Sleep Deprivation, Genies, and Crooked Houses

So here it is, 3:50am and while Sylvie is sleeping like a dream, I'm wide awake. I fell asleep around 8:30pm and David snuck her out of the room so I wouldn't wake for her feeding in the middle of the night -- which of course meant he had to stay up long past his agreed-upon shift -- and I woke up, a bit confused and surprised, a little after 2:00am. I think that's the longest stretch of sleep I've had since she was born. He brought her back to bed around 2:40am, fast asleep, which meant I should have been able to sleep for another two, three, or even four hours. But I haven't been able to -- my mind's been racing.

My mind isn't the only busy one around here. Ever since Sylvie was born, Luke's been doing a lot of deep thinking. He came to me a couple of days ago with a perplexed look on his face.

"Mama?" he said. "Why doesn't Bella [our female cat] have a genie?"

I stared at him, in incomprehension.

"And why doesn't Theo [our male cat] have a penis?"

Suddenly understanding, I explained that they both have the appropriate boy and girl parts, it's just that they're rather hard  to make out under all that fur. And then I held a pillow over my face so he wouldn't see me laughing like a seventh grader over "genie." Although we always use the proper names for body parts whenever discussing them -- hence the child's familiarity with the p-word -- I must say that "genie" is the best diminutive for the female parts I've ever heard, including Oprah's infamous "vajayjay."

In other news, on Monday night this little-known blog got 10,000 hits in ten minutes, when the television show Jon and Kate Plus Eight featured Crooked Houses, a company in Maine that makes custom playhouses (and t-shirts that I covet). They happened to do it on the episode in which they announced their divorce -- if you're not up on this, I guess you don't read the covers of the tabloids while waiting at the checkout stand in the grocery store -- and the ratings must have been through the roof. So if you're here looking for them, well, you're welcome to hang around but you really should go there. And you Crooked House Playhouse people, please do feel free to come install a playhouse for Luke and Sylvie, too. There are only two of them -- but sometimes, like at 3:50am, they can feel like eight.

Comments

[lisa peet]

And now I have the theme from "I Dream of Jeannie" stuck in my head... that's really funny. I'm going to use "genie" as a euphemism the next time I need one (euphemism, that is).

[gigi]

I see you are reading "We Have Always Lived in the Castle." It scared me so much at thirteen that I slept with the lights on for two days!

gigi

[Nela]

I dream of Jeannie with the light brown hair? Oh, that's awful.