Exhausted

It's been a while, and I've missed blogging.  From the title of this entry, you can probably see why it's been awhile.  I'm one sleepy chica!  I've recently put two and two together as to why I've been so completely exhausted to the bone every day.  So recent that it has, in fact, been approximately thirteen hours since I've made this discovery.  Every night, Nathan and I go to bed just the two of us, and every morning I wake up- hours after he's been gone- with someone else in my bed.  Her name starts with Rh and ends with eaLynn.  And she is a bed hog beyond belief.  I'm talking, she comes in sometime in the middle of the night and plasters me against the wall, which makes me wake up stiff and in pain, which in turn causes me to try and turn over, but I can't because of said toddler hogging my space.  This morning, I woke up, tried to shift, she woke up and asked me to cuddle her (which I'd already been doing in my sleep, explaining the dead left arm I had going on), and I told her I couldn't because my body hurt.  So I turned over, and what did she do?  Plastered her bum into my back, made sure it was good and dug in to the small of my back, and promptly returned to snoring.  Needless to say, I woke up feeling like I hadn't slept at all. 
I realized that this has been happening for about a week and a half, since she really got re-comfortable sleeping in the room Rhea and Trace share.  We bought this flower light at Ikea a couple weeks ago, and since it's been mounted on the wall and on all night long (all day, too!), she's realized that there are no "skulletons in her room" coming to get her.  The nightmares have stopped *knock on wood* and hopefully, we are moving away from this phase that she's been in for about a year.  Now, about the skulleton thing: Rhea is super-perceptive to the supernatural.  I know, I know... if you don't believe in "ghosts" or "spirits," things of that nature, it can sound really hokey.  And that's fine; stop reading.  Because that's what I'm going to be talking about.  Since she was a baby and we lived across from a nursing home, she's been freakishly in tune to things that Nate and I can't see.  (Or, every so often, we could see... in my case, sense.)  Nate used to be really visually perceptive to the spirit realm- seeing random spirits, friends who'd died, my grandpas and uncle, that kind of shenanigans.  I've never seen anything in detail- just the occasional "teaser" where I see something out of my periphery, look up, and it's gone.  Or a shadow person in a doorway... or the electric vibes/presence of a spirit.  Sometimes, when that happens, my world looks like the "doo doo doo doo" scene at the end of Wayne's World, except sub in crazy electric colored lights for the wavy water effect.  Anyway, Rhea.  When we lived across from the nursing home in this super cool condo (with a super douche-y landlord), it was a wide open floor plan.  But there was a short hallway that ran off the living room; if you were in the hallway and looked right, there was the master bedroom.  Right in front of you was a linen closet, to the immediate left of the door to the closet was Rhea's room, and at the left end of the hallway was the big bathroom.  (We had a half bath on the other side of the condo.)  When I would put Rhea down for nap or bed, I would rock her in a glider that faced the doorway.  If the door wasn't completely closed, she would pop up, and watch people (we assume) walk up and down the hallway.  Oftentimes, she would fight her way down out of my lap, crawl to her doorway, push open the door, and sit there, waving, babbling, and smiling at people walking up and down the hall.  Creeeeepy.  If the door was closed all the way, it happened a few times where I'd hear this shuffling sound, like someone scuffing their feet across the carpet, and it would stop in the middle of the room.  Simultaneously, it would get chilly and Rhea would be riveted to the same spot I'd be sensing something.  Double creepy.  Add in the times Nate and I would hear her talking and laughing at/with someone, and when we'd get up to check on her, she'd be completely asleep, but her room would be frigid and the glider would be moving.  Bizarre.
I don't know when she went from being so comfortable with the supernatural to absolutely freaked out by it.  Nate and I both grew up having supernatural experiences, so it's nothing new to us.  Yes, we've both had some seriously freaky situations, but nothing that we've ever gone running scared from.  We're really open and accepting to that, so when we moved and about 7 months after we moved in, right after I had Trace, she started saying "There was a man in her room" and "Skulletons were coming to get her,"  we'd ask her to elaborate and she'd immediately switch into full-on denial of anything being there.  But it wasn't the kind of denial that was like "Ahhhh got ya!  I'm just kidding around!"  It was the kind of terrified denial that really said "There is something scary in my room and I can't even talk about it."  We tried everything from getting her fish in a lighted tank (that didn't work) to a Bieber poster on the wall (she'd swoon all day and still flip her nuggets at night) to putting my confirmation cross with a beautiful dove in the middle on the wall.  No dice.  It would be "Night night Jesus!  I'm going to sleep on Mommy and Daddy's floor!"  Sigh.  Her little world was shattered (again) when she woke up in the middle of the night on our floor, shrieking about the skulletons that were in our room.  So she climbed into bed with us and it was another terrible night of sleep for me and Nathan, wonderful and secure sleep for Rhea.  Un-fair.
Back to the original point, I've figured it out.  She is a bed hog of epic proportions.  So tonight we're going to try leaving Nate's ipod in the room for her.  That way, if she wakes up, she can put on Go Diego Go! or Toy Story 3 or Dora the Explorer or Backyardigans (yeah- she has a plethora of options) and (hopefully) stay in her room.  I need to be able to wake up in the morning and do some yoga mania or pilates without her freaking out because I "got out of bed without her."  I also enjoy showering without a shrieking toddler banging down the door and waking up her brother at 6:45 in the morning.  A cup of coffee in my system, breakfast on occasion... those are also two more things I highly enjoy that I severely miss when Miss Miss gets up off her tuffet and thinks everything should go her way.
On that note... my eyelids are desperately seeking Susan (okay, not that terrible Madonna flick from the '80s, but Susan meaning sleep... terrible correlation, I know), so I'm gonna hit the ol' sack o' hay.  Can't wait for what tomorrow's going to bring!