Retro Wednesday: Night Owl

Retro Wednesday is another "column" that I will be posting on my blog every so often. Since I am doing this blog as a kind of journal or scrapbook for my kids, I thought it would be fun for them to have some record of things that happened before the days of blogging. So occasionally I will post a photo from the past for them.

This is Atom all ready to go home from the hospital when he was a day old. It is one of the rare moments that he slept as an infant (or any time in his life so far!) The cute whale blanket and burp cloth were made by my friend Carmen. The little sleeper he has on was a gift from my friend Barb. If you look closely, you can see that the sleeper has little owls and moons on it. Under the owls are words too little for you to see so I'll tell you what they say. They say: "Night Owl." When my friend gave me this sleeper I thought it was adorable. Hence, the reason it was chosen as Atom's all-important "going home" outfit. I remember thinking how cute it was, as newborn babies tend to be up in the night. I also remember having a premonition that this little one would keep me up a lot at night. "I really hope he doesn't turn out to be a night owl," I thought uneasily. (I already had one of those and didn't really want TWO of my little offspring keeping me up at night.) "I hope this one is a good sleeper." But I had a sinking feeling that he wouldn't be. Mother's intuition was right about that!

I still think the sleeper in adorable, but it is also prophetic. When he was an infant, I would finally get the child to settle down and fall asleep for the night at 2:00 a.m. and would gratefully hop in the shower, only to hear him screaming from his bassinet 5 minutes later. This past Saturday night (well, technically Sunday morning) at 1:00 a.m. I heard Atom get out of bed AGAIN and found him wandering around the house with a sheet of stickers he had found, carefully placing selected stickers on his sibling's sleeping foreheads and chattering at the top of his lungs about how they would be "so happy" when they woke up in the morning because he had given them a sticker. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. (Hint: I was closer to crying.) I have often wondered at times such as this if the sleeper was cursed. And if so, when, if ever, is the curse going to wear off?! Thanks, Barb. It must be all your fault! J/K