An ominous start to the day...

[Editor's note: This, like all posts that date prior to January 9, 2007, was originally posted at my former Woebegotten Wonderland blog that was destroyed for many very good reasons and a few pretty pathetic ones. They will all be labeled as "re-runs" here. I apologize for the blatant recycling hack-job, but the truth is I don't write that much and some of this stuff is probably better than I am likely to write any time soon. It seemed such a shame to let it go to waste.]

Caleb wakes up at around 3:00 some mornings just wanting to be held and loved. Josh and Maggie went through the same thing at his age. I don't know if it's night terrors or what, but about once or twice a week Caleb will revert to being an inconsolable baby in the middle of the night.

On a good night, his mother or I will go into his room, talk to him, comfort him, hold him for a few minutes, and put him back in his bed. On a bad night, we'll just bring him back to our bed with us and try to go back to sleep. On these nights, Caleb never has trouble going back to sleep. We might.

Caleb likes to sprawl. He just stretches out and gets comfortable. He also, for whatever reason, really likes the headboard on our bed. He likes to touch it. He likes to press himself up against it. He likes to maintain constant contact with it and both of his parents. This means that Caleb will often, if given the chance, be found laying perpendicular to us across our faces and pillows in the middle of the night. It is for this reason that we are much more likely to get him back to sleep in his bed than ours. We've been down this road before (with Josh and Maggie) and we don't like it.

Last night Caleb was pitiful, and I was weak. I brought him to bed with me. I snuggled up with him and got him back to sleep in a relatively reasonable position. All was good.

I made, however, two crucial mistakes.

1). I didn't account for his ability to squirm in his (and our) sleep and get into his preferred position laying against the headboard.

2). I did not check the condition of his diaper or change it.

This morning I awoke to Caleb laying across my pillow, with pee all over it and him.

That's right, my pillow had been peed on.

I actually have two pillows on the bed that are mine. When I go to sleep they are stacked one on top of the other. I often have allergy issues and difficulty breathing, so propping my head up a little helps me to go to sleep. I am a fairly "active" sleeper, however, so my pillows do not often stay in the position in which I left them when I went to sleep. Due to this trait, only one of my pillows was peed on. The other fell harmlessly to the floor in the middle of the night.

The five of us (Shannon, Josh, Maggie, Caleb, and myself) are not the only living creatures in our house. We also possess a dog (Abby) and three cats (Cheddar, Colby-Jack, and Winky). Having so many living creatures in one house means that often somebody is not getting the attention they feel they deserve. This usually culminates in someone "acting out" to obtain attention. Apparently bad attention is still attention, and when attention-starved it will do nicely. When one of the children is attention starved, he or she will generally pick a fight with a sibling or get into something that they know they aren't supposed to. When one of the animals is attention starved, they often will just pee or poop on something.

This morning, one of the cats apparently was not paid enough attention. I'm not sure which one, and so I guess whoever-it-was's plan for attention failed, as I gave it none, not knowing who to give the attention (read: punishment) to. But one of the cats peed on something. And not just anything, but something extraordinarily important to me, especially in light of what happened in the middle of the night.

That's right, the damned cat peed on my other pillow.

I can tell that this is going to be the kind of day that I would be better just going back to bed and sleeping through. I'll try the whole thing again tomorrow, right?

Well I would, except what would I use for a pillow?