3am Wake Up Calls, and the Reasons Why

If you're ever struck with a case of insomnia around 3am, call my cell. I'll be there. And awake.

Two nights in a row. The kids are 6 and 3 (almost four) - why are we still getting up in the night???

Tuesday night I woke up at 3:15am to the sound of Jack and Ryker talking to each other. Jack has a habit of waking up in the night and moving all of his bedding into Ryker's room and sleeping the rest of the night in there. We don't like this particularly, but we are picking our battles, and that's not one of them.

I woke up, dazed, and prepared to launch myself into Ryker's room, scare the daylights out of both of them, threaten them with death if they didn't go back to sleep, and hobble back to bed. I opened my door, ready to storm down the hallway, and almost tripped right over Jack. He was sitting in the middle of the hallway, lights on, tub of batteries in his lap, putting fresh ones in the Leap Pad, while carrying on a conversation with Ryker, who was sleepily thrashing around in his bed.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING???"

Scared them, yes.

Threaten certain death, yes.

Only at 3:45 it happened again. Not the batteries, but the waking up and the talking. I sent Jack to his room, whisper-yelling at both of them.

Fast forward to last night. I had a whole conversation with Jack, imploring him to be a big boy and stay in his own bed. He did GREAT. Ryker did not. Wanna know why? Because his lip is busted. He hurt it at school Wednesday afternoon and I spent all of last night trying not to look at him. Christi (my cousin-like-a-sister) made me look, and I'm holding her solely responsible for the knots in my stomach.

You all can thank me later for not getting an actual picture of his lip. Except my mom, who had to look at it via Facetime last night.

Chuck thought he was fine and that we shouldn't take him in. I went along with that and put myself to bed at 9pm - figuring unconscious was a better state than awake and trying not to think about my baby's lip.

Ryk awoke at 3am. What is it about 3am? He awoke, mumbling "mama" through a severely swollen lip.

"My wip is hurtin."

I had a moment of Mommy Genius - 3 in the morning - and got him a soda can to hold against it. No edges, no bumps. Gold Star to me. I patted his head until he fell asleep again.

This morning I looked sideways at him, averting my eyes but trying to gauge the severity. Then I left the room and made Chuck take a closer look. Then I demanded he take him somewhere. Most of you know about my aversion to blood and hospitals. I have fainted more than once because of those two things.

We spent the morning trying to call the clinic, talk to the triage nurse, keep ice (or Popsicles) against his lip, and telling him to "be kind to your face."  I tried to quickly make Jack's lunch, which ended with him locked in the bathroom sobbing and refusing to go to school because I hadn't put raspberries in there. We actually DID put raspberries in there, on the second attempt, but that wasn't good enough to overcome the first error (read: the lack of attention he was getting). I told him, through the bathroom door, that he was, in fact, going to school - because one parent was taking his little brother to the hospital for his busted lip and the other had to go to work to earn money to paid for said raspberries and the medical bills. So there.

Back to Ryk. He's out of Children's Hospital - no stitches. Wash with saline and he'll be fine. Whew.

So anyway, call me at 3.