Oh, (s)Nap!

What were you doing at six o'clock this morning?

I was sitting on the toilet trying to pee. I say "trying" because urination can be difficult when there's a pug nesting in your pulled-down pajama pants, a whimpering two-year-old clawing at your lap, and a six-year-old poking at his shrieking three-year-old brother with the handle of a plunger.

I just. Wanted. To PEE.


I swear I'm going to start sleeping in my kids' beds, because they must hold the secret to a fabulous night's sleep from which you awaken refreshed and revitalized. ($100 mattresses from Sam's Club ... who knew!) I can't figure out what else it could be. Seriously, every morning they bounce out of their room with so much energy you'd think they'd spent all night getting an IV-drip of caffeine. Whereas I toss and turn all night, wake up repeatedly when Curtis's alarm goes off a million freaking times starting at like 4-something. Then when it's finally time for me to (reluctantly) peel myself from between the sheets, I hobble to the bathroom (do anyone else's ankles feel stiff and sore when they wake up in the morning, or am I just old?), and only then do my eyes start to open ... but only because I get a jolt of fright from seeing my hair in the mirror. Yikes.

I'd love to know exactly what it is that makes my boys energetic enough to sword fight and pretend to be race cars and monsters and policemen and superheroes as soon as their little feet touch the floor. I guess it's because when they sleep, they sleep ... unlike me. They don't lay awake with their brains running a mile a minute, worrying about work and balancing bills with paydays. They don't sleep with one ear trained to hear the slightest cough/whine/barfing sound from the other room. They don't get up a bazillion times a night to pee (thanks, fetus) ... and even if they do, they aren't distracted by a blinking green light on their cell phone and stop to check their email - and then Facebook - at like 2 am.

I'm pretty sure I haven't gotten a solid night's sleep in the last seven years. And that's starting to take a toll on my ravishing beauty, y'all.

Most days, I have the opportunity to take a nap. Theoretically, I mean. Colin's at school, and I have the two little ones on the same nap schedule so that I've got about two hours of (sweet, valuable) "kid-free" time. So yes - technically, I could use that time to catch some ZzZzZs.

But.

Here's the thing about grown-up naps - or grown-up naps in my world, anyway - they kind of suck.

First of all, I feel guilty for even taking a nap in the first place. Because there's soooo much I really should be doing instead, while I've got a chance to do it without "help" from the boys. Laundry. Dishes. Writing. Cleaning the toilet. On the rare occasion that I get past that guilt, my nap almost always turns disappointing. Like ... my phone rings. Or people text me. And if I turn my phone off, or silence it, I inevitably miss an important call - like the school nurse's office saying, "Your kid is sick, come pick him up," or some other minor emergency. Or I'll lay there thinking for so long that by the time I actually start to nod off, one of the kids is awake - and there goes my chance.

Barring all that, on the once-or-twice-every-six-months that I do actually get an actual, sleep-filled nap, I always wake feeling like crap. I don't know if naps have the same effect on anyone else, but I can almost guarantee that I will awaken in two states: grumpy and hungry. And before I've fully come to, I've snapped someone's head off and inhaled half the contents of my fridge. Plus I always feel ... behind. Like I'm scrambling to catch up with the stuff I should have been doing instead of napping.

People tell me that when my kids get older, it'll be easier to sleep. My sisters, whose children are grown and almost-grown, can nap with the best of 'em. So that means I'll start to get some decent sleep in, oh, about .....

... twelve years. Damn.

Wonder what nearly twenty straight years of shoddy sleep will do to a person?

I guess I'll find out ...