Awkward Mom vs. Mini-Battle #2

Shakespeare says that sleep "knits up the ravell’d sleave of care." He also thinks that sleep is "Nature’s soft nurse" and that "our little life is rounded with a sleep." The man enjoyed a nap, that much is clear. Super Baby says that sleep is "a total waste of time when you could be playing with me. Wake up. Wake up Wake up. Wake up. Wake up." We are totally paraphrasing in the interest of time; she went on quite a bit longer but this is a mini-battle, after all.

If 2 night owls and a morning person walk into a bar, I mean their parents' bedroom, there is little punchline. Really more punching of the actual variety. Super Toddler is a sleep puncher. He is also a sleep kicker, talker, roller, mover, shaker, yeller, and toy stealer, if Super Preschooler's accusations are anything to go on. Super Toddler has been in here since last night around 10pm, when he finally fell asleep, nearly folded in half up by the pillows, using a pen to draw on the wall. At least, he didn't need any company; although, upon reflection, he probably should have been monitored with that pen. Super Preschooler, on the other hand, refused to go to bed until he was read to, sung to, talked to, and cuddled. He seemed contently on his way to sleep when he popped out into the living room around 11:15pm, right we were watching the body being discovered in the freezer. That did not help matters at all, and then he announced that a monster was under the bed and he needed more cuddles to combat it. I still don't know who put the body in the freezer, but I think it was the minister. Always the quiet ones. I vanquished the monster, but he, and Super Preschooler, somehow made it back in our bed around 3am. No one had the heart, or more likely energy, to move them. And I have no idea why Super Toddler wasn't moved in the first place. Super Baby showed up around 7am, when Awkward Dad plopped her and a bottle of milk next to me on his way to the shower. She drank fairly quietly, when she wasn't loudly talking in my ear about being healthy, wealthy, and wise. I think that is what she said. I don't know, I was half asleep.

I had just gotten all the way back to sleep. Martin Freeman and I were having tea in a beautiful garden somewhere. He is more John Watsony, but he has those adorable curls from the Hobbit. Hey, do I come into your dreams and judge your choices? Do I? Well, OK, I know that I was pretty harsh on those of you who have a thing for Justin Long, but ladies, come on. The man is a baby. Some of your preschoolers look older than him. OK. OK. Each to her own, I apologize. So, Martin and I are gazing adoringly at each other when these lovely butterflies start to hover around the table. How picturesque. And it would stay that way, but they start to dive-bomb me. Butterfly after butterfly just hurls itself into my face; suicidal skippers, all. I fling my arms in front of my face and start to blink rapidly. Martin starts to kick me under the table, which isn't very nice; doesn't he see these butterflies attacking me? I am getting ready to spat with him, when my rapid blinking banishes the beautiful garden and replaces it with my cluttered bedroom. I try to focus on Martin's face, but it slowly morphs into a overfull, and hazardously leaning, basket of laundry. He is still kicking me, however. Oh, never mind, that is just Super Toddler. And the butterflies?

Super Baby is standing in the bathroom doorway, the morning sun haloing her hair and bathing her face in beauty. She laughs like a little sprite, leans over, and pulls something out of a box on her right. I don't have my glasses on, so everything is hazy and slowed down somehow. She seems to be weighing the object in her hand, preparing just the right arc and velocity needed to get it to my face accurately, and then, like the superhero she is, she flings this flash of white toward me. I am only able to shift slightly, weakened as I am from the previous evening's antics, so the tampon just grazes my cheek and goes on to plow into Super Preschooler's ear. He waves it away and continues to snore. I look back at Super Baby to see that she has reloaded and is hurling yet another tampon towards me, like some gynecological gunslinger. She is also chewing on one; it is poking out the right side of her mouth, a la Groucho Marx. A baby Groucho Gaucho in pink feeted pajamas grins at me from across the room; guess it is time to get up.

In the Bard/Baby Battles of sleep, youth always triumphs. Youth and deadly aim.

Just like this. Only, you know, with a feminine-product cigar.