Exhaustion

from the mom

Ben has spent the last 4 days making statements like: "I am tired," "I need a nap," and "I want to go to bed." All day. His appetite has been way down and he pretty much sits around reading his devotional. (He is VERY devout.) We're a little baffled. We've kicked around all kinds of theories from anemia to something bad happening at school. The latter was eliminated this morning when he joyfully went to school declaring "I love school." It was school picture day and when I picked him up he declared "I had fun with pictures." We then went to the very damp park because we are experiencing our second day of sunshine in the last month and hey, perhaps it is a Vitamin D deficiency. Now we are home and he is on our bed reading his devotional. Hmmmm....

Perhaps, like his parents, his sisters nocturnal risings are depriving him of much-needed REM sleep and making it hard to function? His mother forgets pin numbers, his dad sleeps through his alarm, and Ben just wants to go to bed. Meanwhile, Kyri decided that she wanted to play between 12 and 3 last night.

When I was single and my married friends would complain about their children "not sleeping through the night" I really didn't give much thought to what they meant. So your kid doesn't sleep through the night? Give 'em a toy and go back to bed. I didn't make the logical leap that if a) child doesn't sleep then b) parent doesn't sleep. It is a rather harsh reality.

Yesterday I put the stair gate up and put Kyri in her room and brought my pillow in and napped for an hour and a half while she and Ben played. An act of desperation but I was close enough that if anyone had been hurt, I would have woken up. Unfortunately M can't nap on the job quite as easily. And amazingly, unlike the rest of us, Kyri seems to function just fine without sleep.