Sometimes

Last night was hard. I couldn't sleep, my head too full of worries about Iyyar. The minute I heard my husband fall asleep, I got out of bed, pulled on a sweater and went back to reading journal articles on obstructive sleep apnea (which, truthfully, was good for me; it's better to be informed). By the time I was really ready to sleep, it was 2 am; as I walked past the boys' room, I heard Iyyar wake up and cry for me. I went in and settled him, but it was too late; Avtalyon was up. I nursed Avtalyon back to sleep and got into my own bed, but just as I was getting under the covers I heard Iyyar wailing again. So I went back into their room and just climbed into Iyyar's bed next to him. "I'm right here," I whispered, "Go back to sleep." He gave me a look of mingled surprise and delight, and went right back to sleep with a contented smile still on his face. I went to sleep too, after a while, and slept till around five, but curled up on half (okay, two-thirds) of a toddler-sized mattress bordered on three sides by headboard, wall, and footboard (and on the fourth side by a sleep-disordered toddler) is not the path to restful slumber. I woke up at around 5:30 and got into my own bed; a few minutes later I heard Avtalyon, up for the day. My husband got him up and changed and let me stay in bed until 7:30 or so, at which point I did finally stumble out of bed and into the kitchen.

Barak was already there, dressed and ready go to. "Am I going to school this day?" he asked me, as he does every day, in his own peculiar turn of phrase. "Yes, but Iyyar's still sleeping. Did you eat breakfast?" "No." "Okay, go get a banana while I nurse Avtalyon, okay?" He did, and found the banana good. "There's no squooshy stuff and no brown! It's just white! I'm going to gobble it all up!" Avtalyon, having at this point been up for over two hours already, was ready for a nap by the end of the nursing session; I went to put him down and was surprised to find, on my return, Barak standing there in coat and mittens, totally ready to go. I was so tired it was as though someone had hit the fast-forward button--wait, wasn't he just standing there not in a coat? What happened? I looked at the clock, and saw that we still had ten minutes. I looked at the counter, and saw a bag of Brussels cookies. I wanted one.

"Barak, if I do something that I am never ever going to do again, are you going to want me to do it again or will you just accept it as a pleasant surprise?"

"I'm going to just assept it as a pleasant surprise."

"Okay." I took out two cookies and handed him one. I cracked open a diet coke and took a swig. We stood there munching, and just as I was contemplating a second cookie for each of us, Abba walked into the kitchen. "Abba, I've been meaning to talk to you about these hallucinations you've been having. Because you're not seeing anything at all unusual right now. You and your dad both have this problem, I've noticed it before." I passed Barak another cookie and we crunched on companionably.

"Yeah, I should probably look into that, shouldn't I."

"Uh-huh." Crunch, crunch, crunch.

"Abba, can I have some milk?"

"That part's not a hallucination. You can give him the milk."

"Um, okay."

Someone, at least, had a very pleasant morning.