ABCs of Adoption: Z is for ZZZZ

People sometimes ask what we miss the most about our pre-kid days.  For me, it is the ability to sleep.    I am a person that needs 8 hours of sleep a night in order to feel refreshed.   The last time that happened was on a business trip a month ago.   Unfortunately once I wake up I have a hard time going back to sleep.  For the last month junior hasn't been sleeping well, which has definitely had a impact on us.   He would wake up around 4 AM and come tell us he had a nightmare and couldn't go back to sleep.

 Nightmares are to be expected but I quickly saw a difference and realized that some nights he had nightmares and other nights he just woke up to go to the bathroom and wanted me to put him back to bed.   Nights where he had a nightmare I would hear him jump out of bed and coming running into our room.   He stood by the edge of the bed shaking and found it hard to talk.   I could relatively easily get him back to bed and then I would lie awake.   Nights he was just awake, he would go to the bathroom first and then casually come into our room, going back to sleep was not in the cards for either of us on these nights.    Over the last week he has been sleeping through the night which is great. I still am having a hard time making it through the night without waking up.

With his sleeping trouble over the last month he has also started to nap.   For a year he has only napped if he was sick or after a long plane trip but now they seem to be a regular occurrence.   He naps in the car, on the couch, and today he managed to take a nap at Century Link Stadium.   This last one perplexes me.  Century Link is not a quiet stadium and I was a bit worried about how he would react to the noise.   We gave him ear plugs and he still was having a hard time with the noise, I was afraid I was going to have to leave.  He decided to cover up under a blanket (a strategy he uses at home when he is overwhelmed or upset).  A few minutes later I took a peek and he was sound asleep.  I guess his bodies need to escape the noise at the stadium took over and he was able to sleep.  After that he managed to stay until the end of the 3rd quarter.

I am hoping that sleeping patterns return to normal for all of us soon.   And then when he hits the teenage years I can once again lose sleep at night but for different reasons.