Sleep wars

Sleeping is often a problem in our house. Before we had kids, Charlie and I both had periods of no sleep or little sleep or not-very-good sleep. When Annie came home, she made it clear there was no way she was going to be sleeping alone. This was fine with us, but she was a very active sleeper and Charlie and I were getting very little real sleep. So we embarked on a series of sleeping arrangements that left a lot to be desired.

Annie had serious night terrors during her first months here. If you've never seen one of these, they are terrifying for the watcher as well as the sleeper. Annie would scream and kick and flail her arms around violently. It was extremely difficult to get her to stop and impossible to wake her up. So we would usually just let her ride it out and she would eventually calm down. Watching her in the grip of one of these was heart-wrenching, wondering what things from the first few years of her life might be causing such fear.

Eventually she started sleeping better, but by that time, the arrangement was Annie and I in the bottom bunk (a skinny little twin bed) and Charlie and the dogs in the nice queen-sized bed in our room. Just about the time we had graduated to Annie in the top bunk and me in the bottom one, we went back to China to bring home Bethany.

Both girls wanted to sleep in the big bed with us, but that made it nearly impossible for the adults to sleep. It's amazing how much room a 3 foot, 35 pound child can use up, especially one (or two) who has a tendency to kick and do other gymnastic moves in her sleep. So we tried different arrangements and it mostly ended up with the girls (and dogs) in the big bed with Charlie and me moving out to the couch part way through the night. Annie would sometimes bring her sleeping bag out to the living room and sleep on the floor next to me. We would try moving them into their own beds once they were out, but they often returned in the dead of night.

So we kept working on it until we were finally all in the right rooms and the right beds. And then it was time to go back to China for Jack. We have a small house with only two bedrooms on the main floor and another one in the finished basement (when I bought the house years ago, I never imagined one husband, three children, two dogs and two cats). We figured that Jack would not want to sleep alone at first so we ended up with toddler bunk beds and a single toddler bed in the kids room (thank goodness for Craigslist) I made Charlie move almost every piece of furniture around in the room until we found the perfect arrangement with the most amount of floor space.

First night home with Jack, who in China had been sleeping with his sisters on piles of comforters on hotel floors. No way was he going to be sleeping in a bed that put him at the other end of the room from them. He cried and cried and cried. So we ended up moving the single bed right next to the bottom bunk and totally messing up the nice room arrangement.

Annie is supposed to be on the top bunk, but that has become a place for her Disney Princess tent and large collection of Magic Treehouse books. Bethany is in the bottom bunk with Jack next to her in his single bed. Her bed is so full of stuffed animals and other treasures that she can't stretch out. Jack inevitably has some kind of Spiderman toy and several books on his bed. When they are really tired (= really cranky) we have to hang a blanky from the top bunk so they can't actually see each other though they are only inches apart.

Annie makes herself a nest on the floor. She has actually always preferred sleeping on the floor. When we visited her orphanage, we saw the crib and the bed she'd slept in and in the Chinese way, the children slept on a hard surface with no real mattress, so she is used to it and can sleep just about anywhere.

From the start the three of them have been the best of friends and the worst of enemies, like siblings who had been together from birth. Many mornings when I go in to wake them, Bethany is partially in Jack's bed or he's in hers. Sometimes they will all be on the floor, cuddled next to each, wrapped in their special blankets. I think about how closely they are connected now, three children from different parts of China who came so far to find their family, and hope that they keep this bond for life.