Grumpy New Year

Here’s January!  Fresh start, new beginning, hopes, dreams possibilities, potential… all laid out like a feast just waiting to be devoured.  Usually this is my bliss – the mystery of future adventure, unknown promise.  But today I’m not feeling it.

 

At Christmas and New Year, I have been known to fall into the age-old trap of wanting everything to be perfect.  Now you would think that with over nine years of child-rearing under my belt (almost seven of those with a child with autism) that I would know better than to expect life to go according to plan, let alone any slightly elaborate plan based on everything slotting neatly into place at exactly the right moment.  But I am only human, and, well, I forgot that planning anything is ridiculous in our family.

So on New Year’s Eve, I had in mind that the kids would have their movie night, eat their popcorn, go to bed and sleep.  Between 9 and 12, Mr BooHoo and I would dine upon whatever delicacy he had prepared, relax on our squishy sofa and watch a silly movie.  He would be charming and wonderful all evening.  At midnight we would wake the girls for the fireworks, after which they would have a mug of warm milk and go straight back to bed.  Their daddy would say something beautiful about the year to come and then we would all fall into a deep, sweet sleep.  However, this did not happen.  (Shakes head and rolls eyes.  Of course it did not happen!)

It was 9.50 by the time the kids were actually settled in their beds.  At 10pm I had to go upstairs to put the smallest one back into bed.  At 10.15, the biggest came down to say the smallest was in her bed again and was being annoying.  (Oh really? Welcome to my world!)  I sent Daddy up to sort it out.  Mistake.  He caved and let them stay in bed together, for a treat, it being New Year’s Eve and all.  The next hour was filled with one of us going up because they were being too noisy, or the eldest coming down to complain about the youngest.  Boo was fast asleep throughout all of this- for the first time in almost two weeks her Melatonin capsule actually seemed to have worked!   (Sings Hallelujah Chorus- but very quietly!)  At 11.20, I stormed up the stairs again, having paused our movie for the umpteenth time, and split up the little blighters, each back to their own beds.  The result was 10 minutes of complaining and back-chat from the eldest, who then had her (brand new from Santa) iPod confiscated.  This was not going well.  At 11.50, the fireworks started.  Eldest shouted to youngest to come and watch the fireworks from her bedroom window.  A sleepy groan was heard from Boo’s room.  That was IT, I had had ENOUGH! 

‘NO FIREWORKS!’ I bellowed. 

‘WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!’ they howled, for the next half hour.  Seriously.  My sense of humour: gone.

Just to make her be quiet, I got in bed with 9 year old Pipsy.  Just to make her be quiet, Daddy let 4 year old Peeka get in bed with him.  Boo slept on, in her Melatonin snooze-cocoon.  And finally we all slept.

  This morning, 6.30, I am forced out of bed by my three happy girls who, apart from the dark circles around the eyes, show no other signs of the chronic lack of sleep over these past couple of weeks.  I can’t say the same for myself.  Frankly, I look like shit.  I feel like shit, too.  I have had YEARS of my kids not sleeping, ergo me not sleeping either.  It has taken its toll.  If I ever found my mojo again, I wouldn't know what it was or what to do with it.  ;-)

 All three of our girls have sleep problems.  We have two who can’t fall asleep and our eldest is regularly awake when we come to bed.  We have the youngest who, since starting school, usually falls asleep ok now, but can’t stay asleep and wakes us repeatedly in the night.  And Boo, whose autism affects her sleep in many ways, the most disruptive now being early waking, so that she gets up for the day sometimes as early as 3.30am. 

Tired parents are grumpy parents, often unproductive parents.  Housework is never top of my list.  Actually it isn’t even on my list.  Nor, sometimes, is being sociable.  We have lost touch with so many friends over the past decade because we were simply too tired to go out, and we don’t feel good asking people to babysit because it is such hard work.  Inviting friends over for dinner is a thing of the past – we spend all our evenings going up and down the stairs dealing with tired children, so what’s the point?  Our kids have never had friends to sleep over (because, frankly, I have enough on dealing with my own children all night long), and they are rarely invited to sleep over at other people’s houses.  I feel bad for them.

My resolution this year is to find out how to get everybody sleeping again.  If anyone out there has any suggestions, I would really like to hear them!

Happy New Year!  I'm off to sneak in a power nap before anyone notices.