Dreaming of sleep

I used to have the luxury of sleeping the whole night through, and of sleeping past 5:30 am on Saturdays, and the option of taking naps on Sunday afternoons.

No more.

It all ended so abruptly five and a half years ago.

My mind has been in such a thick fog ever since, I don't quite remember what it was like to feel rested and renewed.

I fully admit that lately, some of it is my own fault. The only time the house is quiet and peaceful is when everyone is sleeping. After the insanity of yet another day, it's just so deliciously serene to sit and read with my purring cat beside me. Even if I should be sleeping.

Apparently my children are not a model that is compatible with the sleep option, like I ordered the wrong part number or something. My sister got the kind that sleeps. I just don't understand it.

If the baby sleeps through the night, and she occasionally does, it guarantees that one of the boys will wake up screaming.

Last night my husband and I stepped outside for just few minutes after all the kids were asleep in bed. Once they are all down, we get a magical few hours when all three of them sleep well.

We walked out to the barn together. He filled his corn buckets and I spent a few minutes in my happy place, the chicken coop.

As I observed the chickens, Fritz (the Barred Rock rooster), decided to get busy with one of the hens. While he was finding his balance on top of her, lining his stuff up with hers or whatever the rooster's job is... Red (the Buff Orpington rooster) spotted them with a jealous eye from across the coop.

What happened next made me laugh out loud. And my laughter echoed and echoed through the barn.

Red ran purposefully straight toward that romantic pair of lovebirds. As he closed in on them, he lifted his right foot and solidly kicked Fritzy, causing him to launch off of his lady and into the air like a football headed towards the goal. Except in this case, Fritz missed his goal. The hen stood up from her crouched position, shook every last feather into place in an I-can't-be-bothered-with-this-nonsense kind of way, and joined the other girls snacking on some moldy Long Keeper tomatoes I had brought them.

The roosters gave each other dirty looks and took turns lunging at each other for a minute, although it didn't seem like either one was really interesting in any kind of meaningful battle.

Laughter is good for the soul, and I believe especially so when sleep deprived.

Oh, how I love my chickens.

I told them to go to sleep, turned out the coop light and heard them softly singing as they settled onto the roost.

Our knuckle-head dog joined us as we walked out to the mailbox.

The wind was cold. But it felt so good to be out of the house and just with my husband, a few quiet minutes alone. There is no end to the kid chaos around here. Moments like this are so few, but give me hope that life will get easier again. Someday. Someday, should I actually survive that long.

My delusion was short-lived.

As we walked back into the house my blood went cold before I even realized what I was hearing.

Uh oh. Our three year old was bawling. He was standing in the kitchen in his underwear, screaming, his tummy and legs cold and wet with his falling tears.

The kids don't ever wake up until they have been in bed at least a few hours. Yeah, right.

Seriously, we weren't outside that long. But apparently it was long enough. Long enough to make me feel like an incompetent parent yet again.

Sigh.

Poor kid, he must have thought he was abandoned.

I ripped off my jacket and scooped him up, wiped his tears and his nose, took him to the bathroom and convinced him to empty his bladder, rocked and snuggled him, put out the fires, saved the world... again.

Again. It just never ends.

Everyone says these years fly by and the kids grow so fast, surely I'll look back and long for the days when they were little.

Right now all I'm longing for is a nap.