my love hate relationship with the smoothie...and it's affect on my sleep.

I love smoothies.  REALLY I do.  And I've convinced my girls to like them too, which is great, because I stuff all sorts of healthy things in them, that they otherwise wouldn't eat.  Spinach, Carrot, Cucumber hidden in yogurt, milk, juice, berries and dates....DELICIOUS.

However, my body can not handle the healthiness of it.  EVERY TIME I make one of these smoothies, no matter how much or little I drink, I end up with a stomach ache.  Too nutrient rich?  Who knows.  I can eat Doritos and chocolate chip cookies for dinner and be fine, (don't tell the kids), but one 14oz glass of smoothie while I am making dinner and I'm a wreck before I eat.  Does this stop me?  No.... I know they're good for me.

Enter yesterday.  I was in bed at 6:30 pm with smoothie-tummy...and out for the night.  Well, I thought it was for the night.  At about 2:45 am  the 9 year old wakes and calls out.  Apparently the last 12 times we have told her not to wake us unless it is an emergency haven't sunk in yet.  Either that, or to a 9 year old, her blankets being twisted is of paramount importance, and without an adult to immediately rectify the situation, she will self-combust.  Anyhow, after arguing in whispers with her briefly, I leave her to sort out her blankets and back to bed.....for about  45 seconds.  "MUMMY...MUMMMY!!!"...indignant yelling now, from the 9 year old's bedroom.  Apparently she can't fix blankets herself.  We have deprived her somehow of learning this skill in her short lifetime, and are now paying for it.  I send her to the bathroom, arrange her blankets while she's doing her business, and figure that will be the end of that...

Nope.

"Mama.....mama..." from the other bedroom.  5 year old has been woken by the yelling and now wants to come to the moms' bed.  I tell her to stay put while I finish with Big Kid, and she listens.  

Big gets back into her bed, I tuck her in (she somehow won that argument....) and head to Little Kid's room to check that she has fallen back asleep.

Nope again.

She gets out of bed, we change her pull-up (a by-product of Sensory Processing Disorder is the inability to feel when she has to go until it's almost too late.  At night time, forget it.  She fills 2 pull-ups easily at night still, with no end in sight, pardon the pun), and she crawls in with us.  We have recently purchased a King Sized  bed with the realization that one kid or the other will be sleeping with us for the foreseeable future...

She gets in, and lies down, leaving me about 3" of bed, and the rest of my butt hanging off the bed.

"Move over, Little", I whisper, hopefully..

"I can't!  I'm all the way!"  She says.  I look over at my no-longer-sleeping-but-trying-to-get-back-there-as-soon-as-possible partner, miles away at the other end of the Gigantic Bed...and at the six FEET of space between her and my 5 year old daughter.  

I sigh, and push the girl over, crawl in, cover up, and hope that is the end.  I ignore the fact that MY blankets and sheets are a bundled up mess at my feet and within the duvet cover, in the hopes of falling asleep before my body realizes how much sleep it has already had and decides it's morning...

Nope.

 

"MOMMY!!!! MOMMY!!!"...I trudge into Big Kid's room, daggers in my eyes (that she can't see, thankfully) and daggers in my voice (that she can hear, unfortunately), and ask her what the problem is NOW.   Apparently I've put her favourite crib blankie, that she still sleeps under, under her sheet and duvet, UPSIDE DOWN!  The tragedy.  What was I thinking?!! Not much at 3:30 am, obviously.  She can tell, in the dark, which is the right way up of her blankie.  She wouldn't want the lions' feet on the blankie to be up by her head, oh no, that would be horrid for the last 4 hours of sleep of the night.  I voice my displeasure once more at being woken up (though this is purely academic at this point, as I hadn't been asleep yet) to fix her covers...I mutter something about disrespect and rudeness and being unfair, but fix her covers, and return to bed.

Ahh, sleep, at last.....NOT.

Little is all awake and chatty, and Buster Cat has joined us in bed, so Little must pet her.

Seventeen loud "SSSSSSHHHHHHssshhh GO TO SLEEP"s later, and the cat is settled on my nicely-nestled-under-the-covers-butt for the night, the two girls are quiet, hopefully asleep, but I'm not checking.....

And now Mokey, the 2 year old cat, and the only boy in the house, starts antagonizing the poor old lady Buster.  Trampling herds of elephants, hissing yeowling, meowing and growling ensue for the next 15 minutes....I groan and start planning this blog post in my head, because there's NO WAY I'm getting back to sleep at this point, and it's better than planning a murder-suicide combo.....

I look up at the clock and whimper.  4:30am.  I curse my children silently, and the cats....

and I realize that I'm awake when no one else in the house is...because I already had 8 hours of sleep...

thanks to 

the

SMOOTHIE.

I love smoothies.  and hate them.

It's noon now.  And I'm REALLY TIRED.

yeah...this happened.

MY 5-year-old kid is smart.  Too smart.  She is able to extract information from one situation and apply it in new ways.  Like when there's a green arrow in one video game to move to the next thing to do, she recognizes that in most other games, the same holds true.  Sometimes, however, this genius leads to some seriously funny lateral thinking.   For instance, today's stroke of brilliance:

I've been trying to teach the cats' body language to B, so that she understands when to be near them, when to leave them alone, and when to be offended by them....(grin). She usually gets mad at the cat when they put their butts in her face (who can blame her, really...), but her being mad at them often involves her yelling at them, or worse, hitting at them.  So I have been trying to explain to her that it's actually a cat's way of showing their friendship and trust - because cats and dogs sniff each others' butts to communicate. So this afternoon, as I am making lunch, Bis crawling around the floor, as she has been known to do. All of a sudden she puts her legs up in the air, points her butt at me and says "Hey mommy! You're my friend!"

great.