It's Just a Phase

Not creepy at all. 

Do you ever have nightmares where your child has climbed out of her crib and is wandering the house in the middle of the night terrorizing all of the sleeping occupants?

Yeah, well, I'm currently living your nightmare.

This two year old sleep regression can SUCK IT.

I am exhausted and grouchy and just so freaking done with not sleeping.  But there's the rub (as my old friend Will Shakespeare would say) because the cold, hard truth about parenting is that kids don't f*cking sleep.  Everyone tells you that they do "eventually" which, I'm beginning to suspect isn't until somewhere around age 15.  But see, this is what keeps you going once you have kids, this idea that if you can just make it past this particular sleepless stage, things will get better.  That you simply have to stop night feedings, or sleep train the baby, or whatever, but that someday your child really and truly will sleep through the night most of the time. Of course by then it's entirely too late, because your sleep cycle is permanently f*cked for life and you're so used to waking up before sunrise that you're physically incapable of sleeping until a decent hour of say, eight or nine and you've turned into one of those annoying old people who can't drive after 4pm for fear of falling asleep behind the wheel.  This is what you have doomed yourself to simply by having children.

In the meantime, you wander the streets in a perpetually exhausted state, guzzling lukewarm coffee and repeating to yourself over and over "my children will sleep through the night eventually" or, "it's just a stage.  I just have to make it through this stage."  Everything with parenthood is just a stage and in between each of these stops on the sleepless express you're issued a reprieve of a day or two or, if you're lucky, a few months of uninterrupted slumber, after which you wake somewhat refreshed and completely convinced that your kid is done being a human night terror and that you've made it through the worst.  These short-lived stretches are what keep parents going, during which they are lulled into complacency and refreshed just enough to look at their children as miraculous little beings instead of the devious sleep thieves they really are

So tonight, while my tiny sleep terrorist once again robs me of any slumber between the hours of 11pm and 4:30am, I will do some deep breathing and mutter my "it's just a phase" mantra.  It's a lie - the phase of sleeplessness never seems to end with these small humans - but it's the only thing that's getting me through right now.  Well that, and coffee (so much coffee).