Major Malfunction

Often, in the middle of the night, I find myself wanting to ask my son "what's your major malfunction?!"

We are currently suffering through what I like to call The Suck. It is called The Suck for 2 reasons: 1. it sucks and 2. you really just have to suck it up and deal with it.

There are lots of "The Suck" in parenting. What The Suck is depends on the age, and in some cases the child. But every child has a Suck. Generally, The Suck is outweighed by The Awesome - or at least they're 50/50 - but sometimes The Suck is greater than The Awesome and you want to just reboot the day (or you know, your life) or skip to bedtime or the 1st grade. Whichever comes first.

Some Sucks are: the 6 month sleep regression, a 9 month old who doesn't sleep through the night (because most don't, so don't get your hopes up), weekly tantrums, suddenly becoming a picky eater, etc. Sucks are temporary, which is the bright side of a Suck.

Griffin's Suck is sleep. It's always been sleep, and will probably be sleep for awhile longer. The Sleep Suck is one of the worst Sucks to have (with the exception of the Colic Suck, which is *also* a Sleep Suck and thus is a double whammy of Suckage). All Sucks suck, it's in their very nature, but some are more sucktacular than others.

And the Sleep Suck is pretty much the worst Suck.

Sometimes the Sleep Suck morphs into what I like to call Hell. And I call it this because it's pretty much the perfect description of the situation. Hell happens when your 3 year old doesn't sleep for 24+ hours (yeah, I know someone who dealt with this on a regular basis). Hell happens when your child goes to bed at 12am and wakes up for the day at 4am for an entire month. Hell happens when you cannot take your toddler out without a full meltdown and so are forced to water down milk in order to make it last the day.

I have not yet experienced Hell. But I know parents who have.

What we are dealing with right now, is just Suck. Which sucks, to be sure, but it just something that we have to deal with - unless is morphs into Hell, in which case I am driving them the 3 hours to Sacramento so I can have a weekend of SLEEP.

This incarnation of Suck is regular night wakings - every 45 minutes or so - that come with whining, plaintive cries of "mama!", and often an emphatic (read: loud) request for milk. This means that G is up at least 8 times, sometimes more. Getting him back down is sometimes easy, sometimes not and it's hard to tell when he's going to need more help self-soothing.

So we're tired. *Almost* newborn phase tired. And really? I haven't gotten consistent good sleep since Penelope was born and damn it, I deserve it. But there's not a whole hell of a lot I can do but comfort the G-man, keep trying new things to help him learn to self-soothe, and just wait it out.

But mark my words. Child will be getting some sweet, sweet revenge when he's a teenager. Mommy holds a sleep-deprivation grudge. For sure.