Sleeping is the topic of the week...

Sleeping like a baby is a classic cliche that doesn't mean what it at first appearance seems to mean.

Have you ever noticed how the people who are getting enough sleep don't worry about sleeping at all while those of us who are sleep deprived will spend a significant portion of our day figuring out how to get more sleep (when the baby goes down, when our spouse comes home, while Dora's on)?

Booboo is my sleepless baby. He has no pattern. The only thing that seems to be even a little consistent is his wakefullness, which generally comes in about 3 hour stretches. Usually. Other than that, he may sleep for 20 minutes or 2 hours. There are no clues I can use to determine which stretch this will be. One might naively believe that if he slept for 20 minutes at his last nap, then he might reasonably sleep for 2 hours at his next one. One would be wrong. Maybe. Conversely, I could assume that his next nap will be a short one since he slept for 3 hours at the last nap, only to have him sleep another 2 hours.

There are days I will try to keep him awake until 7pm or so, afraid that if I don't, then he will be awake at 5am or another equally awful time. He will regretfully fall asleep at 6:30pm when no annoyance will keep him awake and then he'll sleep until almost 9am, waking only once to eat. Or maybe only 5am. Other nights I might go through our bedtime routine three times before he finally falls peacefully asleep at 9pm. The he wakes at 11pm and 1am and 2:30am and 5am. Or maybe he doesn't. Maybe he sleeps straight through until 7am. Except I wake at 1am and 3am and 5am to make sure he's still breathing.

Bear was a wonderful sleeper. She napped at 10am at 1pm and 5pm, for about an hour at each of the two morning times and a half hour at the evening time. When she went to two naps, they were at 10am and 2pm for about 1-1/2 hours each. However, to this day, she wakes at about 6:30am. Sometimes we can convince her to go back to sleep and sometimes we can't. There was the wall kicking that would commence when she had decided she was ready to get out of her crib. Then there was the wallpaper border fiasco when I realized she needed to go to one nap. Other than waking at the crack of dawn, she's a great sleeper.

Belle is a good sleeper also. She never had the luxury of three naps since she has a busy older sister. The poor baby had to move to a single nap each day at somewhere around 11 months. Trooper that she is, it has never phased her. She is the child that can skip a nap entirely for days on end and I'd still be happy to be around her. I have recently come to suspect that she occasionally wakes up her sister in the morning, but have no proof to support this. Potty training has really thrown her for a loop as she now wakes at least once a night screaming that she has to go potty. Not yelling or calling, but truly screaming in a manner that makes you think someone might be torturing her.

All of this to say that I'm wondering how long one can survive on 4 or so hours of interrupted sleep?