you'd expect parents of a newborn to be sleep deprived, right?

what about parents of a four-month-old? or a two-year-old? or even a three-year-old?

kenny and i are sleep deprived. our infant son, who slept for 8 straight hours at night for weeks after he was born has decided to wake several times during the night. he is even waking his daddy up (which never happened in the beginning) and (i'm so lucky!) his daddy gets up with him in the middle of the night as well! thus, we are both sleep-deprived.

our older sons share a room. rowan (3 years old) has decided that 6:09 a.m. is a great time to wake up for the day. when he wakes up, he wakes the entire house up. if we had neighbors closeby, he'd wake them up as well. so sawyer, bleary-eyed and oh, so tired wakes up with him. in october (and in the coming months), 6:09 a.m. is as dark as 2:37 a.m., or 12:56 a.m. he didn't believe me when i told him it wasn't morning. afterall, daddy had already left for work, so it can't be the middle of the night.

and yesterday, after waking at o-dark-hundred, neither older boy had a nap. you should have been at our dinner table last night: much screaming and yelling and carrying on, and not much eating (i'm talking about the boys, not kenny and me. although we were close to it!).

i write this not for pity, but for company. i just want other sleep-deprived parents to know that you are not alone. we're all sleep-deprived. i think there is something in a book somewhere written at the Beginning Of Time that parents of children under 16 don't get any sleep. and then, i am told, they still don't sleep because they're up worrying about their 16-year-old behind the wheel of a car.

what about parents of 20-or 30-somethings? I think my parents sleep very well at night. (right?)