Alma Mater All Nighter

How fitting that we'd have to pull an all nighter while visiting our college town. Except I'm not 21 anymore...I'm still catching up on our sleep.

Every time I ever joked that Teagan was "part sloth" came back to bite me our second night in Provo. It started off innocently enough, sticking pretty closely to the ol' routine. Thinking we were wiser than the night previous, we put her Pack 'n' Play out in the living area, so we could brush & flush without worrying. She went down easily enough, and all seemed well approaching 11:00.

 

After Brandon fell asleep I couldn't help but enjoy the free cable - the 10 English channels we have get old pretty quickly. But I would live to regret that last episode of Sister Wives. No sooner had I turned off the light and Teagan screamed. A blood-curdling scream that I couldn't ignore...especially not in a hotel. Thinking that perhaps she was disoriented or scared, waking up in a strange place I snatched her up and whisked her away to cuddle in bed with us, since it worked the night before. Oh, if I could send a message to June 10th Michelle to tell her not to waste the next two hours of her life on fruitless attempts to get June 10th Teagan to sleep. Instead, I would tell her not to bother dragging the Pack 'n' Play back into our room with us, or pulling her out of it to rock her back and forth and snuggle. I would tell her to cut to the chase and just set Teagan up with a Dora DVD. That's right, in one push of a button, I squandered my chances at Mother of the Year. It became evident to me that she was AWAKE and had no intention of going back to sleep. Had we been at home, I would have let her cry it out for a while, and I'm sure she would have given up and slept peacefully. But with the walls being so paper thin, and the rooms around us all occupied, I felt badly letting her cry in the wee hours of the morning.

I broke down and we set her back up in the living area with that previously mentioned 8 episode Dora DVD and, bless his heart, Brandon offered to sit out there with her so I could get some sleep. I woke up a couple of hours later and offered to switch with him so he could get some rest. Teagan was still WIDE awake - so weird! So I gave her a snack to munch on while I...hit the play button again! Boy, did I feel like a terrible mother. But I was exhausted, this was completely out of character for her that I saw it as the easiest way to keep her contained and entertained. I promptly nodded off, but woke up when she tapped me on the face and signed for food. So I gave her another graham cracker and collapsed until morning. As far as I know, she never slept. HOW? I have no idea. But my question of "How did she eat those graham crackers so fast" did get answered. She didn't. She pulverized them.
Sleepless night + crib full of cracker crumbs = an unhappy tomorrow. This was a lot easier in college.