ME TOO!

I can never sleep! I mean, I go to bed at night and I wake up to Alina's hungry cries every three hours or so. I feed her in the arm chair in her nursery and then I return to bed. I fall asleep very easily and I realize I am lucky for that.

Hey.. that's MY spot!

 But when I say I never sleep it's because I never go to sleep when I should. Rob commented on that recently, that I should be super tired by the end of the day and I should want to go to sleep early because I am up a few times each night with the baby. Yet, I don't like to go to bed early. I like to stay up and watch shows, to read my book or my favourite blogs and then comment on all of them.
 When I have company come and visit I am always the very last person to go to bed. It doesn't matter if every one will be drinking and having a good time but one by one each person will slowly slip to their rooms. I am the last one up. We could be having a fairly chill night, watching movies and people will retire for the night. I am the last one, turning out the lights and locking the door.
 I'm not sure what it is that makes me this way. It could be that I'm the youngest of three. I always had the first bedtime, being the baby. I always resented that I had to go to bed first. I always tried to keep fairly quiet so that my mom wouldn't notice the time. Even if I got an extra ten minutes past my bedtime it was a small victory to me. My brother and sister always ratted me out too. Always. I had to be really careful with them because if I did something annoying, they would check the clock and happily yell that it was time for me to go to bed! Damn them!

I swear my sister and I are best friends today. She doesn't look too excited about me in this picture...

 I also know that I don't like to miss anything. Rob's folks were in town when Alina was born. They were staying at our house and every time that I had to leave the room to nurse her, I felt like I was missing out. I mean, they were never really doing anything all that special, yet I wanted to be there.
 It must be a combination of things.. Being the youngest is one. Having that urge to want to be around all the action, even if it's very little action is another. I think both reasons are related too. I have that "Me too!" mentality of a youngest.. Remember that Little Critter's book, "Me Too"? Yeah, I'm pretty sure Mercer Mayer wrote that book about me. He met my family and he observed us for an hour and then he wrote that book. It should be dedicated to Haley Parenteau Wirth (that was my long, hyphenated name at the time.)

Yeah, that's about right..

I know that all people with children told me while I was pregnant to sleep when the baby sleeps. But that is just unrealistic. I remember napping in the early days of Alina. But Rob would be home and he would take care of her while I caught up on rest. Once he returned to work I did try to sleep when she was napping, which was often, but the way she'd wake me up was always awful. Imagine waking from a dead sleep (because that's how hard I fall asleep) to an ear piercing scream. My heart would jump up my throat and I'd feel so anxious/annoyed all at once. I don't like waking that way, it's almost worst than not having enough sleep. Besides, after a few weeks I got used to the interrupted sleep at nighttime. I find that it doesn't bother me in the least bit. Alina does wake up some nights more than others. I am tired when I first wake up, but I have never been a napping sort of person. Again, I feel like I'll miss out on something and I always feel like I could be doing something else, instead of resting. I also have to mention, that Alina sleeps great. She goes to bed well now. She wakes up to eat and then goes right back to bed like a good little girl. I can't complain about sleepless nights and for that I am grateful!

Sleeping Beauty in the flesh.

 The only time that I wanted to sleep was when I was cooking Little Miss A. in my tummy for nine months. THEN I was tired all of the time and wishing for the zzzzzz's...

Rob took this one of me when I was nearing the end of my 8th month. I think we JUST woke up and I went to the couch and fell back asleep.