The Bedroom Circus

The alarm clock went off this morning playing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.  I reached over to slap it off and my daughter said, "Hey, I like this Christmas song!" 

First of all, what was she doing in my bed?  And no wonder I was so cold last night; the little thief took all of the blankets and piled them on top of herself.  Do you have this same problem?

I go to bed at night with just myself and my husband, both having plenty of room in our gloriously ginormous California King Size pillow top bed.  By the morning there is virtually a guarantee that we will have at least one extra set of legs in our bed, if not 4.  (Four feet belong to the dog).  This prohibits the REM cycle from being able to ever be completely fulfilled, at least for me.  My husband can sleep through a tornado, as evidenced by the amount of times that he ever got up with our kiddos when they were newborns.  Mom: 765.  Dad: 13.  Do you see a bit of disparagement here?

I love my children, I love my dog, but I swear I can't wait for the day that I don't have to play a game of Twister in my own bed each night.  It truly turns into a three ring circus.  They all have their own little ways of keeping me awake too.  For my oldest, it is the art of pushing Mommy all the way to the edge of the bed.  She is a lanky little thing, and for a 4 year old, she sure can take up a lot of space.  She can't move Daddy though, oh, no.  Gotta be shoving our way through Mommy's side.

My youngest always starts out really cute.  He bangs his way through the door with his little tears crying about a monster in his room, so naturally I scoop him up and hold him close.  Somewhere throughout our attempted sleeping, however, this little boy turns into a monster himself, the bed monster.  He loves to turn himself completely sideways, laying with his feet in Daddy's face, and his head on top of mine.  Now, at least this one involves my husband getting in at least a bit of the unpleasantness.

Then we come to the worst culprit of all:  the dog.  She is the ringmaster.  I swear she facilitates herself and both of the kids.  They probably have meetings about who will go where in the middle of the night.  She is a pit bull, who is 59 pounds of love, wrapped in muscle.  She only uses this muscle for evil at bedtime.  I love my dog, I love her so so so much, but she has this ridiculously Herculean way of wrestling the blankets off of me and shimmying her way completely up the bed and forcing herself in between my husband and I.  That dog is worse than two children at the same time.

I do remember what it was like to sleep all alone.  It was beautiful.  One day I'll get that back.  But by then I'll probably miss the bedroom circus.