I figured we were out of the woods on the sleep front, but this past week has confirmed that may never be the case.
With our boys now 3 ½ and 2 years old, respectively, it would seem to me we have moved beyond the middle-of-the-night awakenings and other unpredictable sleeping issues that plague parents of newborns and infants.
For the most part, that does seem to be the case but not always.
It all began on Friday evening when Carson vomited in his crib, touching off a tough weekend for our little guy, as he fought off an illness that made life miserable for him for about four days.
As a result of his crib needing a complete hose down, Carson slept with us that night, resulting in neither parent getting any semblance of sleep and Pam suffering through unintentional kicks and slaps from Carson.
It was much of the same the next night, but Pam took one for the team, sleeping with the little guy and keeping him upright for most of the night, resulting again in little to no sleep for her.
The next night Carson seemed to be doing better so he slept in his own crib and did well, aside from some coughing fits throughout the night that may or may not have awoken his big brother, Beckett.
We don’t know for sure if that was it, but something caused Beckett to appear in our bedroom at 2:30 in the morning, asking for pancakes and juice.
Taking the path of least resistance, I picked him up and brought him in bed with us. Unfortunately, Pam again was the recipient of some kicks to the kidneys and slaps to the face.
It appears both our kids are restless sleepers and deliver some serious blows in their sleep. For whatever reason, they give their mom their best shots and I escape unscathed.
A couple hours later, after a battered and bruised Pam left our room to sleep in Beckett’s bed, he eventually fell asleep, but not before being assured repeatedly his mom was not mad at him.
That was the third night in a row of interrupted sleep, giving both of us that familiar dazed over look that parents don when they don’t get enough sleep.
You know it when you see it.
Beckett is like a goat. He can eat anything and everything and he never has any stomach issues.
After noticing this uncanny ability to mix all sorts of foods together throughout the course of a day, I kept track of what the kid ate on Saturday just to determine exactly what he was consuming.
He began the day with his typical trucker breakfast of pancakes, sausage and juice. Immediately afterwards, he asked if he could have a couple Skittles for dessert. Since we were headed to indoor soccer practice, where he could burn off the sugar-sparked energy burst, I acquiesced.
Immediately after soccer, his coach gave him some gummy fruit snacks, which he inhaled before we even exited the parking lot.
For lunch, a few minutes later, he had chicken fingers, apple sauce and peas. That wasn’t enough, though, as he washed that all down with a bunch of Goldfish. Asked how many he had, he said, “50-10”. He meant to say 60, but I think he had even more than that.
Throughout the course of the afternoon, I think he managed to shove in a couple dozen more Goldfish and asked numerous times for some M&Ms as a special treat.
For dinner, he had a crab cake sandwich and French fries and a couple ice pops for dessert. Some more Goldfish were mixed in there along the way.
Later, he finished off his day with some chocolate milk, but not before inquiring about the possibility of an ice cream cone from the Boardwalk to go along with it.
Black eyes have a certain charm to me.
That’s, of course, what I would say since Carson is now sporting one that was probably my fault.
Thanks to a fall from a chair last week, Carson looks pretty battered these days. It happened on my watch, as it often does (or always does according to Pam).
Rather than adhere to the “expect the unexpected” mantra, I watched as Carson maneuvered himself out of an overstuffed chair that he successfully had gotten off dozens of times before.
He was doing exactly as he was taught — going down on his belly — but his foot apparently got caught and he went headfirst on the hardwood floors.
The sound was quite sickening and even distracted Beckett from the iPad he was on nearby. My oldest son jumped up off the couch for a second and said, “Carson, don’t worry you will be fine, it’s okay.” He had no idea if that was true or not.
The thing about black eyes is they go from bad to worse to nasty before they start getting better. Usually, when they become painful to even look at, that’s when they start to quickly improve. That’s where we were the middle part of this week, and I’m hoping any day now it will just disappear.
The only problem is less than 24 hours after this fall, he had another injury at day care, leading to a major bruise on his forehead.
The end result being the end of his cherubic look for a week or so and the advent of his bruiser alter-ego.
There he was with a black eye about the size of a dime and a bruise on his forehead the size of a nickel. He was all banged up.
Add to those wounds the illness that I detailed earlier, and it’s been a tough week for Carson.
