Temporary? Insanity

The weekend was all kinds of lovely. Until the last two hours or so. Hours that involved tears, snatching, shrieking, sobbing, and worryingly blank looking expressions whenever the word “share” was mentioned. Three days. Four little girls aged five and under. It’s amazing it took that long for all semblance of sanity to break down.

Really though, the little girls behaved better than I have today. I have been in a full blown pout. My family went home yesterday afternoon and ever since I’ve been sulking about reading Terry Pratchett books, watching moody Jane Austen films, and watching HGTV whilst thinking nasty thoughts about the people in the shows (your granite counter tops are the wrong shade? Oh you poor POOR woman!). Okay, so I do those things most days but today I did them determinedly and to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. It’s now 10:30pm and I feel a sudden need to shake off my surly mood and do something positive and/or productive. Problem is, it’s past my bedtime.

Dang it.

I just can’t go to bed like this though. There isn’t time to answer the emails or read blogs or leave sweet or clever comments on Facebook, so I’m going to tell a quick story before I toddle off to bed. It involves sleep deprivation and a hamster wheel. Oh yes. You just know it’s going to be good, don’t'cha?

So while the girls were visiting here Emma was needy during the day time, and Becca? She was needy at night. Anywhere from 3-8 times per night. And with an uncanny sense of when I’d finally fallen back asleep again. If mum hadn’t spelled me off and let me have a nap each day I would’ve been a wreck by the end of the week. As it was, I managed fairly well. When Neil came for the weekend and offered to get up with her though, he didn’t do quite so well. By the end of the weekend he was muttering about how if she pulled that on him at home he’d consider pulling out the children’s Gravol or something to that effect. I’m about 99% sure he was joking.

Sure enough, his first night back home with the kids (last night) didn’t go smoothly. Becca kept calling out for him, saying she was scared. She had a bad dream. She clutched and clawed at him and didn’t want to go back to bed. She was almost frantic she was so upset. Neil was exhausted and running out of patience, but the last time he went in he pulled her up into his arms and tried to soothe her. Suddenly she stilled in his arms and announced quite simply, “It was Ellie makin’ dat noise!” You see, she’d looked over Neil’s shoulder and seen the hamster cage he’d put on her bookshelf before he’d gone away for the weekend. Having put the cage there so the hamster would be in one of the warmer rooms while we were away, he’d completely forgotten in all the furor of unpacking and settling the kids in for bed last night.

When he called up and told me I laughed so hard it’s a wonder I didn’t pull a tummy muscle.

I managed to stop myself from saying it was his own darn fault for buying the rodent in the first place (yeah, I’m not exactly a pet person), but I managed to restrain myself and wish him better sleep from then on.

Hee hee!

There. I feel better. No more pouting. And now, to sleep. Where I hopefully will not be punished for laughing at my husband by having hamster infested dreams….