Off to dreamland. Now how do we get back?

            See that picture up there above? That’s Chris on New Year’s Eve. The time stamp is 11:55 p.m. after an unsuccessful hour of trying to wake her up. She didn’t make it in time to see the ball drop. The sad news is the one person in the house who was most excited to ring in the New Year is the one person who couldn’t hang.

Here's another NYE shot. Mean we are.

            The funniest part is that we tried everything on earth to wake her up for the big countdown. Three noisemakers – and those suckers are loud! – were going off in unison inches from her head. I propped her up and stuck a glass of sparkling cider in her hand. And just like Weekend at Bernie’s, she made like a sack of potatoes and fell limply back onto the couch. So we did like all giddy party revelers and covered her body in party hats, blankets and dogs, and then laughed and took pictures. We weren’t drinking, we were just being mean.

Friend's kids could hang. Not Chris.

            You might think Chris had simply worn herself out from trying out her Wii dance moves earlier in the evening, or took a nosedive from her candy sugar high. But the truth is it’s not all that uncommon for her to sleep so hard that a bomb could go off and she would wake up hours later asking why the world was littered with debris. Many a time I have been startled from my own sleep by a shaking thud that left Chris sprawled on the floor unaware that she’s fallen out of bed.

            Fortunately in the early days Chris was an excellent sleepy baby. Now that more than six years have passed it’s beginning to get a little fuzzy. But I distinctly remember calling someone – possibly my sister the nurse – asking if it was normal for a newborn to sleep through the night and being yelled at to never wake a sleeping baby. Once I got over my own claustrophobic fears and realized babies really do like to be swaddled, we rarely had a lick of trouble getting Chris to sleep.

            For years I felt pretty smug when I heard new mothers complain about colicky babies who didn’t allow them to sleep more than an hour or two at a time. Then my own reality sunk in and I had to figure out how to wake my daughter up for school. I fear that when the teenage years hit I will have to invest in a spray bottle of ice water since air horn alarm clocks apparently won’t work.

            It’s baffling to me that someone could sleep that hard and not be comatose or faking it. I’m exactly the opposite in dreamland and generally wake up at the slightest sound. I have been known to wake up in an almost instant upright position, often standing on the bed with my heart racing and wondering where the whisper of sound is coming from.

Even playtime can't be enjoyed when you're tired.

            With Chris, we must have taken the baby books a little too much to heart. You know, the ones that suggest you don’t tiptoe around your child but make everyday normal sounds and they will learn to sleep through most anything. I can attest it really does work. But the major problem with it is that when you need then to wake up because you’re running late for work, you have to move heaven and earth to do so.

            And when you don’t want them to wake up, say on a weekend that you could sleep in, that’s usually when it does happen.

            A couple of years ago our air conditioner was on the fritz and we had to spend a sweltering night until the repairmen could fit us in to their busy Arizona schedule. So as not to bake, Chris and I spent the night downstairs barely clothed on the couches.

            Halfway through the night, I woke up to the sound of the back door creak-creak-creaking open. Convinced someone was trying to steal my third-hand coffee tables, I immediately sprung into action. So there I was, standing on the couch with hands in karate-chop position, kicking wildly and using all the best moves I remembered from my cardio-kickboxing exercise videos. It was then that my big toe connected with a puffy blond curl and I realized Chris was the one opening the back door.

Sweet sleepy baby.

            “What are you doing! Are you crazy?” I screeched, making sure any robbers or rapists standing outside would be afraid of the banshee jumping on the couch.

            Contritely she closed the door, so mature as she turned the deadbolt, and returned to the couch. She laid back down and said, “I just wanted to see if it was still dark outside.”

            You can guess what happened next.

She promptly fell into a deep sleep from which I did everything possible to wake her up to leave for daycare the next morning. Finally I had to promise donuts, which is my go-to move that works the best.

So now, in preparation of the high school sleeping years, I’m buying stock in Krispy Kremes. My advice to you is that you do the same.