme version of Stockholm syndrome!
So eventually this Spanish-inquisition trained baby sleeps for 5 or 6 hours at a time and you start thinking you should be feeling like a million bucks 'cause shit, you're getting almost a full night of sleep. Well except that you have to wake up once in there to make sure the kid is breathing. Oh and you are an adult and therefore cannot consistently fall asleep at 6pm and the bills didn't get paid that day because someone threw up on the keyboard so you really have to do those before you hit the hay. But, it's fine because the baby isn't waking up til 4am now. There, you see that. Suddenly we are being grateful for sleeping til 4am. No. NoNoNo. Before you had kids you would have shot someone in the throat if they woke you up at 4am. Just taken them out right there and then.
Finally they start sleeping til 7 which is not awful for most people but if you work until 1 or 2am each night that's still pretty painful. And they can't just let you sleep for like 45 min. No, not even on the couch where there's at least an 80% chance you'll wake up if something really serious happens, like they find the drill and tear down the entire house. No. The minute you lay down they creepily and silently stick their faces right up to yours until you get that awful someone-is-watching feeling and open your eyes only to have your heart stop dead in your chest because someone's eyeball is a hairline away from touching your eyelashes. And the sadistic smile spreads across the kid's face because they are just so happy you aren't asleep. Or they want to lay "with" you, meaning on top of you, usually with an elbow or a knee pushing violently into your throat. Or they want to "just play with your hair mom", and the unceasing burning sensation from large swaths of hair being torn from the roots makes sleep, well, unlikely at the least.
I tried getting a toddler clock and telling them they had to stay in their room til 715, a mere 15 min after they are usually up. Result? 6:50 wake up calls of "MOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM MMOOOOOMMMMMMMMM MOOOOOOOMMMM CAN I COME OUT NOW? HOW ABOUT NOW? IS IT TIME NOW? MOOOOOMMM THERE IS A GHOST. I HAVE TO COME OUT BECAUSE THERE IS A GHOST!"
"Ok fine come out but mommy is going to sleep on the couch"
::insert creepy haunted house laughter::
I'd like to note that I am writing this at 12am on a night that I got off work at 10. The irony is not lost on me.
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