The Sleepy Feeding

As much as we try to keep life casual and free flowing, we definitely have a schedule. Actually we have lots of schedules. One for Ash's school, one for Leni's babysitters (and soon to be daycare), both of our work schedules, the cleaning lady's schedule, the studio assistant's schedule, the travel schedule, the this the that and the other schedule. Lots of schedules. One in particular is Leni's feeding schedule. Specifically, the one feeding that falls outside of normal awake hours usually sometime between 4AM-6AM. The sleepy feeding. We swap who takes this feeding each night so that we're both at least presented with the option of getting a full night's sleep every other night.

A full nights sleep. Yeah. About that.

We're not very good at going to bed before midnight, so even when it's one of our "nights off" from the sleepy feeding the maximum possible sleep hours is 7, and that's only if Ash sleeps till 7 (not common) and only if the "night off" didn't still result in being awake during the feeding, because let's face it - when she wakes up and one of us stumbles out of bed to go to her room and change her diaper and make a bottle and feed her...well, it's almost impossible for the other to remain asleep. So, a much more common sleep number is 4, sometimes 5, and when we're really really lucky and all of the stars align we manage to attain 6 full hours of sleep. That doesn't happen often.

More common?

In bed around midnight. Asleep around 12:30. Shrieks over the baby monitor around 4:30. Back to bed around 5:00, only to be awoken an hour or so later by the cutest 3 year old voice in the universe informing us that he's all done sleeping. And yes, I do understand that if we'd just go to bed earlier the whole 4-6 hours of sleep thing would quickly turn into 6-8 which is more than acceptable, but what would be sacrificed in order to make that happen are things we're just not terribly excited to sacrifice.

Like.

A couple hours of adult time, sans any interruptions from children. A couple hours of sanity where we can just sit and stare at something, whether it be each other or the TV or our computers. Just sit and stare and be quiet and breath a little easier knowing The Shriekers are tucked comfortably in to dreamland and we're free to just sit and stare.

So for tonight, who's turn is it anyway? Well, since I clearly remember stumbling to the nursery at 4:10 this morning that means it's daddy's turn to take over the sleepy feeding. And maybe we'll push our bedtime up an hour and manage to be asleep by 11:30, and maybe the Little Shrieker will sleep soundly till 6AM. But probably not. And that's OK. Because both of us sort of enjoy the Little Shrieker's sleepy feeding, and both of us sort of look forward to being woken up just after the sleepy feeding to the Big Shrieker's announcement that he's all done sleeping.

But.

Both of us really enjoy those hours spent after the Shriekers are sound asleep and we can sit and stare. In quiet.