Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday's omissions and regrets. - Faulkner

Day 56: It's four in the morning, the end of ... February?
Originally uploaded by emmabolden

Yesterday, we made the gruesome error of letting E remain asleep after he fell asleep in the car on the way home from daycare. Typically when we do this its no problem; he just sleeps through until a stupid-early but basically reasonable hour of the morning. Last night, not so much.

Instead, he woke up at around 11:30 and came downstairs. Now its so happens that we had some friends over, and had just finished watching Glee, so not only was he disoriented and cranky, but he found it doubly (triply?) weird that the house was full of people and we had the TV on.

"But we can't watch TV after supper time. Its a rule!"

We had to come clean to him that his father and I do, in fact, sometimes watch TV after supper. Another childhood illusion destroyed, I guess.

We fed him a Peanut Butter sandwich (yes, I feed him PB&J - I wonder if, these days, this is a mark in the "bad mother" column) and sat up with him while he ate. So, more than an hour after I had intended to go to bed I was snuggled up with him, reading.

At 1 am I told him "I'm turning off the lights and going to sleep." And that's what I did. I stayed in his room, because I knew if I didn't he'd be up and playing for most of the night, and I had hopes that he would fall back asleep.

For two hours (at least) he squirmed around. He played with his teddy bears. He would periodically lay his (very heavy) head on my head. I believe he fell asleep by 3:30.

This morning, I was wrecked. He was chipper and cheerful and ready to go. Tonight, as we wait for dinner to finish, I'm still wrecked.

I wonder if employers take into account the fact that parents just don't ever, ever, ever get enough sleep. I wonder how much more productive I could be at work if I did?