The Next Morning

Some hours later, after on and off sleep, Jacob was awake for good. We didn't know that for sure until 3 hours later when Zach finally gave up and took Jacob downstairs. A lot of the stuff we do for him at night might seem crazy, but you have to realize that on most nights now he does sleep through the night (define 'sleep through the night', right?), and on the nights when he doesn't, we're just glad that he's actually staying in the bed. Because that means that we can stay in the bed, in a sort of drowsy half-sleep and at least pretend that what is happening is all a kind of bad dream.

It was 5 or 6 am, depending on whether or not you had changed the clocks back yet. It was our big chance to get an extra hour of sleep and we spent it the way I described earlier. I say we, but I use it the way I use 'we' when I am talking about the addition to our house. "Yeah, doing an addition" and so on. This really means Zach is doing the work and I am either watching/staying away from the house/handing him screws/complaining about the slow pace of the progress. So when I say 'we' referring to the nighttime, I mean I, while Zach soundly sleeps through 98% of what is going on.

So we spent the next 3 hours occupying Jacob in bed, hoping against all odds that he would in fact go back to sleep. Not a chance. At some point during all this, I had the extreme desire to go downstairs and make coffee. This is how deeply my coffee addiction runs; I was willing to risk the chance that A) Jacob would go back to sleep, or B) Zach would be the first to get up with Jacob and I could maybe, just maybe go back to sleep.

I am happy to report that Zach did get up with Jacob and I believe I did fall back to sleep. Before I fell asleep though, I remember Jacob climbing out of bed and his first official 3 year-old words, "Daddy! I'm a big boy! I tan oose knives now!" Look out world...

Then in a dreamy, just-waking state, I remember someone coming at me with something that definitely was not plywood, but can only be described as long, thin and dangerously close to my eyeballs. "It's plywood. I'll show oou what it do-es! Here, I'll show oou Mommy!" I jumped out of bed real quick and the day was off to a running start.