It's All a Blur

My cheeks hurt. They're sagging down past my jawline, and I fear they would actually fall off my face if I weren't expending energy just to hold them up. Ditto for my eyelids and keeping them open.

I splurged at the cafeteria today, filling my coffee cup half full of Starbuck's French Roast instead of a full cup of the unnamed decaf I typically down in the a.m.

We're going on double-digits of consecutive semi-sleepless nights now. Lily's never been a good sleeper, but this last stretch has been particularly draining. Her awakenings are not the sweet "Mommy, can I have a drink of water?"- get water- tuck quietly back into bed and return to our own bed type. They are screaming-kicking and tantrum filled, in which Lily pits her desire to sleep on the couch against our desire to have her sleep in her room. And often they happen more than once a night. It hasn't helped that we cannot get her to explain to us why she doesn't want to sleep in her room.

We remarked to ourselves just the other day just why it is our monster heathen Pocahontes (in contrast to Sammy, the Good Dog) manages to do with ease all the things Lily has trouble with - eat, sleep and poop. Now, if Lily could just teach Pokey not to counter surf all the time...

I know all about picking your battles, and you might be thinking that this is a battle we should let go of, and let her sleep on the couch. But this is a slippery slope, a road we've been down before. If we let her sleep on the couch for part of the night, soon she will want to sleep on the couch the entire night. And we're really not all that crazy about abandoning our one and only family room at 8 p.m. and retreating like war-weary soldiers to the limited confines of our master bedroom.

We've tried a number of alternatives. At this point I think we're resigned to wait it out, and hope there's enough caffeine in the world (coffee for me/Dr. Pepper & Sweet Leaf Honey Mint tea for Peter) to get us through. And if it continues, I think we may just become the first couple in the history of the world to look forward to all the sleep we'll get on our honeymoon.