3 AM

• Last night. 3 am. Both kids awake. Both parents awake.
• 4 am. Everyone finally asleep but me. What am I doing? Composing this post in my head because I'm a crazy person and also a bit of an insomniac. It started out as a facebook status update, and then I realized it was too long a story for that medium. So I'm just laying there, writing, revising, grammar checking. All in my head. Seriously.
• 4:45. Jude awake, but no big deal because I hadn't fallen asleep yet.
• 6 am. Jude's up for good, so after feeding him, cleaning up all the spit up he doused me with, and pouring a much needed cup of coffee, it's on to the internet.

Now as I sit to write about our night, I realize it really isn't all that interesting. I suppose it's just easy to be a bit narcissistic at 3am and presume your experience is worth documenting for the masses (and by masses I mean you 5 or so friends and family who read this.)

So, lately life here has been a bit, shall we say, exhausting. The cold virus has invaded. Claire has a horrible chest cough and looks like she must feel terrible. Of course, if it weren't for the cough, you'd assume she had just been possessed by the most vehement case of the terrible twos know to man. When she's sick she doesn't slow down, she speeds up and gets nasty. We've been dodging tantrums all week. Of course, Claire shared the cold with me and I have no opportunity to rest it off. I've gone a little OCD with hand washing in an attempt to keep Jude from catching the cold. (So far, so good!)

Claire's 3 am wake up was due in part to her cold, and in part to a technology fail. We have been using a nightlight on a timer to train her to stay in bed in the morning until a reasonable hour. She knows that she has to stay in bed until the light goes off. That means it's morning and it's ok to come in our room. Because of the crazy tantruming of late, I experimented with using the light for naps as well. It did not help. Nap time continues to be a battlefield. Well, apparently when I set the timer for her nap I mistakenly set it for 3am instead of 3 pm. I never realized it before because we never made it through an entire nap time. Because Claire's sick, she's not sleeping well. When she came wandering in our room last night, Kevin tried to take her back to bed. She got so sad and kept saying, "The sunshine's awake!" When we discovered her light was on, we realized what had happened. We felt so bad for her! It was the middle of the night, she was so sick and obviously exhausted, but she thought it was time to wake up. It took an hour of cuddling before she was ready to go back to her room.

So, between that and Jude's normal newborn waking up, sleep was hard to come by last night. I'm compensating this morning with Lion King and blogging! (I just skipped past the part where Mufasa is trampled to death.) I can't wait till everyone is healthy again and life can get back to "normal." Until then, I foresee a lot of TV in our future. Oh well!