This month’s blog is written by Erica Moore: Writer, Interior designer and mom to two boys. You can find more of Erica’s hilarious work here.
We had completed sleep training and had officially graduated into the land of dreams with our 6 month old. It had worked and our whole family was benefiting from more sleep, including our 2.5 year old son, Otis. We had two nights of success under our belts and we were already patting ourselves on the back.
My husband and I had completed the work with our sleep consultant, working as a solid team, embracing about 3 nights of sweat and tears. My husband shared the responsibility and had been a complete partner throughout the whole process. He was my confidant, my rock, and my equal. We had built this home of doze together and were now finally beginning to enjoy the splendors of our arduous slog.
This morning began quite typically. My husband heard some sounds on the monitor, looked at his phone and then got up to start the day. Moments later he had brought our Two year old into bed with us, where morning cuddles and chats began; classic weekend stuff. Otis was especially vibrant; he was full of beans, squealing and tickling my face and bouncing around the comforter. Naturally the baby (asleep in our room) began to stir and squawk. We got out of bed, turned the lights on and started to get dressed and ready for the day. It was in the bathroom where I was rolling deodorant onto my armpits that I noticed that it was a dark morning. I thought to myself that it’s always sad how the sunlight begins to fade with the arrival of autumn. I brushed my teeth then headed back to our bedroom to corral two children downstairs for breakfast. It was then that I grabbed my phone and checked it (a reflex that many of us can relate to).
I gasped. The same sort of gasp you may hear in a horror movie when the killer isn’t dead and leaps up for one last shocking plot twist slash. A blood curdling, terrified gasp. I was startled, and caught dead in my tracks but what I saw on my phone. It was not 7:30am, but 2:30am.
My husband, the sleep trained traitor, had made a grave error and essentially beguiled our entire family into waking at an ungodly hour. All that work to sleep train and only three days in, he somehow sabotages the whole plot. I thought he cared about getting more sleep, I thought he knew how exhausted I was, how hard I worked, I thought he loved me. I guess I was wrong about a lot of things – because what person in their right mind would wake a house of sleeping beauties in this cruel fashion?
“Trevor!” I hissed, “Look at your watch!”. Trevor’s eyes darted to meet mine. Colour instantly drained from his face and his eyes grew large, as I’m certain he could see the subtle mom furry all over my face.
“Oh. Fuck. Shit. Ummmm” was all he could muster, “I must have, uhhh, mistaken the 2 for a 7?”
At this point the baby was crawling on the floor; slapping his hand in joy on the hardwood as our toddler ran circles around him squealing, “breakfast! Breakfast! Breakfast!”
Panicked we started to trouble shoot. Firing strange solutions back and fourth. Do we go downstairs and just let everyone watch Paw Patrol likes zombies until the sun rises? Do we all take super shots of Gravol and essentially pray that the drugs work? It was at this point that I noticed out of our window that our 20 something neighbour and her friends were casually strolling home from the bar, winding down their evening, preparing to slide into their warm drunken beds. Rage once again filled me and I snapped, “Everyone out. Daddy made a BIIIIIIG mistake and he has to figure this one out”- I herded my family members out of the Master bedroom and into the corridor, repeating “I don’t care, figure it out, make it work” as I closed the door behind them. I turned off the lights and returned to bed, tired, angry and shaken.
I’m not sure what went down last night, but I woke this morning at 8am as though nothing had happened. Miraculously (motivated by the fear of divorce?) my husband had managed to undue his grave error and convinced all of our children to return to their beds.
When he woke he looked at me sheepishly, “that was weird eh?”. Still in shock by the near premature start to the day all I could say way “That can never happen again. Call your optometrist”