It’s been a while since I dedicated a whole post to my favourite subject, lack of sleep. So this post comes hot off the press with my eyes still half shut, tapping the keys with resentment in my belly.

Today is annual leave.

Today is no different to any other day, whether it be school day, work day or weekend. Joseph’s body clock has no care for what time it is. In some ways, you could class today as a lie in as I heard him about 5:45am

Today comes only days after his late night escapade whilst The Keeper was away on a conference and he (Joseph) scared the shit out of me appearing at my bedside at 11:30pm. I felt like I’d been asleep ages when he turned the lights on telling me “I’m not going to have a big sleep” Mentally, I was saying “Fuck Sake Joseph, you fucking well are” when actually I knew he was probably right but one thing was for certain, I wasn’t getting up at 11:30pm! I frogmarched him back to his room and rattled off my usual threats “You won’t be able to sleep at Grandma’s later in the week. There’ll be no iPad and Mummy will be cross”

I sunk back into a deep sleep for once and fortunately I heard nothing from him until 5:20am. Yep Joseph, you were right. No big sleep.

Last night, The Keeper took him up to bed whilst I was finishing off some work in my room and I heard him (Joseph) telling him what the plan was going to be for the rest of the weekend.

Joseph: I’ll get up and give Mummy a big cuddle

Keeper: Well Mummy may only want a big cuddle if you’ve had a big sleep

Joseph: *silence*

And he decided to go no further with the usual ramblings of the conversation.

So when I heard him leave his room at 5:45am knowing full well he will have unlocked the sleep clock and set it to the sunshine to justify his exit of the room, I inwardly had my usual thought of, Fuck My Life. Part of me was slightly relieved as I’d been dreaming that someone from work who I wasn’t particularly keen on, was insisting I had a selfie took with them so it could go on facebook. I suppose the 5:45 wake up calls was the lesser of two evils.

This morning, The Sleep Thief played a different tactic. One that I’d not seen before. One that involved him actually quietly walking across the landing and standing outside the door (after he’d done the loudest horsepiss ever in the toilet).

I opened one corner of my eye and could see him bob down and crawl across the floor, like he thought he was doing it in stealth mode. It took him five minutes to crawl from the door to the bed (approximately 3 metres) and at this point I was picturing Gorilla Man from last weekend’s London Marathon who I do believe is still crawling across the streets of London.

He kept looking up at me to check whether I’d seen him and with the corner of my eye still only slightly open, I pretended I was still asleep. I knew Joseph’s patience wouldn’t last for long and he began little coughs with the intention of trying to wake me up. I ignored him and he got closer and closer until I gave in and with eyes still closed, waved at him.

He gave me the cheesiest grin and got in bed and told me “Your hair looks nice” (picture hair from Lion King at this point) “Are you ok Mummy?”

I smiled back and said “~~Fucking~~ Brilliant”.

I’m a sucker for a smile and a cuddle.

Well played Sleep Thief. Well played.