Battle for the Bed

So, you may wonder where I've been for the past four months. Oh, I'm sure you assumed many things, like that we were out having many grand adventures, some of which involved miniature ponies wearing whimsical costumes ("Look!" we'd exclaim, "that horse is dressed like Dumbledore!" And we would laugh and laugh and laugh), or that my blog was so awesome that I was forced to shut down by the International Community of Curmudgeonly Bloggers, who feared being made to look bad by my total blog domination.

Sadly, neither of those things are true (although if there is such a thing as the ICCB, I am certainly on a dartboard somewhere in their favorite bar, which is probably something stupid, like a B-Dubs)-- quite frankly, it's just the mundanities of everyday life that have kept me from posting. And also, laziness.

But something has happened that I feel MUST BE COMMENTED UPON, because it threatens to tear apart the fabric of our family, and, dare I say it? That of the ENTIRE UNIVERSE.

Namely, Ben and I have decided to reclaim our bed.

This is not a proposition that Addie is taking lying down. (HA! I made a bed pun!) In fact, she has decided to take it standing up, screaming and brandishing her trusted bedtime companion Sleepy Time Monkey like the proverbial tin cup against the bars of her unjust bed cage. This is UNFAIR, she declares. It is my right as an American-- nay, as a HUMAN-- to sleep perpendicularly between you while jamming my feet as hard as I can into your kidneys and flailing my razor-sharp baby claws dangerously close to your eyes.

This is, as most things are, all my fault. I have been bringing Addie to bed with me since she was three days old, a decision I made based on a number of valid reasons, most of which revolved around me being far too lazy to get up and nurse her in her actual nursery, and also, there is a giant TV in my bedroom, which allowed me to nurse AND catch old episodes of Family Matters, which really just proves that I am an excellent multi-tasker.

And this plan worked amazingly well for the first five months-- we snuggled, we bonded, and most importantly, we both actually slept.

But around six months, Ben and I decided that perhaps it was time to make the move. I had, after all, forced him practically at knifepoint to assemble her crib two months before she was born, a maneuver that now seemed stupidly hyper-prepared. And at six months, she took to the crib fairly well. That is, until she started teething, at which point, she didn't take to anything well except screaming and occasionally attempting to bite me on the face, Tyson-style. So, back to the bed she went.

We tried again around eight months, and again met a degree of success-- a night or two of crying, followed by a blissful month or so of peaceful adults-only slumber (not as dirty as it sounds). But again we were thwarted, this time by Ben's trip to Japan, followed by a subsequent mild but inexorably long-lasting flu.

This flu just ended on Saturday, and by God, it's time to take back the night.

Addie, grown drunk with vomit-based power, has begun shoving me to the very edge of the bed-- not a metaphor here, but the actual edge, where I have woken on more than one occasion with my face hanging about six inches from the floor, the rest of my body perched precariously on the meager foothold left for me in the bed proper. Ben has been excised from the bed altogether, his normal space usurped by her kangaroo-kicking legs. I don't know how a person who is only 31 inches tall can occupy so much space, but she has made an art of it.

But no more! Tonight is the night we begin the Battle for the Bed, and this time, we will WIN. I know this because I made this CNN-style graphic in order to pump myself up, not unlike that used during Operation Desert Storm:

How can I possibly lose after all the valuable seconds I put into creating this?

Right now, my target slumbers blissfully after only 45 minutes of protest, but I know she is only marshaling her energy for an explosive late-night barrage of sadness that no loving mother can withstand. But I must harden my heart for the time being, my eyes on the prize: a dawn that does not find me with a baby's fingers jammed up my nose.