Don't Wake Me

I've been an absentee blogger. I think of things I need to write about on here all the time but the truth is, I'm just too exhausted to write it down.

Miles, formerly known as "the easy one" has taken up the hobby of torturing us. The most significant damage is done in the form of sleep deprivation, since Miles has decided that sleeping is for wusses, and he's no wuss, so he likes to wake up at 5:00. 6:00 at best. Every day. No exceptions. Weekends shmeekends! That boy waits for the first sign of dawn and starts screaming like a banshee until we get him. I have tried telling him that roosters don't scream, they cock-a-doodle-do, and I've also reminded him that he's not a rooster, and it's not his job to wake us up so damn early every day. We're going on at least three weeks of this madness. Jade and I are making pouches with the bags under our eyes. They're so deep we can store a hand full of cheerios in them.

All sleeplessness aside, Miles has also decided he'd take up the personality of a cantankerous 90 year old man. He complains about everything, and when he doesn't get what he wants, he throws toys like they're empty beer bottles. In a last ditch effort to get us to feel sorry for him, he collapses in a pile on the floor, screaming and red faced. Usually sitting, he folds completely in half and rams his head against the floor in protest.

Aside from not sleeping, and constantly complaining, Miles has decided he needs to scale every piece of furniture, every toy, every wall, in our house. I'm pretty sure he'd climb to the roof if we'd let him. The routine is climbing up, getting down, climbing up, getting down, climbing up, falling down, climbing up, getting rescued from another fall, climbing up, being removed from the piece of furniture, throw a screaming fit until he finds something else to climb. He needs a trapeze harness I think, because I'm tired of serving as his bodyguard all day, every day.

In the small chunks of time that Miles decides to take a break from climbing, he's engaging in a love/hate/but mostly love relationship with Lilah. If she's sleeping, he's pretty obviously bored and unhappy until she wakes up. He wants to go "up" to get her, and when he can't, he is insanely unhappy. I try to explain to him that Lilah doesn't get up at 5:00 am, and that she will sleep for another few hours, trying to convince him that sleep is awesome (everybody's doing it!,) but he doesn't care. When I get him from his room in the morning, Miles frantically points to Lilah's door, shouting "that, that, that!!!!!!" and when we pass her room without entering, he reduces to a pile of shrieking tears. For the next few hours I have to work diligently to keep Miles entertained enough that he doesn't pace the stairs, which is usually a fail. Once Lilah wakes up, Miles is immediately happy and vibrant, and gets right to violating her personal space as much as possible, which Lilah usually enjoys reciprocating. The next few hours of my morning is spent refereeing them as they proceed to attempt to sit on each others' laps, steal each other's food and drink, and get in front of each other's TV view. With all of the angry screaming, you'd never know that Miles loves Lilah best of all.

Last but not least, I can't sum up my dear son without explaining the many hickeys, fang marks, and bruises that decorate my arms, legs, neck, shoulders, and various other parts of my body. Miles is a biter. He bites constantly, for every reason. He bites if he's excited, if he's happy, sad, angry, bored, tired.... Not only does he have a nice mouth full of teeth to make a decent sized chomp mark, but he's also got a razor edge on his front tooth to amp up the pain factor. A while back, on a climbing endeavor, Miles managed to chip a tooth, and the result was a pretty uniform razor, jagged edge on his front tooth, that helps him deliver quite the bite. I believe I'm his most frequent victim, but he does enjoy dolling out an occasional bite punishment to Lilah when she gets a little too heavy handed with him. So when you see me, please know, I'm not a junky, I do not have anemia, I don't have a relationship with a vampire, and no, they're not hickeys. They're simply artifacts to demonstrate how much I hold my son these days and serve as his pin cushion. War wounds from the battle I'm losing against the much dreaded toddler bite.

After many discussions of how our easy going Miles managed to turn into a high maintenance hellion over night, Jade and I often wonder if we'll ever get our easy guy back, or if we just don't make easy kids. Of course we love Miles and are enjoying him more than ever. He's walking, talking, and has a really great sense of humor and vibrant personality. But he's keeping us on our toes these days, and keeping us very surprised! At the end of the day, we'll keep all of these new facets of Miles we've recently discovered, except for the sleeping thing of course. Because waking up at dawn at this house, is truly unacceptable.