Narcoleptic Rachel

Our sleep schedule, which is usually in shambles as it is, has been completely trashed. We simply don’t have one, but that’s what “vacations” are for, right?

I don’t think anyone is getting quite enough sleep. I know I’m not. I haven’t napped in what seems like days, although I’m pretty sure I napped on Saturday. Rachel for sure isn’t getting enough sleep. She’s been going to bed late and waking up early and refusing to nap. We’re both short-tempered.

The other night when we were wrestling Rachel to bed, she started up her usual petitions:

“No! I don’t want B-E-D! I don’t wanna go sleeping! Please! Please! Please! I don’t B-B-E-D! I don’t! Please!”

Then she tacked on the following:

“Take pity on me!”

That? is a line she must have stolen from Rapunzel on the page where the witch listens to the pleas of the young man and “takes pity on him,” letting him take lettuce from her garden to his wife. Rachel seems to have translated this to mean “give me my own way.”

I just about died laughing.

Tonight what she was screaming was mostly incomprehensible, although I think I caught a few leave-door-opens and lie-down-with-me-Mommys. She fell asleep mid-scream.

I would have been in the room with her, trust me, but remember how we’re both grumpy? It just wasn’t working. She had to go to bed on her own tonight so I left her screaming for the whole two minutes it took before she fell asleep.

Had she been standing, she probably would have literally fallen asleep.

That’s the second time today she’s acted slightly narcoleptic. The first time was when we were on the bus from Jerusalem proper to Bethlehem. She was singing in her Dora the Explorer fashion,

“Where are we going? Where are we going? Where are we goi…”

And then she, rather suddenly, fell asleep. Her head flopped over onto my arm and she went limp. She was completely out.

I was in the middle of telling Andrew how she fell asleep mid-song when her head snapped back up and she alertly finished,

“-ing! Where are we going? Where are we going? Bess-le-hent!”

It was all we could do to not bust up on the bus.

One day we’ll let her sleep again for as long as she wants…