Sleepless Nights

Sleeping hasn't been going so well in our house this week. Joey is trying to adjust to his new bed and Claire has a cold. I know there are a lot of people who have it worse than I do because they have greater numbers of small children or have a family member with special needs or a medical condition that causes them to wake up a lot in the night, but considering my situation, I've been up a lot this week.
On Monday night Joey and I played a grueling game of musical beds. The way we play is that when Joey wakes up, he roams around the house until he finds where I am sleeping and comes to join me. Once I think he is asleep I move to another bed to avoid being kicked for the rest of the night. Monday night was particularly bad. I lost. Every 1-2 hrs I was traveling from my bed to the couch to Joey's lower bunk and back to my bed again all night long.
On Tuesday night Claire was up quite a bit because she was sick.
I was prepared for last night to be pretty bad because I knew how sick Claire was and that she hadn't been able to nap because her nose was too stuffy. Here's how it went down:
6:45 Claire asleep.
6:55 Joey asleep.
Sounds like a good start, right?
7:30 Claire crying. I comfort her.
7:55 Claire fussing. Ignore.
8:05 Claire fussing. Ignore.
8:12 Claire fussing. Ignore.
8:45 Claire crying. Give her to Matt. They watch TV and she dozes with him in the recliner.
10:00 Claire back to bed and I go to bed myself.
11:30 Claire crying. Give her Motrin and settle in the recliner so she can sleep more upright and not be so stuffy. Take tent blanket off crib to use as covers.
1:30 After two fitful hours of "sleep" I put her back to bed. I lay down on couch downstairs because I know she will be up again soon. Use tent blanket for covers.
2:00 Claire wakes up yelling, "Need Claire's tent on my bed!" Replace the blanket tent and rub her back until she falls asleep. Retrieve king-size fitted bed sheet from (clean) laundry basket to use as covers since accessing all other blankets would probably awaken other family members.
6:53 Hear Joey's voice upstairs. Look at clock. Look at clock again in disbelief that I slept for 4hrs and 53min straight. Get up and get ready for work.
At some point in the night, Joey had happily crawled in bed with Daddy and asked for a back rub. How cute.

So there you have it folks. A few somewhat sleepless nights. I was so thankful for that stretch this morning. It helped me not to fall asleep at work today (well, that and the cup of coffee I had).

I was inspired to do this post by some old friends of ours the Strovases (how do you pluralize Strovas?) and their blog post about a far worse sleepless night that they had a while back. You can read it here: http://tableforsix.wordpress.com/2009/02/19/is-it-really-morning/
And also after chatting online with our friends from Bellingham about a night they had this week, too. It involved a 4mo old waking up 4 times, a 2 yr old up 5 or 6 times, a 4yr old who wet the bed and an almost 6yr old who had a nightmare. Yikes. I've got it easy.
Now someday, when our kids are grown, we will look back on these nights and miss them, right? OK, maybe not miss them but at least we can laugh about them. My challenge to you is to write about your worst night of sleep in the comment section or on your own blog. Maybe we can all have a good laugh ... when we get done yawning.