Sleepless

Saturday
7:30AM - Phone rings. It's the delivery people, calling to let us know they have one delivery ahead of us, and then they'll be at our house to deliver our new beds. I wake Matt up and tell him if he wants a shower, now is the time. I move the rocking chair out of Alex's room and into ours while Matt stumbles out of bed, sets a speed record for showering, and starts to disassemble Alex's crib.

8:30AM - Delivery folks show up. I keep the kids downstairs and out of the way while Matt tries to stay ahead of them in clearing space before they'll need it. By 9:30, both beds are completely assembled.

9:30AM - I take Alex shopping for sheets for his new big-boy bed. He picks out one generic design with cars and trucks on it, and one "Toy Story" themed set. Then, because I'd been disgusted by the look of our natty boxspring on top of our shiny leather-covered bedframe, I go shopping for a bedskirt, and end up also buying all new sheets and a comforter cover. I'm a dork like that.

11:00AM - Matt and I rearrange Alex's room (including the very heavy bed's placement) so that we can actually open all the assorted drawers and doors on the bed and the dresser and have room to walk.

12:00noon - Alex takes his first nap in his big-boy bed. He goes right to sleep, and wakes up two hours later. Success!

1:00PM - My dad arrives with his pickup truck. We load it with the crib and old bed parts, and an assortment of other things we're getting rid of. I follow my dad to the dump (farewell, crib: you served us well for eight long years) and we heave everything out. Then I follow him back to my folks' house and chat with them about plans for going to Cancun next month.

8:00PM - Alex goes to bed in his big-boy bed. I peek in on him an hour or so later, and he's out cold, sleeping peacefully, his head on the pillow as if he'd always slept that way (instead of upside-down or all over in his crib).

11:30PM - I go to bed.

11:45PM - Just as I'm drifting into a drowse, Matt flings himself up the stairs and into Alex's room. As he opens the door, I hear Alex crying. He'd fallen out of bed. I don't get up just yet -- Alex is probably just bruised and scared, and would not actually benefit from having both parents hovering around. I stay in bed and just listen until I hear his screaming getting more frantic instead of calming, and Matt says, "Liz, he's bleeding!"

As near as we can determine, he fell out of bed and smashed his face into his little stepstool on his way down. It split his lip, scraped up his upper gums, and might possibly have chipped a tooth. It takes a good hour for us to stop the bleeding and get Alex calm enough to get back into bed. (I suggest getting out the inflatable mattress and letting him sleep on the floor for the rest of the night. Alex is adamantly against this idea; he wants his big-boy bed.)

Sunday
1:00AM - I'm in Alex's bed with him. Matt goes back to bed, but we leave the door open so Matt can hear us if we call for him. Alex has stopped sobbing, but every time I mention that I'm going back to bed, he gets teary and pouty and asks me to stay.

1:30AM - Alex is still awake. He tells me I'm taking up too much space in the bed. I offer to go back to bed, and he gets teary and pouty and asks me to stay in his room, just not in the bed. Grudgingly, I sit on the floor beside the bed. After half an hour, I get a blanket from the linen closet and lay down. Alex talks to me a couple of times, I think just to reassure himself that I'm there. Eventually, I drift off to sleep.

3:30AM - I wake up. My back is killing me. Alex is sound asleep, so I leave the blanket on the floor (and make sure the stepstool is at the foot of the bed so we can't have a repeat) and stumble off to my own bed.

5:30AM - "MOM!" I sit bolt upright and pretty much teleport into Alex's room. He's fine. Still in bed. Just woke up and spoke to me and I didn't answer, so he'd panicked. I sigh, resigned, and settle back down on his floor with my blanket. He, of course, has no interest in going back to sleep. He starts talking to me at 5:45, and doesn't stop. I manage to keep him in the bed until 6:15, but then give up and let him up. So I got, what, three and a half, four hours of sleep? The good news is, he says his injuries don't hurt anymore. I expect that will change as soon as he's trying to eat, but I'm relieved he's not in pain just from talking and smiling.

(Braz and Adin picked up some bed rails for us while they were at K-Mart, and I put them on the bed after Alex woke up from his nap. No more rolling off.)

But the good news is: the new beds are lovely, I'm pleased with the new sheets I bought, and Alex is very excited about his whole new bed setup. He told pretty much everyone we encountered all about how now he could get up and go potty and go back to bed all by himself. Also, the kid is tough, both mentally and physically -- he had no qualms about sleeping in his bed again after his spill, even before we'd put the rails on it, and aside from a little trouble biting into hard or crunchy things (toast, apples) with his front teeth, he doesn't seem to be in any real pain from his injuries.

Oh, and also! My book was released! And this time, they didn't release it just on the publisher's site, but also for distribution, so it's available at Amazon.Com and AllRomanceEbooks, and possibly other distributors as well (those are the big two, for Torquere). I'm freakishly excited, and I'm holding a contest on my writing blog -- go, enter to win!