Hush Little Baby and other pipe dreams

I am so tired.

Three hours of sleep is just not cutting it.

Lastnight had me looking around my room for hidden cameras because it seemed like such a prank.
I went to bed at midnight after working on a Namescape and catching up on a few shows I'd DVRed.
I thought that almost 8 hours sounded divine and plentiful.

I wasn't accounting for the 2 following hours of tossing and turning and staring at the ceiling.
When I finally DID drift off, Tessa woke up.
Then Chloe woke up.
Then Tessa wouldn't go back to sleep.
Then Chloe woke up again and sat up in bed as I started to carry Tessa off.
I was taking her to our bed to see if she'd sleep there and literally wanted to cry when I saw Chloe's head pop up in her toddler bed.
It was 4:00 in the morning and my arms were full of her 32 pound "little" sister, and she was asking me to tickle her.

Um.
How about not.
How about you close your eyes and sleep like a normal human does.
Sometimes I think they are actually not human at all.

I don't know what was up with Tessa. She fussed and writhed and whispered,
"Mama, hold you." in the dark.

She finally drifted off at 4:30 sprawled in the middle of our bed like a queen.
I didn't dare move her again for fear she'd wake up again, so I was forced to lay on my side and get 'comfortable' in approximately 3 square inches of bed space.
I seriously contemplated crawling in her crib.

She had my pillow, and she ALSO had a sly little sleeping smile.

Torturer.

Again - I was JUST about to doze off, finally, when suddenly a chorus of birds arose from the tree outside that left me bug eyed.
I have never, in all my life, heard birds that loud in the DAY time, let alone when it's still dark outside.

I got up to close the window.

I put on my eyemask.
There.....A LITTLE more peaceful.

Then I heard, "Chirp."..........."Chirp"..........."Chirp."
It wasn't the birds.
It was the smoke alarm in the hall. The battery was dying.

And of COURSE it's not an alarm that is close enough to beat with the stick end of a broom, even.
It is a super-lofty-ceiling alarm that would require a trek to the garage and the retrieval of a tall ladder to change. Perfect.
That is where I draw the line at 5:00 in the morning.

Instead of counting sheep, I laid there and mentally listed all the varying types of ear plugs.
There are the spongy ones that you pinch, there are the bright colored silly putty type ones, flexible rubber, headphones.........

Finally, around 5:30, I fell asleep for real, only to be awakened at 7:00 -- 45 minutes before my alarm went off -- by Tessa yanking off my sleep mask with her sticky little fingers and shrieking, "BWATHETH!!!" (glasses-Her favorite thing ever)
She then clammered down and rifled through every item in our bathroom cabinets and came out sucking on the hydrocortizone tube with fingernail scissors in one hand and the toilet plunger in the other.

I had an arrythmia, twitched a bit, then sprung up out of bed.

Justin was pretending to be asleep. I know he was pretending because when he's faking his eyes are closed and when it's real, they're open. Weird, but true.

I wanted to club him.
Not because he'd done something, but because he'd snored and dreamed at I'd tossed and turned and shut windows and cuddled babies and plotted becoming a bird sniper.

He sleepily said, "Good morning."
To which I replied, "I slept three hours."
Then, my kind and sensitive husband screwed up his face and said, "No you DIDN'T."

?????????????

Me: "Why are you saying I didn't?"
Mr. Sensitive: "I don't know. Just because."
Me: "Well that's what I tallied as I laid there, AWAKE, staring at the numbers on the clock watching my life pass before me sleeplessly."

Mr. Sensitive: "It's funny that you tally."
Me: "It's funny that I allow you to live."

(Actually, that last part I just thought in my head, but I WANTED to say it.)

*Sigh*

I guess I'll rest when I'm dead.
Which may not be too much longer at this rate.