Once again Emma has been sick. She'd been running a fever that sometimes reached over 104` and it really sucked. She was wimpering alot and wouldn't eat much of anything. I think we did ok keeping fluids in her, but she was just plain OUT of commission for a minute (pronounced "5 days").
On the second night, she spent the night with her Grandma Maggie...and vomitted in the bed - all over Grandma, her clothes, the blankets...probably the walls and ceiling too.
Because of that, on the third night Joselyn told Emma that she would sleep with her to be there for her if she "threw up" again. Jo didn't last 20 minutes before she left the room because Emma snores...no wait....SSSSNNNNOOOOOORRRRREEEEESSSSS so loud. I was called in to sleep with her instead. There is a reason for this...
All my life I have snored like Emma. When I was a kid, my mom and dad used to joke about my snoring rattling the door to my bedroom at night (I think they were joking...). When I went to basic training for the Army, I lived in a dorm that housed 54 of us. It only took a couple of sideways looks at me and one comment made (something like "somebody back there in that corner (now the sideways looks at me from people) snores WWWAAAY to loud and needs to learn how to shut the fuck up at night") to teach me how to not snore while I'm sleeping. I just sleep on my side or on my stomach and that keeps/kept me from snoring. If I started to snore...I heard it and woke myself up...lets just say that I was a light sleeper at that time out of necessity...I definately did not want a blanket party. I knew that I could probably do ok against one or two of them at a time...but that's not how a blanket part works. You are totally asleep when the beating starts, and don't have much time to protect yourself. Whoever has seen the movie "Full Metal Jacket" raise your hand now. Ok...put it down.
So Joselyn figures that it's my job to lay with her, because I'm sure that I've kept Jo up nights with my loud snoring. Ya see...the fear of a blanket party has faded and I tend to roll onto my back when I sleep now, which means that I snore. I know this because (not only has Jo told me ALL about it, but) I snore so damn loud that sometimes I wake myself up. Did I already mention that? So IF I go sleep with Emma, and in so doing get a taste of my own medicine, then Joselyn will actually get a decent nights sleep without the doors and windows rattling around her from my snoring.
When I lie down with Emma, I thought there would be no way in HELL that I was going to get to sleep. It sounded like she had a curtain of raw steaks hanging down across her throat and she was trying to breath by forcing air through them. The meaty gurgle of air going into her tiny body was enough to give me the willies and probably gave me nightmares. I was even scared that she may not be able to continue breathing all night, because I knew there must be some tremendous effort going into making her lungs work, pulling the air in through those steaks like that, and she was sick and weak at the time. It sucked. However it happened though, I fell asleep.
Now is another part of poor Emma's sleeping. She rolls and flails like you would not believe. If it was very cold in our house...if we relied on blankets to keep us warm throughout the night, she would probably freeze. Blankets do not stay on her for very long at all because she flails so much. When you sleep with her, you pretty much need a "redman" suit, which is protective padding worn by the recipient in hand to hand combat training. One time, she delivered an axe kick to me in her sleep that made me see stars. Her little heal is small and hard enough to focus all of the energy from her downward swing, straight into my belly. Joselyn caught one right after me, and we thought she may have cracked a couple of Jo's ribs. Because of this, I considered bringing home cell extraction gear to wear to bed, but then figured that there wasn't any of that which hadn't weathered some feces before...and I didn't want to add Hep C to Emma's problems. I thought about borrowing some football gear, but then I figured...she's little...I can take it. Apparently there's something built into our systems so that we don't really remember the PAIN being as bad as it was. That's why families have more than one child. If the mom remembered how bad the pain was, she probably wouldn't have any others. So I went to bed in Emma's bed without protective gear.
Come about 3:00 AM, I am awakened by Emma's backhanded blow with a closed fists. She does it again, the knuckles making indentions in my rib cage, under the arm at just above elbow height (you know, the sensitive area where all of the nerve endings are). She hits me about three times like that while I'm coming out of my coma, before I move over and push her away. Her eyes are still closed and I wonder what in the HELL she is dreaming about, but I am also privately happy because whoever is in her dream is being handled by a real sheepdog. She's obviously not buckling under and trying to run away...my little girl is handling her business and kicking some wolf ass. I manage to go back to sleep while nursing my ribs.
The next morning, Emma has the nerve to tell Joselyn that I kept her awake all night with my snoring. I can't believe it. I KNOW she slept because HER snoring sucked.
On my way to work, it struck me. The person who she had been pummelling (in her supposed dream) was me. She was not asleep at all when she was hitting me, she just had her eyes closed because she was exhausted. I had just been given a damn blanket party by my own daughter because I was snoring. I survived boot camp and my regular duty station in the military without being beaten in my sleep....but I hadn't survived Emma. I could just see her kneeling beside me, pinning my arms to my side with my sheet, hitting me repeatedly and yelling "It's just a bad dream PILE, just a bad dream!! Quite snoring or you'll have more bad dreams just like this!" God Help Me....
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