I think I broke it in my sleep

A couple of nights ago just as we were turning off the light to go to bed, a child called out in their sleep.

"MOM!"

I sucked in some air and held my breath. Neither Andrew nor I moved until we were sure the moaner was really asleep and not actually calling out to me.

"I think they're asleep," Andrew whispered eventually.

"How come whenever they call out it sounds like they're saying mom?" I wondered.

"Because that is what they're saying," Andrew correctly told me.

Sometimes it's hard to have demands be thrown at you all day—and all night—long and sometimes I wish someone else could take a turn. Living in a house with three other adults does allow me more undemanded time than I would get otherwise—for example, the girls are downstairs "helping" Grandma do her morning exercises—but still.

Last night at about four o'clock in the morning I woke up to someone screaming.

"DAD!"

Did they just say...

"DAD!"

Awesome. I was under no obligation to rush into the bedroom, banish the monsters, cuddle the child, soothe the sore throat, clean up the throw up, or do whatever it was that needed doing. I could stay in my nice, warm bed.

For once.

*poke*poke*poke*

I poked Andrew but waking him is like waking the dead. He didn't even roll over.

"DAD!"

The screaming was getting desperate—and very high pitched.

I went into the girls' room and found Rachel sitting up in bed—and Miriam wide awake, sucking her thumb and pulling her ear—and holding her foot, which, she told me, "hurts so bad I think I broke it in my sleep! I need Daddy to fix it!"

"Oh, I don't think you broke your foot. I think you probably just slept on it funny and it fell asleep—that just means it didn't get enough blood and now it probably feels a little bit prickly, doesn't it?"

She nodded. I rubbed her foot a little bit and then she asked for a cold cloth (which is the Balm of Gilead for almost any pain Rachel has had in her short little life). By this time Miriam was well awake so I invited her to come with me to go potty—may as well...we were already up. Rachel decided that she'd better go potty, too, and limped slowly to the bathroom after us, complaining that I never carry her and that Miriam should be walking because Miriam didn't have a broken foot. Never mind the fact that Rachel weighs twice as much and has been walking for twice as long as Miriam...

I got the kids back in bed but then Miriam had a terrible coughing fit and asked for a cough drop. Fortunately her coughing fit was terrible enough that it woke up her daddy, who I sent in to fix Rachel's foot because she was in bed insisting that she still needed her daddy to cure her foot.

I cuddled Miriam while she sucked on her cough drop—it makes me nervous to put her to bed with a cough drop in her mouth. A few days ago I caught her chewing up and swallowing her cough drop and told her that we're not supposed to "crunch it up." We're just supposed to suck on it so that the medicine can slowly go down our throat—it doesn't do our throat any good to have the medicine in our tummies! So she stopped crunching them up. Yesterday morning she was sucking on one and then accidentally swallowed it. She came up to me and said, "Mommy—my cough drop is gone. But not did I just crunch it up. Just did I choke on it. Okay?" And that's why putting her to bed with a cough drop in her mouth makes me nervous. Have you ever accidentally swallowed a cough drop? I have. And there have been times when I thought choking on a cough drop would be listed as my cause of death.

Anyway, so I cuddled with Miriam while she sucked on her cough drop and Andrew magically convinced Rachel that if she would just go back to sleep all would be right in the morning and then he came and took Miriam from me and she screamed the whole way to her room about wanting her mommy and then he magically got her settled back into her own bed, too.

He did it all within five minutes of getting out of bed, too!

Of course, I had already massaged, rocked, pottied, and soothed the children for several minutes prior to him getting up. But still—that has got to be a new record for getting sick children back in bed.

Now if only I could get him to react to hearing his name being called in the middle of the night like I do for mine—I always sit bolt upright in a state of panic when I hear my children shriek like that. He just sleeps through it. What gives?

Also, how can their middle-of-the-night wakings not affect their morning wake up time at all? Because when I wake up in the morning after being up in the middle of the night I usually feel like I got hit in the head with something...