4 fricking A.M.

For the last few weeks my daughter has been waking up at 4:00 a.m. everyday. Everyday. Hollering my name. It starts out with kind of a weak "mom-my" then, if I haven't answered or otherwise appeared in her room within .2 seconds it's a louder "mommy?" and if I still haven't responded within another .2 seconds it's a frantic "MOMMY!"

Most of the time she just needs to be covered back up and she's gotten her covers so completely messed up that she can't dig them out of the foot of her bed or lift them off the one side they're on. So, I go in, cover her back up, give her a kiss on the forehead and tell her I love her and tell her she needs to go back to sleep, that it's the middle of the night. Most of the time she asks me to stay in with her and lay down in her bed for a few minutes. She has a queen size bed, so that isn't an issue, I just can't sleep in her bed.

I think part of it is knowing that there's no alarm set in there to startle me out of my sleep world and hurl me into the awake world against my wishes. I'm always afraid that we'll wake up at 10am and the entire day will be lost, or I'll lose my job.

I used to be a little more prepared for this routine. I mean, after all, a few years ago we voluntarily went in and woke her up at 4am to feed her. Now that she's nearing 7 years old, my body tells me that 4am is for sleeping and nothing else.

So, for the past few weeks that this has been going on my sleep pattern has changed. On the rare night that she doesn't wake up hollering for me at 4 in the morning, I wake up anyway. Just to look at the clock and confirm that it is, indeed, 4am I guess. I just hope it ends soon because I'm getting tired of it, literally.