Parenting, like a slow march toward death

I’m exhausted ya’ll. With Boof’s new job and battling a nasty sneezy-whiny cold, and Potamus cutting teeth and battling his own sneezy-whiny cold, I have had to pick up the slack. Three days I was up at 4:30 am and still went to bed at a normal time. The sleepy-in-between-times was spent rocking and nursing and laying wide-eyed on a twin mattress on the floor. I had hoped that the weekend would bring respite, but to no avail. I ate lunch at 10:30  yesterday because I had been up for so long that it felt like lunchtime.

I don’t do well with little or crappy sleep. It’s one of the reasons I had for not having kids. Because, I’m not that nice when I’m tired. Really. I am short and have very little coping skills and a propensity to throw things across the room. Basically, when I’m tired, I turn into a VERY tall two year-old. And two year olds should not be parents. I think we can all agree to that.

So in  my melodramatic early rising this morning, while Potamus was trying to shove all of his fingers in my mouth, and pinching my sensitive neck skin, I thought to myself, ‘parenting is like a slow march to death.’ The image in my mind was the deathmarches during the Holocaust, though, even in the early-morning light I knew that my plight could never compare to those who endured the Holocaust. But still, I am tired, and there’s no end in sight for this whole crappy sleep thing, and we even talk about adding another kid to the mix in the next year or two, and it feels like I am a skeleton walking. Or a zombie, and if you get too close I will eat your brains.

I know that with a few extra hours of interupted sleep I will be back in good spirits, but that’s not looking like it will happen anytime soon. I’m trying hard to let-go and be compassionate, or at least acknowledge my own crabbiness, but it is really hard. I just want to leave all my whiny boys (scrummy included, he’s been in rare form lately, barking at everything that moves) and rent a hotel room with clean fluffy sheets and SLEEP.