4 am Follies

Things seem to happen at 4 am around our house, much to my cara spoza's chagrin. For example, we've had two 4 am events within the last week.

So, as you may have gathered from previous entries, I tend to work a bit past closing time. Earlier this week, I wrapped up early (the epinonymous 4 am), headed upstairs from the office and attempted to snuggle, discreetly, into bed next to my cara spoza. That was the plan, but, as I was feeling my way in the darkness, I felt a warm tube resting on my pillow. Hot coffee? No, when I started to move said cylinder, I discovered it was attached to a little Iz.

Explanation, Isabel, being all of 4 and three quarters in years and all of three or so feet, always manages, like water to occupy the entire container (which in this case is a king size bed!). She'll scootch-scootch-scootch around until her feet are occupying a pillow on one side of the bed, with her extended arms occupying the pillow on the opposite side of the bed. How does she manage to do this? Well, I'll tell you.

See, I repositioned her (head on pillow, feet facing down to the, well, foot of the bed) and then assumed my position (the edge-edge) on my bed. As soon as I settled, Isabel started running in her dream, which transduced into using her toes to play my washboard ribcage. I scootched a little out of the way, and she scootched to fill the vacuum I left on the bed. Then, she started waving her arm about wildly as if she was clearing a path through a glen. The machete that was her arm repeated connected with a bridge ... too bad for me that bridge was of my nose ... right between my eyes.

Ouch!

I scootched over a little more, rolling off the side of the bed -- [Thud!] -- and she scootched to fill the void.

Well, I was consoled with her sleep-patter: "We're almost there!" she uttered earnestly. Yeah, I was "there" all right. But "there" didn't seem to be the sleep-zone.

Last night, it was little EM's turn. She came running in at 4 am, crying "Mama! It's Isabel"

cara spoza: Oh, sweety, [grogily] did you have a bad dream?
EM: ... [weeping]
cara spoza: It's okay, honey, you don't need to tell me about it; how about we pray a Hail Mary?
EM: ... [weeping]
cara spoza:

Hail, Mary, full of grace
the Lord is with thee.
Blessed are thou amongst women, and
blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now, and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

During the prayer, Elena's weeping settled into heavy breathing. And who said there's no such thing as miracles? Miracle #1 in my book was that my cara spoza turned to Divine intervention first, whereas I would've probably exacerbated the situation by analyzing the dream to death. Well, EM needed a pillow at around 37^oC, so she snuggled up to her mama.

Her mama, after copious physical contact, had had enough of that, desiring only sleep. So she grumbled, shoved (gently) EM over to her pashti, and slunk off to the twin bed too recently occupied by a 6-and-a-half year old. Huh? Where'd she go? I wondered, for after all there was no way I could return to sleeping if I was worrying about my cara spozzzzzzzzzzzz.

I spent the rest of the night being a pillow and making sure my little girl slept worry-free. A perfect rest for me.