Moonlight Serenades

Last night my friend Jess came over for a visit. She brought the new baby a present, and brought a big sister present for Paprika, too. Somehow she knew how much Paprika loves bubbles. I'd say her present went over pretty well! Paprika had to use it right away!



For the past month or so, Paprika has been sleeping like a normal person...or I should say, a normal adult. She goes to bed around 9:30 or 10pm and wakes up around 8:30am. She doesn't take any naps. All my friends tell me about the 2 to 3 hour naps their two year old takes each day, in addition to the 12 hours of sleep their child gets at night. That is not how it works here, and I'm fine with it. After two years of Paprika sleeping like a college student (to bed at 3am, up at noon), it's good to finally have some daylight in our lives.

Well, of course, nothing is constant here except change, right? For the past few nights, Paprika has gone to bed at her usual 9:30 or 10pm, and then at 3:30 or 4am, she comes into our room and starts singing to us. There's really nothing I can do to stop her from doing it (we've tried), except maybe yelling at her- and I like her singing, so I'm not going to do that.

The only way we can get Paprika to go back to her room at that hour is for me to go into her room and sleep on the extra bed in there...the bed that's supposed to be hers, except she still likes her crib, and prefers to sleep there...since she can get out very easily now (we put the rail down and she has a big ottoman as a stepping stool). Paprika won't sleep in our room...if she comes up on the bed, she wants to stand and jump and sing at the top of her lungs...which makes it hard for us to sleep.

So, for the past few nights, I have gone into her room at 3:30am to sleep and have been serenaded for hours with "That's How You Know" from Enchanted, and "A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes" from Snow White. It's ironic that Paprika loves Enchanted so much because my next door neighbor all during grad school was Amy Adams, you know, the star from Enchanted who sings that song! Every time she sings it, I have flashbacks of Amy singing songs on her way down to the laundry room.

I think Paprika inherited her disinterest in sleep from her parents. We are both notorious for being able to function and thrive on very little sleep. It's like she got the super mutant strain of sleep deprivation from us. But even though I am not a big sleeper, and neither is Mr. Mustard, we like to sleep sometimes.

I am wondering how this will all shake out when the new baby comes home. I won't be able to go and listen to the dulcet sounds of Paprika's serenade at 3:30 am when I have a newborn to feed. Things are about to get very interesting!