My darlings, all of them, have been a bit sickie lately.

Don’t worry, it’s not really dire or anything. It’s just this:

A never ending, wet hacking that sounds like a seal with smoker’s cough. I tried to google that, and you would be shocked, SHOCKED at the images that popped up. Thank you, interwebs.

The boys walk around in a sort of pleghmy haze, coughing and hacking like that happy “Bring out your dead!” plague scene in Monty Python. In fact, if my little urchins learned how to speak in a Brit accent and dressed in rags and cheeky British satire, we could audition.

‘Course, Monty Python’s Flying Circus is no longer. It is an EX-Monty. The Flying Circus has ceased to be.

(You see what I did there, right?)

Anyhow, I really have nothing more to tell you, except that with all this pathetic wheezing, I am feeling a bit tired. Also, it’s just possible I haven’t had a normal night’s sleep in about five hundred days. Or three. Somewhere in there.

And I told you that to tell you this. After six years (plus nine long months, but who’s counting) of being a mom, I have learned an important truth:

Mothers, you can give sleep a big fat kiss goodbye.

Yes, I have learned other things as a mom, like how to get eyes in the back of my head and quelling tantrums with one withering glance (this took practice, but it works like a charm on the hubs, every time), and how to refer to broccoli as “little trees” to amuse your children into eating it.* But the sleep thing? That’s been a tough one.

Let me illustrate for you (since I am really, really tired and pictures are easy)

SLEEPING. BEFORE KIDS:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What? Oh. Well, all RIGHT. The lawyer would like me to state the following,

Disclaimer: Woman in bed is not actually me. She’s a stunt Momsie. And while we’re at it, my bed is not, nor was it ever, that white. And the hubs is not pictured above because, well, he would be sleeping with ANOTHER WOMAN and that is NOT the kind of blog I am running here, ya’ll.

And, also, I think she really needs to wash her makeup off at bedtime; that is so not good for your skin.

But I digress.

 

HERE’S SLEEPING. AFTER KIDS:

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, I know I have written about this no sleep clause after childbirth thing before. I apologize. There are two reasons for this:

1. WELL I’M TIRED, PEOPLE.  GIVE ME A BREAK.

2. It never ceases to amaze me, children. They are, like, relentless. They just keep AT you, like for food, and endless drinks of water, and because they want to come cough on you at three in the morning. Why must they cough on us? I don’t know. (I mean, I get the food part, sustenance and all, but the coughing? Does it have to be with another?  Coughing alone is not as… fun? Coughing likes to bond?)

I once did try to convince the boys that coughing on the cat was the way to go. I mean, Steve is about the mildest, most sweet tempered cat on the planet. And so, expectorating all over him at three am seemed like a good option.

A wee problem with this was that Steve the Cat was in our bed the first time that Red attempted this. So, of course, Red got up out of his bed, grabbed his blanket, and walked his cuteness right over to the edge of our bed, and then unloaded a huge, rattling whoop on Steve, us, and the entire four state area.

All this startled Steve a bit, and he decided to exit the bed rather quickly. The other wee problem here was that he was tightly wrapped in sheets (What? He looked chilly.) and so, he got a bit zealous with his claws to get the heck outta there.

No wee Reds where injured in the coughing incident. I, however, was woken to a wired cat who decided to use my stomach as a trampoline to catapult (I AM AWESOME. YOU SEE THAT? RIGHT?) himself onto the floor.

Don’t worry, I was fine.

It was just a flesh wound.

 

*”Little trees” ? Really? This so did not work on Blonde. He just gave me a withering glance. I was so proud. He has learned from the master.