Sleep Elf

I'm starting to think that there is a little elf in my house who is pulling all-nighters for the sole purpose of destroying my sleep! Here's how the past two nights have played out:

Saturday Night:
I went to bed at midnight because Marcus was up studying and I don't like to go to bed alone. At 2:15 am, one of our Irish setters (Riley), started barking. Just once or twice, but very loudly. Three minutes later, he did it again. He continued this intermittent barking for OVER AN HOUR. I tried everything I could think of to get him to stop: refilled his water and food bowls, let him into the yard in case he had to potty, scolded him, petted him, and finally yelled at him (whisper-yelled, since everyone was asleep). I don't know if one of these things worked or if he just got tired and ready to go back to sleep, but the barking finally ended. Unfortunately, I was all worked up and couldn't go back to sleep until around 4:30 am. The kids were up at 6:15, so I went into Sunday with exactly 4 hours of sleep.

Sunday Night:
Sunday was a very busy day for me, and I was ultra-exhausted by the end of it. I went to bed at 9:30, only to be woken up an hour later by a really, really loud thunderstorm. I couldn't fall back asleep until shortly after Marcus came to bed at 11:15. Then, the mischevious sleep-stealing elf made its way into Ethan's room. Ethan woke up screaming "Mama!" (as only he can) around 12:30 am. I gave him a cup of milk in case he was hungry, and then rocked him back to sleep. Over the next four hours, Ethan got up FOUR MORE TIMES. That's as bad as he was when he was a tiny baby! I tried everything I could think of that could be bothering him. At one point, Marcus suggested putting warmer pajamas on him in case he was kicking his blanket off and getting cold. Neither this nor anything else we tried worked...he just kept waking up every 45-minutes and yelling for me. Finally, around 4:30, I gave him some Motrin (hoping that it was the molars that are breaking through his gums that were bothering him). After that, he slept straight through to 6:45, giving me a full 2 hours of sleep (longest stretch of the night).

Needless to say, I did NOT enjoy this flashback to tiny-baby days, and I am very glad that weeks-on-end of sleep like this are not on my near-horizon :)