Not Sleeping

We hope to pass on our good traits to our children, and when we see the not so good traits we work hard to help them conquer them. Unfortunately, I seem to have passed on the terrible-sleep-gene to Squeakles who spent over two hours last night lying in his crib trying to go to sleep. Some nights he does a better job than others at actually lying there the whole time, staying quiet and trying to go to sleep, calling out every 20 minutes or so for a sip of water or a trip to the potty, or when he realizes that we won't keep getting him up for these things, then at the very least he wants a hug. When he whines and yells, as he sometimes does, we make a big point of not capitulating to his demands, knowing that both the whining and the things he wants are not going to help him sleep. But on the nights like last night, when he lays there quietly, trying his best to sleep for over two hours, I definitely sympathize.

Not being able to sleep is a tough spot to be in, and it only gets worse as you get older and not only have more things to worry about, but earlier and earlier times that you have to wake up in the morning. All my life I've been a night owl and have trouble sleeping when I do finally go to bed. I have memories of trying to convince my parents to let me stay up as late as possible, and when that failed, sneaking a book under the covers. You'd think that being tired would be enough to make falling asleep a natural outcome, but this just wasn't always the case.

Eventually I learned that I can usually get past it by counting and I find that I rarely make it to 100 before falling asleep. (My rule is usually that if I get to 100 then I can get out of bed and do something else for a little while.) So clearly my problem is in my head. It's a matter of putting my thoughts to rest, and if I can't, then lulling them out of consciousness.

If only Squeakles could count past 20. And in numerical order, rather than bits and pieces of ordered strings and numbers, such as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 3, 17! (The exclamation point there is meant to indicate Squeakles' final shriek as he reaches what he thinks is the final number in the sequence.) Or maybe it doesn't matter if they're actually in order as long as he thinks they are.