The Facts

So, here is a picture of our life these days. Stephen finally got a job, thank heavens, that pays the bills and also gives us a little bit of wiggle room. A very little bit, but at least it is something. He is also going to school full-time and is pretty busy. He goes to school Monday from 7am-2pm and Wednesday and Friday from 7am-11am. He works Thursday-Saturday and every other Wednesday from 5:30pm-6am. Tuesday is his Saturday, meaning the only day he has nothing going on and pretty much the only day we see him. Usually he gets off work and either goes to school or comes home and goes straight to bed until he has to get up for work again. Sunday morning he stays awake until after church and usually crashes sometime late that afternoon or evening for the rest of the night. For the most part he gets about 8-9 hours of sleep a day except for Friday when he goes to school and only gets about 4-5 hours. The Wednesdays he works are a little tricky because he goes to school in the morning and then goes to work that evening. Usually he takes a "nap" before work. Sometime in between all this he has to find time for homework. He does have an hour break while he is at school as well. Now, here is my life. I am basically a single mom who gets to stay home with her kids. I don't get a lot of sleep because Pyper has decided she doesn't want to sleep through the night anymore. She gets up a minimum of once a night, usually twice and sometimes more than that. We have our good nights, but mostly we have not-so-good nights these days. Kensley goes to bed easily and usually crawls into bed with me around 6 or 7 and shortly after that Pyper is up for the day. I pretty much have the tasks that most stay-at-home mom's have like getting everyone dressed, making breakfast, lunch and dinner, cleaning, laundry, getting Kensley to and from school, grocery shopping and other errands, making Stephen his lunch whenever he has to leave, paying the bills and balancing the budget, etc. I will just stay that I am not always doing a very stellar job at all my jobs and just leave it at that. Everyone gets fed and the bills get paid. I also try really hard to let Stephen sleep when he needs to without as much interruption as possible and have something for him to eat when he wakes up and his lunch ready to take to work since he is usually running out the door.
Now, let me tell you about last night and yesterday. Friday night Pyper didn't sleep very well and I was up by about 6:30 am for the day with about 5 total hours of sleep. Stephen got home from work yesterday morning and went to bed and slept 9 hours. He got up and went to work. Kensley took a late nap, I don't think she was feeling well, and it made for a late bedtime. Pyper refused to go down for the night and I finally got her to sleep about 9:30, about an hour past normal bedtime. By the time I finally got ready for bed and Kensley was in bed, Pyper woke up crying. I picked her up, put her back to sleep and then went to bed. She kept waking up about every 20-30 minutes and I fed her a bottle about 1 am. At the moment I am getting ready to lay her down again, I hear Kensley start crying and becoming a little hysterical which is never good. I hurry out of the room as she is running to the bathroom and promptly throws up. She spends about 10 minutes throwing up, shaking, throwing up some more. When she seems to slow down I get her to lay down in her bed and she immediately jumps up to throw up again. By this time her stomach is basically empty so it is mostly dry heaving and some gross stuff. I lay her down again with a bowl by her bed. I know, gross. She won't let me leave her so I spend the next couple hours laying scrunched up next to her in the toddler bed while she falls asleep and wakes up about every 10-15 minutes to dry heave again. I finally get so uncomfortable that I lay on the floor next to the bed until 6 am with her dry heaving until at least 5 am. Thank heavens Pyper slept through all of this and didn't wake up until six. I fed her another bottle and put her back to bed. I got in my own bed and Kensley came and crawled in next to me. We finally drift off to sleep and at 6:45 am Stephen comes in to go to bed. I tell him about my night and he says sorry and goes to sleep. So, here is the question: when we have both not slept all night and me going on 24 hrs of no sleep, how do you decide who gets to sleep and who has to get up and take care of kids? I am sure you already know what happened in this house....