The little angel, she wakes up.

She's been waking up at least once a night, usually around the witching hour, for about three weeks. I had almost made peace with having to drag myself out of a deep REM cycle, walk into her room, lay her back down, pat her red head and drag myself back to sleep. I had almost gotten to the point where I didn't really have to wake up.

Then this new thing started.  For the past two nights, she's been waking up more.

And she won't go back to sleep.

This morning, for instance, my beloved and I got up four times each.  Finally, around 5:45, I gave her a cup of milk and went back to bed.  She kept crying.  By this time, having been up every fifteen minutes since around 3:45, I got out of bed and went downstairs to do Pilates.  I haven't been feeling so hot the past day or two, and I knew I was too awake to go back to sleep.  I also knew that I would deeply regret the decision to stay up later today.

Of course, about fifteen minutes into lower-body Pilates, she stopped crying. I think the milk was probably gone by then. My beloved and little angel slumbered while I worked my way through a half hour of Pilates, sit-ups, arm crunches and then, for good measure, a half-hour of lower-body yoga.  Because when you can't sleep, you're supposed to stretch a lot.  Sure, that's it.

I went upstairs at seven to get her up.  She would not wake up.  There were huge wet stains on the sheets from the spilled milk.  Maybe giving her the milk in bed was not such a good idea.  Parents do strange things when they are half-crazed from lack of sleep.  I brought her to my beloved and dumped her in our bed, thinking that would make her wake up.  She did not stir, just rolled over and shaped her little mouth into that adorable bow that makes it impossible for me to hate her for waking me up all night, even when I really, really want to.  She is cruel.  But she stuck her bottom in the air and curled a finger around my arm, pat, patting my elbow.  Good mama - go to sleep, you silly thing. Don't you know that it's time to sleep, Mama?

I stared at her in frustration. After working all day and teaching all night, I am always exhausted on Wednesday mornings, strung out from my professional ambitions. 

We're supposed to make a roadie up to my alma mater this weekend.  I'm supposed to see all my friends I haven't seen in ten years, and a few that I normally see three or four times a year but haven't seen since February.  But I'm not taking her ANYWHERE unless she can make it through a night without this late-night partying.

I stared at the ceiling, wishing the little angel would conform to my schedule. She has never respected my schedule, and I'm sure she probably won't start anytime soon.  Still, doesn't she understand that parents secretly just want their lives to go on as normal after childbirth, just bopping along with the addition of an adorable little photo-ready human in tow?  Does she not GET IT?

No, she does not.  Despite my attempts otherwise, she is a person with her own agenda.  And she is pushing it, hard.