By Heather O.
We have a great new sleep system going at our house. It’s fantastic really. I’m enjoying it SO MUCH, I just had to share.
It’s simple. Every time Little Sister falls asleep, her older brother wakes her up.
If she dozes in the car, J has a kazoo, ready to serenade her. And the kazoo is such a lovely instrument, who doesn’t appreciate such music?
If she dozes in the bed with me after I nurse her, J is right there, climbing all over the bed, and turning on a video. Again, who wouldn’t want to have their sleep interupted by The Power Rangers, or, in this morning’s case, the lovely sounds of a 5 year old singing along with Donny Osmond as he trains Mulan to defeat the Huns? Actions and sound effects also included.
If she sleeps in her crib, with the fan on as white noise to drown out any kazoos or singing, she is awakened by the shaking of the house that has nothing to do with techtonic plates, but rather the house absorbing the shock of her brother jumping down the stairs, seeing how many he can take without crashing into the landing below. His record is 6. Any more than that, and he needs a helmet.
As you can imagine, all of this adds up to a happy and pleasant baby, who is never cranky and never cries. It’s lovely. Really. Y’all should come and see us sometime. And even if you don’t know me that well, I’ll be easy to recognize. I’m the mom in the sweats with the bags under her eyes holding a grumpy infant and a kindergartner with a kazoo.




He he he! I can see the manic laughter in your eyes… I’ll be the mom in a peanut butter smeared skirt with wild hair, dragging an insane passel of redheaded tornados. Wanna get some hot chocolate?
Comment #1 by Tracy MSeptember 17th, 2007 at 6:12 amYour sleep arrangement sounds just like mine!
Comment #2 by MarySeptember 17th, 2007 at 7:59 amTotally happened in our house, too, except my 2 year old would climb in the crib and start jumping. “She likes it!” Oh yeah.
Comment #3 by The WizSeptember 17th, 2007 at 8:09 amI love reading your blog!
Your sleeping arrangement is like mine… except my 5 year old likes to lift his brother out of the crib by dragging him along the rail. Good times.
Comment #4 by StaceySeptember 17th, 2007 at 9:16 amBwahaha!! Sorry to laugh at your misfortunes, but you just have such a way of expressing them…
Comment #5 by AmandaSeptember 17th, 2007 at 10:19 amJust think of it this way. You’re training her to sleep through anything. Okay, well, you’re TRYING to train her to sleep through anything.
Comment #6 by cherylSeptember 17th, 2007 at 11:29 amLOL try 2 older siblings! Just add screaming and fighting to the list of lovely dream interuptions! ROFL… if you don’t laugh you cry.
Comment #7 by AprilSeptember 17th, 2007 at 1:40 pmI’m right there with you…my poor baby almost never gets an uninterrupted nap. When I get really desperate, I pop her into a sling or a wrap and bounce her around until she falls asleep. Then when she falls asleep, I leave her there. As long as no one physically touches her she usually gets a decent nap. This also works at church. If I can get her snuggled in a baby carrier before Sacrament starts, I can usually enjoy (most of) the meeting!
Comment #8 by AmandaSeptember 17th, 2007 at 3:09 pmwait, i didn’t make it past donny osmond. is he really in “mulan?!” i may have to check it out from the library and drool over, uh, let my kids watch it.
sleep patterns? no compassion from me! 4yo, 2yo, 6mo, and a husband who works 15 hour shifts and works nights. i had forgotten there WAS such a thing as a sleep pattern! (but i’m lucky because we refuse to be quiet around sleeping babies and our 6mo now sleeps through the tornadoes that are her big sisters. good thing because in a 650sf house, there’s nowhere to hide for a quiet nap!)
Comment #9 by makakonaSeptember 17th, 2007 at 3:38 pmOuch.
Comment #10 by SueSeptember 17th, 2007 at 3:41 pmDonny Osmond provides the singing voice for the captain in Mulan. He tells her to ‘be a man.’
Comment #11 by The WizSeptember 17th, 2007 at 4:20 pmWe have the “Be a Man” song on the Disney CD in the car, and J likes to listen to it over and over. We bought Mulan just a little while ago, and J will also rewind that scene, just to sing the song, do the actions, make the noises, etc. Sometimes I feel like Donny Osmond’s voice will be embedded in my brain forever.
Comment #12 by Heather O.September 17th, 2007 at 4:46 pmPoor tired baby! And mom. Once I let my niece go over to a friend’s house. She came right back home, explaining that, “Jessie woke up her baby brother, so she has to finish his nap for him.”
Comment #13 by MelindaSeptember 17th, 2007 at 5:02 pmwas that for me, sue? i wasn’t being mean.
heather, sweet donny’s voice can help you through the sleepless nights! hope it gets better (in case my sarcasm/need for facetiousiosity didn’t translate)!!!
Comment #14 by makakonaSeptember 17th, 2007 at 5:10 pmmakakona - same here, but add a 6yo to the top of that list!
Comment #15 by Natalie S.September 17th, 2007 at 5:22 pmMy poor son - I hope he doesn’t have sleep issues later in life because of his lack of naptimes now!
Dh and I couldn’t figure out why our 2 month old won’t go to sleep at night but sleeps fine in the afternoon, then it hit us..it’s too flippin quiet after her brothers go to sleep. She’s so used to the noise. Put her in her bouncy seat with the TV on and boom, she’s out like a light!
Comment #16 by mo mommySeptember 17th, 2007 at 6:40 pmMelinda, absolutely hilarious. That’s one I wish I had heard when mine were the ages of those being discussed by you young ‘uns.
Comment #17 by RaySeptember 17th, 2007 at 6:41 pmoooo… finish the nap for him… BWHAHAHA evil mommy kicks in! I’m going to have to use that! maybe then my oldest will be a little more careful of everyone else in the family sleeping (I know, wishful thinking!).
Comment #18 by AprilSeptember 17th, 2007 at 8:16 pmOMW I love Love LOVE Donny Osmond’s voice!!!! Okay I am a closet Donny fan (no longer closeted)!!!!
Blessed is the day when the children sleep quietly and through the night!
Comment #19 by LeiGulSeptember 18th, 2007 at 6:47 pmI love the “finish the nap” thing, too. My little sister might have been a different person with that kind of parenting…
My mom just banned us from any room that had a younger child sleeping in it (we all had separate bedrooms till almost everyone was past the nap age,) and the consequences for waking ANYone up were, well, dire. I’m not sure, if the house had caught fire, if I’d have had the courage to wake anyone up. And my dad and stepmom put kid-proof things on all the knobs to the bedrooms, so only people with the manual dexterity of a ~8 year old or better could get to anyone who was asleep. It meant, oddly enough, that they could stop locking their bedroom door at night — which was both a fire safety hazard AND the cause of at least one famous incident in which a parent who got up to take care of a child locked themselves out of their own bedroom and had to break in from the backyard.
Though none of the door blocking would keep out the noise of step-leaping. My goodness. On the other hand, when I was a very small child we lived a few yards (maybe 10?) from a freight train line, and I turned out to be very nearly sane, though I didn’t ever really fall asleep before 3am until my mid-20s. And look at me now, 26 and blogging at 1:40am!
Comment #20 by SarahSeptember 18th, 2007 at 7:29 pm