And baby makes three

To say our sleep schedules are out of whack since having a baby may be the understatement of the year. We spent three days and two nights in the hospital after my c-section, during which time the baby and I were constantly being checked up on—medication, vital stats, fluid output, temperature, incision site, etc. (Just for the record, I apparently have wonder kidneys. They process fluid like nobody's business. Except that for the nurses that actually was their business.) Anyway, with all the hustle and bustle involved in keeping two of  us alive and well, at no point were any of us asleep for more than 45 minutes.

Just sitting up in bed was something of a Herculean effort on my part, which meant Sam was the one checking up on Edith day and night. He had her little crib right next to his bed and was instantly up to hold her if she cried or needed to be changed.

Well, we've been home for a few days now, and while we're not getting tons of sleep, we're still getting some, mostly because my mom has been here to work the front lines. She "sleeps" downstairs where she can keep an eye on Edith and feed her in the middle of the night. Sam, used to taking care of Edith constantly while we were in the hospital, doesn't seem to know what to do with a few hours of uninterrupted sleep, as evidenced by some early-morning exchanges we've had.

Our first night home Sam woke up and sat bolt upright in bed with a wild look in his eyes. He started looking all over the room and feeling around in the bed.

Sam: Where is she?!
Me: She's downstairs

He thought on that for a second before getting out of bed and heading downstairs, apparently forgetting that Edith was safe and sound and being looked after by my mom. He soon came back upstairs and went to sleep, only to "wake up" at least twice more to ask me where Edith was.

Later in the day I asked Sam if he remembered any of the times he'd woken up to look for Edith. He said he had no memory of any of it.

The next night Sam sat up in bed, again wild-eyed and clearly acting out in his sleep. He was staring at the stretch on no-man's land between our two sides of the bed, his gaze travelling up and down its length like a tennis line umpire, before settling on a pile of blankets I had cast off in the night. He patted it a bit, tried to pick it up, then looked very confused.

Sam: Where is she?
Me: She's downstairs.
.....
Sam (thinking hard): Well, what am I holding then?
Me: That's my quilt.

I found this particularly funny seeing as how I'd told him just that morning all about his being up the night before wondering where Edith was. I told my mom and she said, "Poor guy, doesn't know how to sleep even when he has the chance."

Last night Sam woke up, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and sat with his back to me, his arms held out in a cradling position. His left arm stayed crooked and stationary while his right moved back and forth in a scooping motion.

Me: Sam?
Sam: Yes?
Me (as gently as possible): Are you pretend-feeding a baby?
Sam (waking up): I think I am, yes.

I like to laugh at Sam when he does these sorts of things, but in truth it's really very sweet that even in his sleep he tries to take care of our daughter. And if I'm being completely honest, the quilt fooled me once as well. I woke up stroking it, thinking it was her soft little hand, before the green paisley print registered in my brain. After that I took it and spread it out so we'd stop mistaking it for a human baby. And if we still do I imagine it will be rather traumatizing. (Why have you flattened the baby and wrapped it around yourself?!)

Some day we'll get the hang of this sleeping while parenting thing.

Horses.

The Preakness Stakes is coming up on Saturday (duh), which means I've got horses on the brain. Tamsen and I were discussing what we might name a thoroughbred if we were to own one and came up with the following ideas:

Pony Brewster
Poni Braxton
Pony Soprano
Pony Shalhoub
Poni Collette
Pony Stark
A Horse is a Horse
A Horse Divided
Speaker of the Horse
The Horse of Representatives
Horsies! Horsies! Horsies!
She's a Brick Horse
Al Capony
Jockey Balboa
Colt From the Blue
Filly-delphia Story
More Than a Filly
Millard Filly-more
Night-mare on Elm Street
Full Horse
Mare the Horse Be With You
Little Horse on the Prairie


Clearly, our horse would be the best horse. Feel free to inform us as to which horse puns we've missed.

I can't seem to find my way out of bed. If you can read this, send provisions!

This morning as I went to throw my tangle of blankets off of myself, I also unwittingly grabbed the waistband of my pajama pants.* A very confusing tussle ensued. I wish I could say I won.

*This is what happens when both your pajama pants and your bedsheets are made of flannel

Bells.

An exchange during a commercial break during Modern Family.

SAM: Man, time for bed, huh?

TAMSEN: No, I have too many shows to watch.

SAM: Well, time for bed for me, then. I can go to bed. I can go to bed with bells on. Which is probably why I'm having so much trouble sleeping.

(TAMSEN gives SAM a funny look.)

SAM: I jingle when I roll over.

Driving.

The drive between our parents' houses and our own house is about ninety minutes, and though she usually tries her best, Tamsen often falls asleep on the drive. (Not that I blame her. I'd fall asleep too, if I weren't driving.) She fell asleep on the drive home last night, and at one point, I felt a gentle poking on my arm. I looked over and asked her, "Hey, what are you doing?"

"Oh!" she said, clearly still asleep. "I thought you were a pillow."

This relationship is suffocating me!

As you know, Sam is, if not a sleepwalker, a sleep-acter-out-of-things. A few months back I woke up to find him sitting up on his knees in the middle of the bed.

me: Sam, what are you doing?

Oblivious to my query (or perhaps in response to it) he picked up his pillow and started beating the wall with it. I chose that moment to scoot as far over to my side of the bed as I could get.

Folks, if I'm ever found beaten to death with a pillow, as unlikely as that coroner's report might be, you know who the culprit is.

Alarm.

School has started for me here in Eugene, but since Tamsen and I aren't allowed to move into our new apartment until October 1, I'm staying with some very kind people in our ward. I drove from Portland to Eugene on Monday morning so I could be in my workshop at 8:00, which meant I had to leave Portland around 5:30. I was pretty tired all day, and by the time I arrived at the house where I was going to stay, I just wanted to fall asleep.

So that's more or less what I did. I set the time on the alarm clock next to the bed, set the alarm, and went to sleep around 9.30. I generally have a hard time falling asleep under different circumstances than I'm used to (I didn't fall asleep until 3.00 the night before because I knew I had to get up early, which only made me even more tired), but I figured I was exhausted enough that I wouldn't have any trouble.

Clearly something went wrong, or else I wouldn't be writing about it. I tend to have a hard time separating dreams from reality when I'm tired, and sometimes I act our my dreams with hilarious results. (See also the entirety of this blog.) This was one of those times, so when you read the following paragraphs, pretend that you're in that half-sleeping half-awake state.

My eyes snapped open at 11.30. I heard a beep coming from downstairs. Oh no! When I set the alarm clock next to the bed, I must have set off the alarm system for the house! I jumped out of bed, turned on the light, and ran around the room clutching my hair saying "oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no OH NO oh no oh no oh no" trying to figure out what to do. I knew I only had thirty seconds to disarm the alarm before it started screaming and waking up not only the kind people who gave me a place to stay, but their entire neighborhood.

So I ran down the stairs, still saying "oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh NO oh no," frantically searching for a panel on the wall where I could disarm the alarm. I knew it would be easy to find, since it would have a huge LCD display with a timer counting down to zero. (By my sleep-deprived reckoning, I should still have had fifteen seconds to go, even though I actually spent about two full minutes running around in my room in a panic.) I ran out into the kitchen to see two loaves of bread sitting on top of the oven, having just finished baking.

And then it hit me that the beep I heard must have been the timer for the oven.

And then it hit me that I probably hadn't actually tripped an alarm for the house just by setting an alarm clock.

And then it hit me that I had probably dreamed about tripping an alarm, but didn't realize it wasn't real when I woke up.

And then I was profoundly grateful that no one else had seen me run downstairs in a panic. I slunk back up the stairs, calmed myself down, and went back to my relatively uneventful sleep.