Justified

We aren't good at getting our children to sleep through the night. Eli routinely woke to breastfeed on a newborn schedule. Things got particularly bad when he was teething, so bad that my sister-in-law (totally-into-natural-stuff-and-also-with-two-small-kids) said "do yourself a favour!" and sent me to her local pharmacist to request a "teething medicine". Now this teething medicine is not natural. I will not tell you the ingredients. But it is legal. At least here. I did some research to see if it was safe, and suddenly, we started sleeping, even after we stopped giving him the "teething medicine". We're still up a couple of times a night, but nothing like before. So there you have it, my sleep recommendation: drug your child.

There is a supernatural strength that comes on women who are sleep deprived. Think of it: at least 3.5 years of terribly interrupted sleep. Enough to make me look older. I suppose 3.5 years and two kids might have done that, too.

It helped that I could look to the future, when, with the hours I gained I planned to:

• Wake up before my kids.
• Read the Bible first thing in the morning.
• Shower regularly.
• Make a super schedule for the kids- maybe on a big piece of paper or something
• Not say "I'm so tired! Stop it!" to the kids all the time.
• Write my dissertation.

It's been about a week, and this is what I've done with the extra time:

• Watched old episodes of Justified on Eug's computer
• Drunk hot chocolate

And it seems ok that all that supernatural strength dissipated without any fanfare. Maybe, someday soon, I'll wake up before the kids start poking me.