My Child is Driving Coffee Bean Sales

My husband is relentless with his jabs about my coffee drinking these days. That’s right. I’m a coffee addict. Not a snob, just an addict. To that I have two things to say. First, thank goodness our friend Marc told us about the 2.5 pound bag of freshly roasted coffee at Costco that is available at an extremely reasonable price. Second, blame Emily. That’s right. Blame her. For the first two years of her life, she did not sleep through the night. That’s 730 straight days of irregular, interrupted sleep. SEVEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY DAYS. Not traumatic sounding? That’s 5,840 hours of a little sleep here, a little sleep there, a lot of dragging my ass out of bed to feed or comfort her, and a painful amount of time trying to get back to sleep. So, because of her, I am addicted to coffee in the morning, more than I ever thought possible. Sue me.

And then something happened, something amazing happened! Emily turned two, and she finally started sleeping through the night. By then I had a full-blown case of insomnia, but hey, she was sleeping and I had a husband who’d let me sleep precious extra minutes in the morning and only come to wake me up bearing my vice of choice, a glorious cup of aromatic coffee with just the right amount of sugar-free French Vanilla creamer.

And then something happened during the last month, something exasperating happened! Emily, who has been potty trained for months now, has started to wake up in the night to go to the bathroom. Sounds ideal, right? You’re thinking, no more night-time diapers, hooray! Yeah, not so much. You see, Emily is tiny. She’s just now in her “run around the house and turn all the lights off” phase because she has finally reached the height that allows her to do so. She’s not quite to the “run around the house and turn on all the lights” phase. At least another two inches of growth is in order first. This translates to her waking us up in the night again to help her go to the bathroom, turning on all the lights along the way. Plus, we’ve been cheap and kept her in traditional diapers instead of moving her to night time pullups. She couldn’t put her diaper back on herself if she even wanted to try. Oh wait, she DOES try, which adds to the length of time I am not horizontal in the middle of the night. She tries until she gives up in defeat. But there is no helping her until that happens, lest the stubborn monster rear its ugly head. Trust me, that isn’t pretty, especially at 2 a.m. Oh, and it doesn’t matter that we stop giving her liquids early in the evening, the kid can eke out a thimble full on demand, I swear.

As much as I’d like to go in her room and beg her to just do her business in her diaper, I don’t think she’ll do it. So, we’re back to getting up in the night with her. And I’m back to groggy mornings and many, many cups pots of coffee. Rather than feel sorry for me, I suppose you can be grateful to Emily for helping our economy by driving up coffee bean sales.

Now if I could just get her to pour…