5a, Ronin cries. He meets me at the door and I point him toward bed. He seems bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and announces that he wants to play. "Ronin, it's 5 o'clock in the morning. No one is awake. Go back to sleep." He starts talking, but I shush him and lay at the foot of his bed. I think he stayed awake for a while, and I checked on his breathing a few times. By 5:45a he was deeply sleeping again. I walked back to my bed, and then at 6:15a Nikko wakes up. I go to his room and lay down while he chatters away. 6:45a Ronin is awake and I usher him out of the room quickly so Audrey doesn't fully waken. Looks like a pattern here, eh? I think I wouldn't be hurting so badly if I weren't going to bed at 1:30a. So, I'll go to bed by 12 tonight. I blame last night's late sleep on watching LOST on the DVR. Sorry, can't miss it!
Nikko was drowsy on the bus home and remained in fairly good spirits. After Audrey woke up from her nap, I got the troops ready to go to Costco for provisions. Nikko was drowsy and fell asleep while I was getting gas, so I had to wake him up when we got there. Ronin had fallen asleep in the cart while Audrey and Nikko stayed awake and behaved rather well. Nikko wanted to open the packaging of a book that had little cars in it so I had to quell him with a Dum Dum lollipop. We got home and I snacked the kids. Then I was able to open these books with little cars in them and for the first time in months, the kids were playing while the TV was off. The silence was almost screaming in my ears! It didn't last too long, but it was kind of nice to know that the kids could play without the background noise. Of the little cars, there were some Disney characters mixed in, including a little Nemo and Bruce the Shark which Nikko commandeered for most of the evening. Right now, Nemo is MIA so Nikko has Bruce with him. Nikko was tired by bedtime and I watched his eyelids fight closing when prayers were finished and I was tucking him in. I absolutely love the evenings when he is so tired that he falls asleep before I leave the room. But this way of drifting off is so different from what I saw last night. Nikko was not completely sleepy at tuck-in time, although he was tired. When I leaned close to him so I could sing the Good Night song, his eyes were darting everywhere except at mine and his breathing was shallow as if he were very anxious, and possibly scared. I sang to him and tried to soothe him, but it wasn't working. I knew that when I left the room there would be tears. I tried to give Nikko some big hugs and shoulder squeezes, but he still looked so anxious. When I got up to (almost) leave and reposition his blanket, his eyes closed really tight and he started to whine. When I did leave to go tuck in Ronin, Nikko started wailing. I heard heavy things moving around in his room and when I came in, he was trying to move the rocker glider toward the light switch. I pointed him back to bed and dragged the chair into the hallway. Again I tried to reassure Nikko but he was still anxious. I left the room and he had another spell. I could hear him moving around, so I didn't wait long to reenter. When I did, he was sitting up in bed with his blankets balled up around him as if he were trying to straighten them. I helped him out, said the Good Night Mantra, and left. This time, he stayed in bed and was quiet. Thank goodness. I calculated that he is averaging 9 hours of sleep a night. I know he needs more, but don't know how to give it to him. We are going to try pushing bedtime back by at least 15 minutes. Does sleep beget sleep? That has been my question.
One more thing... there's a Wiggles movie we have called Racing to the Rainbow. It's pretty kooky, but the kids are enjoying it the more they watch it. Today I heard Nikko singing a song but I couldn't place the melody. Later in the evening I recognized that he was singing a "La la, la la, la la" melody to a song from that movie, a song about a mermaid. Once I identified the tune, I started singing it back to Nikko. He looked at me with a secret smile and he held up his hand as if to hit me in the shoulder, but he hesitated because it was more of a moment of recognition between us, like me saying Hey Nikko, I figured out your song, I'm on to you! What I'm loving is that Nikko's got music in his head and now he's got a voice to let it out.
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