Feeling a Wee Bit Better

After I picked up the girls at work, we all clashed as my mother-in-law would say, "big-time". The ride home was pretty miserable. Within minutes of being home one of them was in tears over a demanding customer that told her she needed to get some communication skills. The other one had gone into her closet, put her head down and fallen fast asleep. Then it dawned on me - we are all utterly exhausted. We were in the city until after midnight last night, stopped at Walmart on our way home, and stayed up until almost 3 am once we got home. In the last week and a half there has not been much if any down time. I gathered the girls up and put them in my dark bedroom on my soft cozy bed, covered them up and got them both to sleep for an hour. I wish I had a chance to do the same, but for now things seem a little less short-circuited. I took some pictures of them in my bed - they looked so cute and sweet - just like when they were little. I would suffer a painfully gruesome death if I posted them here, so you'll just have to imagine it.

Once a Mommy.... Always a Mommy

I have a little confession to make - I have rarely seen my 17 year old daughter sleep. Kendra was a high-strung baby. I say this with much kindness as she likely inherited the trait from me. She hardly ever slept. My parents have few memories of my childhood, but they both agreed that I would lay in bed even as a very small child and recite every nursery rhyme, sing every song I knew, etc. to keep from going to sleep. I hated the thought of missing anything.
Kendra has not ever had the "in bed by 8" routine. Perhaps it was Kendra who trained us to let her sleep when she was tired instead of an arbitrary bedtime. When she was a baby, her daddy worked nights, so she and I would wait until he got home from work around midnight before we went to bed.
Last night we were all up very late, but she had to go to work this morning. She came home a little while ago and was laying on the floor in her bedroom listening to Frank Sinatra on her MP3 player because she was too tired to remove the clothes and paper and books off of the bed. I cleared it off and suggested she lay down. To my surprise she did just that, and she has been sound asleep for almost an hour now. I keep finding myself tip-toeing down the hallway to peek in on her, just like she was a baby. I am so not used to her being asleep when I'm awake. We never do things quite the orthodox way - Kendra and I - but we seem to figure it out along the way together. Sweet dreams baby girl.