Mirror, Mirror

I have a lot of thoughts swirling around in my head and heart right now so again, bear with me, I'll try to spill it out without getting too tangled.

I have decided that I can be "okay" with getting up at 4am, maybe not happy with it, but I can do it if that's what my life is going to be like. This may not just be a phase and as scary as that is to me, maybe it's just what it is. Maybe, as my friend Jill says it, this is just my new normal.
And I can be okay with that but right now it's just a hard pill to swallow. I think because every morning when I'm woken up at 3/4a after being up every hour (like last night) it just reminds me how abnormal we really are. I envy those "normal" kids that sleep 10-12 hours a night. I can't help that.

But when did envy turn into open hostility? When did I become a woman that rolls her eyes and sighs instead of a woman that offers a conspiratorial smile to the other sleep deprived mom? When did I decide that it was okay to pass judgement? Or to think that my life is so hard that I must have it harder.
When did I become this person?  I can honestly say that I don't know but I really don't like who I've become...
Basically I think I need to suck it up. I need to stop feeling sorry for myself. I need to accept my new normal, accept that yes, this life is hard but it cannot make me hard.
I need to get back in touch with my old self. Myself that was empathetic more than any other quality. A person who pats another mom on the back and says, "girl, that's tough - I've been there!" One that shares a smile with another mom wearing that dazed look on her face, clothes rumpled, hair thrown up on her head, coffee in hand.
I guess that can be another 2012 (or life) resolution.

And on top of being nicer, and more empathetic to others, I also need to be nicer and more lenient on myself. I need to realize that what I go through every day and night is hard. It is. There's no sugar coating it. It sucks waking up constantly at night and then having to get up at 4am. It doesn't mean that a mom that gets X amount of sleep is not as tired as I am, or doesn't understand what I'm going through. It doesn't give me permission to pass judgment. I doesn't mean that I can bum around doing nothing but watch TV all day.
It does mean that I can get away with watching X amount of Mickey Mouse - because really, what else is there to do between 4-7am!? It means that we'll probably have more "pajama days" than not. It means that I can take a nap every day because when else am I going to make up those missing hours of sleep? It means that I can take my daughter into bed with me just to get those few more hours of uninterrupted sleep - guilt free. It means that I may not want to cook or clean every day but it doesn't mean that the day is a waste and I shouldn't treat it as such.
It means that I can live and be happy and healthy and treat others kindly. I can live and breathe and smile despite being tired, despite being abnormal.