This is just to say...

Phoebe had her 18 month well-child visit at the doctor yesterday. 

The doctor suggested we give her some melatonin before bed to help her wind down.

She hasn't slept through the night in...ever. Is up a billion times every night. 

Before bed she likes to (a) stand up in her bed and then fall face first, like a tree trunk, onto her pillow or (b) swing from the bed slats like a monkey (she's on the bottom bunk) or (c) roll around and turn somersaults and things like that or (d) whatever else she can think of.

This she does for approximately two hours. If we leave, she screams. And she'll scream forever (trust us). 

So we just sit there and say, "Lie down. Lie down. Lie down."

And she does...for all of ten seconds before she's up again...and then she'll hit the magic moment when we say "Lie down!" and she does and...falls fast asleep within those ten precious seconds.

But then she'll only sleep for maybe an hour or two before she's up again. And she is not easy to put back to sleep in the night. And we are running around on complete empty over here. Nothing in the tank.

Put her in a pack'n'play? Have I mentioned her climbing skills?

Put her in a sleep sac? Have I mentioned her screaming skills?

Start bedtime earlier? Sure. Yeah. We'll just...start bedtime earlier. Like she's going to go to sleep while all of her sibling are awake. Yeah. Yeah. That'll totally work. But actually she won't fall asleep then either.

So I texted Andrew from the doctor's office to tell him that the doctor suggested melatonin (we had to stick around for a while because Alexander had the bivalent booster and we had to wait 15 minutes before we could leave). Andrew was ecstatic. Like, absolutely counting down the hours to bedtime. 

We gave her melatonin and she was asleep, in bed, by 9:30! 

Does that not sound like victory for you? Well, it was a victory for us. 

Unfortunately, Phoebe's bedmate woke up with...crummy tummy...and needed to vomit quickly. But where to vomit when you're stuck on the top bunk? I know! In the corner by the wall!

That way you miss most of the stuff in your bed and the vomit instead just...flows down the wall into your little sister's bed! 

Perfect!

Miraculously, Phoebe slept through all of that. She slept through Zoë waking up and dry heaving in bed. She slept through the wet heaves, too. She slept through Zoë hoping into the shower and Daddy stripping Zoë's bed. (Actually, she woke up at some point, demanded to nurse, and then fell back asleep and went down to bed easily...I just can't remember when...it was a wild night.)

We decided to leave Phoebe's sheets until the morning...just opened all the windows and hoped the smell would dissipate. 

(Edited to add: Benjamin thinks I should clarify here that the girls sleep head-to-foot in their bunk bed, so Zoë threw up at the head of her bed, but Phoebe doesn't sleep on that end of the bed. She sleeps under Zoë's feet and she's a small person so was rather far away from the throw up waterfall, thank goodness. If they slept with their heads facing the same direction we would have 100% moved Phoebe. But they don't sleep with their heads facing the same direction and Phoebe hardly ever sleeps anyway so we didn't want to risk waking her over a little vomit at the foot of her bed...that's how desperate we are for her to sleep, folks.)

Phoebe slept until 3:00 am. 

And then she was like, "Woohoo! I'm awake! I'm awake and I don't care who knows it!"

So we're thinking, like, maybe half a dose of melatonin before bed and half a melatonin dose when she gets up to party. Because she could have used some melatonin at 3 am...

Now I have to go strip Phoebe's bedsheets and finish scrubbing last night's vomit off the wall.

And all this is to say that maybe vomiting over the railing of your bed into someone else's bed is not the greatest method of vomiting. Just saying.