Oh my god. Breanna will be one year old in five days and I think that to celebrate the end of the first year of her life she has decided to remind me of the newborn sleep deprivation days. First we had the nights where she would wake up just as I was heading for bed between 11:30 and midnight, and then keep me up until about 4 in the morning.

After four days of that, she had one good sleep but I didn’t get to enjoy it myself because I was so jittery from the lack of sleep that I actually couldn’t sleep much at all; the constant belief that she would wake up any minute now kept jerking me awake and I was too restless to rest.

The next night I was finally ready for some good old fashioned sleep but alas, although she slept through the dreaded witching hour, she then decided that 4 am was a fine wake up time. Yesterday she was up from 4 until about 7, after which we both fell asleep for awhile, and this morning my chances were shot when Hayley also woke up at 5:30. I gave up and just decided I was fated to hook up a heroin needle to feed coffee directly into my bloodstream. I spent most of today feeling woozy and fuzzy and just plain lost. Which is pretty much what the first part of newborn parenting feels like.

Today she was so tired that she took a two and a half hour nap, which is pretty unheard of these days. She then tried to resist bedtime but the music on “Dancing With the Stars” helped put her to sleep pretty quickly. (What? What are you looking at me like that for? It’s not the first time I’ve outed myself as being a fan of cheesy television. It’s not my fault, I am a prime target for that stuff. You know when you see these reality shows and scream, “augh, who watches this shit?!” Well. You’re welcome.)

I really seriously hope that there are no further occurrences of weird night wakings, early morning three-hours-before-the-sun wakeups, and no preschooler-playing-with-the-frickin’-kitten-at-5:30 incidents. I don’t think my body can take another day of that. I am so tired that it took me half an hour to motivate myself to put supper on the table and all I had to do was heat up the pre-cooked chicken, fries, and gravy in the microwave for two minutes.

Please cross your fingers that I get a decent sleep tonight. There is not enough coffee in the world to save me otherwise.

She’s not this cute at 4 in the morning.