A Good Night's Sleep

In the past two weeks I have become just a tiny bit obsessed with the Twilight series written by Stephenie Meyer. In case you don't watch TV and haven't seen the trailer for the soon to be released movie advertised over and over again, it's basically a love story....oh yeah, and there just might be vampires involved! (Edited to add that there may be some details/spoilers about the series in the comments so if you are reading or planning on reading them, you can still leave a comment, just don't read the others! I know, I know - overkill, but I'm one of those who wants to know nothing about endings or plot twists at all!)

It was similar to reading the Harry Potter books because once I started reading, I couldn't put the book down. The big advantage with Harry Potter was that I read them as they were released so I had a few years to wait in between each book. A few days of obsessive reading = no big deal, right? But with this series, all four were already published by the time I got hooked. So that meant I had four 600 (approx, the last one was more like 750) paged books to read. Because there was just no way I could stop and take a break when I didn't have to!

So that has been what I've been doing in my free time for the last two weeks and I am happy to say that now I am done. Last night I powered through the last few hundred pages of Breaking Dawn because I really need to reclaim my life!

What does this have to do with sleep? Well for one thing, vampires don't sleep...no that's not it! I've been staying up late reading and when I do finally tear myself away it's not because I'm that tired, it's because Matt is next to me mumbling "go to bed", and I finally do. Unfortunately that means that I am laying in bed wide awake, because it's not like I've been reading a book of bedtime stories. So then my wide awake brain starts thinking of all sorts of random things, mostly things I need to do or forgot to do during the day. Or I start thinking about Christmas shopping or planning Ella's birthday party. Just imagine trying to go to bed right after watching your favorite team win a big game or an intense action movie and that's how I am. Unless you are all blessed in the same way my husband is and you can fall right asleep no matter what.

So I've been feeling pretty tired but I can't blame my vampire books totally for my lack of sleep. Catherine and Ella both have had colds/coughs for the past week and just recently Ella started waking up at night coughing and coming in to our room so I was awake with her for a few nights. A side note...we took her and Catherine to the Dr's after their coughs wouldn't go away and found out Catherine has bronchitis and double ear infections and Ella is moving in the same direction! Anyway, a coughing child and intense books have kept me up late a few nights in a row. I woke up yesterday and I had a headache already. Add that to the fact that I was out of my favorite creamer and had add milk to my coffee. Ugh. The headache was a whopper and Motrin eventually did the trick, but I still felt kind of sluggish. I went to the grocery store and to get medicine for the girls and felt like I was in slow motion the whole time.

I knew that I really needed to get a good night of sleep and start feeling normal again. Around 10:45 pm (yup, still awake - I always have more energy at night, no matter how tired I felt during the day) I decided to take not one, but two Tylenol PM's. I rarely take them and when I have in the past I only take one at a time. The directed amount is two, but I have this fear of falling so dead asleep that I am not awoken by my kids crying in need (Matt is such a heavy sleeper that I don't have confidence that he, even in a drug free sleep, would wake up.) It was a big thing for me to actually take two, but I knew that I really needed some good sleep. I remember laying in bed around 11:15 feeling pretty sleepy. I also remember thinking that I better fall asleep soon and then I opened my eyes and saw that it was 6:45 AM! Do you know what a good feeling that was? I shut my eyes and opened them again at 8:00 AM because Ella snuggled in next me and exposed me to the frigid air of our unheated (oops, Matt forgot to turn the heat on after working on the plumbing yesterday) bedroom.

So now I know that two Tylenol PM's really will put me to sleep! I also feel so much better getting eight solid hours of shut eye. I also don't have anymore vampire books to read and Ella has antibiotics and cough medicine so I think my sleepless nights are over!