Last night...

...and the night before and the night before that and I'm pretty sure the night before that...Finn has decided that 3:00 am is the new witching hour.  What this means for the rest of the house (with the exception of Abby, who can sleep through a dump truck driving through a nitroglycerin plant) is that we're awake.  Awake.  AWAKE!

A couple of nights he's done a pretty good job of talking himself back to sleep, so we don't go into his room unless he get's really angry.  Last night, while he wasn't really angry, he did go to bed with a stuffy nose and I am a sucker for a sick kid.  Unless there's vomit involved.  Then I invoke the Puke/Poop Agreement of 2008*.  So, at 3 this morning, I found myself awake.  Awake.  AWAKE!  Bright-eyed and busy-tailed and trying to deposit baby nose drops in a wiggly, stuffy boy who sounds just like the pugs next door.  Then, after a sufficient amount of time had passed (approximately 13 1/2 seconds), I attempted to suck out the loosened crap from up his nose.  And then, just to make up for the torture I feel I subjected him to in the wee small hours, I soothed him with a late-night snickety-snack.  And waited for him to fall blessedly back to sleep.

My mother is the reason for my snotty nose.  

 

As I laid my little head back down on my pillow sometime after 4, the only thing that I could think of was:

1. I should not have taken him outside this afternoon to rake the leaves.
2. My alarm clock is going to go off in 2.5 hours.  That is not enough time to get the exact amount of beauty sleep that I need.

My alarm did not need to go off because Finn started shifting in his bed and trying to breath through his stuffy nose holes around 6 and Uriah was giving off enough body heat to melt the entire state of Alaska.  So, once again I was awake.  Awake.  AWAKE!  Finn snoozed off and on for about an hour or so.  I had enough time to take a shower and do my hair and even put on make-up (in a lame attempt to downplay the puffiness of the morning.  I was unsuccessful.).

Abby decided this morning that she was going to eat breakfast at school, which is fine, she can eat breakfast at school 2 mornings a week.  However, she decided that she should get up at 6:50.  In the morning.  I'm not really sure why...she doesn't have to go out to the bus until 7:50, so she usually gets up at about 7:00 and if she's not eating breakfast at home, she's just saved herself another 15 minutes.  Which means that this morning she had almost a half an hour to kill before she had to leave for the bus.  So, I had her pick up some clothes that she had dumped on her floor and she read for a little bit.

And then I noticed the tights.

They were the black sparkly tights that she got for her Halloweener costume.  Now, this is a school of uniforms and I'm pretty certain that black sparkly tights are NOT on the approved attire list.  Let's all take a collective moment to remember that my sleep was stunted, at best, last night, so I have limited patience already.  Top that off with the fact that I am absolutely the farthest thing from a morning person there is.  Suffice it to say that Abby had to change, she used her sassy mouth with me, and she will be cleaning her entire room, including organizing her drawers and closet when she gets home from school.  And I'm pretty sure she took her sparkly tights to school with her and changed in the bathroom.

Based on the look I got, if I get a call that she's smoking in the girl's room, I won't be surprised.  Friday's trip to Barnes and Noble will include a stop in the parenting section.  And the travel section...Mama needs a vacation.


 *Puke/Poop Agreement of 2008 was enacted the first time Abby got sick at our house and vomited on the carpet and was further amended and approved in 2009 when she got sick while still in her lofted bed (The splatter...oh, God, I can still hear it!  It haunts me).  It states that I will change the majority of the poopy diapers of any children that Uriah and I should have together as long as he cleans up all of the puke.  That includes, but is not limited to: cleaning carpets immediately, washing bedding, cleaning the bathroom, sitting up with said puking child, emptying any puke receptacles that may be necessary during the course of the illness, and spraying copious amounts of Febreeze to mask the puke odor.  Because I hate vomit that much.