6:00 AM

is the worst time ever.  It's not that it's early, because, really it's not.  I woke up at 6 am back in my teaching days and my seminary days.  I can survive waking up at 6.  It's really not that early.  But it's just early enough that if one of my kids wakes up at 6, she (let's be honest, it's usually Alice waking up at 6--Rex knows not to leave his room until the sun comes up so he just reads in his closet) can't last the day.

6 am is just at the critical time--it's still dark so really I can convince Alice to get back in her crib, but it's also just late enough that she's had almost enough sleep and a little too much to really go back to sleep.  But there I am anyway at 6 am, pretending like it's 2 am so she won't know that really it's late enough to get up. I just need to rock her and get her to go back to sleep for just 45 more minutes.  Because it's that 45 minutes of sleep that let's her last until after lunch to take a nap.  Without that last partial sleep cycle, nap time is at 10, which is the worst time ever for a nap because that's when all the mom stuff happens--library story time, ward playgroup, everything that gets me out of the house and talking to other adults...oh and that build my children's social interaction skills, I mean.  And when Alice takes a 10 am nap, she wakes up from said nap at noon, which is usually when Rex (and I) have a bit of quiet time, but because Alice is awake, she will not allow quiet time to occur.  And then she's ready for bed at 7, which is just when we're finishing dinner and not quiet ready to be putting kids to bed.

And so twice last week, I found myself huddled in a sleeping bag, half-awake, singing twinkle-twinkle little star while rubbing Alice's back and rocking the La-Z-Boy while my feet slowly, and painfully fall asleep at 6 in the morning.  And yes, I was successful at getting her to go back to sleep both times, but that also meant that I spent my last hour of sleep huddled in a sleeping bag, with my legs and feet asleep and my hips on fire while holding a spitty ball of love because if I dared move, that fragile sleep was broken.