I am a huge proponent of sleep. Without it, I cannot function. In fact, I get physically nauseous when I don’t get enough sleep. That is what made the first few years of having our second child so difficult, as he did not sleep much and it made life very challenging. My sister is in the midst of this transition right now as well as a co-worker and it is really tough.
Luckily, nowadays sleep has returned to our lives as the kids don’t need to be up until 7:30AM which is a game changer. This lets us recover and sleep later than we ever imagined. For all you college kids out there – yes, that’s 7:30AM as a thing to celebrate!
We have become such big lovers of sleep that we have kindly asked couples we go out to dinner with if we can go early so we can be in bed no later than 11:00PM. I know it sounds very old fartish, but once sleep has been taken from you - it is essential to get it back whenever you can.
Many people I speak with about sleep can relate to this, but some talk about having trouble going to sleep or falling back to sleep once up. For all of those people who struggle, here are some fun games I play in my mind on the rare occasions I can’t fall asleep:
1) Take the alphabet and try to think of someone you know or someone famous with each letter (i.e., A = Albert Brooks, B = Barbara Corcoran C = Catherine O'Hara). By the time I get to M or N, I am typically sleeping.
2) Select random actors/actresses and try to play the Kevin Bacon game with them. For instance, connect Ted Danson and Bruce Willis (Ted Danson – Three Men And A Baby – Tom Selleck – Blue Bloods – Donnie Wahlberg – Sixth Sense- Bruce Willis)
3) Try to recount every live event you have gone to (i.e. baseball games, concerts, theater, football, etc.)
4) Challenge yourself to recollect every teacher you had starting from Kindergarten to 12th Grade in order.
5) See how many casts of the Real World you can name in their entirety.
Would love to hear from others out there about the importance of sleep in their lives. Until then…hit snooze!