Sometimes my daughter doesn’t sleep in her bed.

When I say sometimes, I should say most of the time.

Or I could say that she sometimes doesn’t sleep in our bed… Maybe that’s more accurate. You can take your pick. Anywho…

When she’s sometimes not sleeping in her bed (or most of the time sleeping in our bed and thus not in her bed) she has interesting sleep habits I’ve noted. I decided to include a list. Behold!

1. The Great Facedown: She likes to sleep face down on her tummy. However, she also seems to enjoy having her butt inclined. It’s as if her most comfortable position involves a specific ratio of butt above head. Somewhere in the realm of 1.804:1. Something like that. In doing so, her body comes off of the bed a bit and it looks (from my vantage) that she is sleeping on her knees and face. I would imagine it would be uncomfortable, but I can leave her this way and fall asleep and wake up hours later to find her in the exact same position.

2. The Sleep-Thrust: I don’t have much better words to describe this behavior. It happens when she lays facedown on any sort of object or person. It could be a pillow, her stuffed animal, a life-sized replica of a Cylon…anything really. When she gets in this position, she begins uncontrollably thrusting her pelvis. I really am not sure why she does this, but she does it all the time.

3. The Traveling Hand: She has a tendency, while completely unconscious, to move her hand into the most uncomfortable places. By this, I mean MY uncomfortable places. This usually is my armpit, but sometimes my neck under my chin or directly in my face. She has even put her fingers in my nose. The problem with this is that I am extremely ticklish and when her tiny little baby hand crawls into my armpit I wake up with a jolt. I try to move said baby hand, but she seems to want it there very much and so it slowly works its way back up.

4. The Tenderizer: I’ve noticed a good deal of men complain about their wives/girlfriends doing this, so maybe it’s a female thing (kidding!), but my daughter loves to drive her tiny sharp little feet into my lower back. She does this repeatedly, in rapid succession. I assume she’s trying to tenderize me for some unknown reason. She’s a vegetarian as far as I am aware, so hopefully I’m not missing something.

5. The Head-butt: This is pretty simple to explain. As she sleeps, occasionally it seems as though all the muscles in her massively powerful, ant-strong legs expand and send her rocketing up the length of the bed. This usually includes her extremely hard rock-head connecting with mine, thus waking me up in semi-concussion confusion. Again, looking back at her I note that she is still sleeping quite soundly, so obviously she didn’t notice anything.

6. The Foot Rub: This one is relatively recent, but she’s persistent about it. In the night, she decides that her feet must touch me in some way. This is usually on my leg, arm, or back, sometimes my stomach depending on the night. When she makes contact, her foot begins to move up and down, rubbing against me. I have, on numerous occasions, moved her leg away to keep her foot from contacting my skin, but she makes a real effort to get it back there. Once, I even constructed a barrier made from the blankets of the bed between the area where her feet were and myself. Somehow, through sheer force of nocturnal will, she managed to move herself in such a way that her foot could navigate OVER the barrier and once again make contact with my skin. The minute she touched me, the rubbing continued. Once again, she was solidly asleep. I looked.

7. The Switcheroo: This one has only happened on a handful of occasions, but it’s interesting enough. In the night, she somehow manages to turn herself around completely. She will be sleeping in the bed in the way that most people sleep in bed, with her head up and her legs down, and she winds up the complete opposite in the morning. My assumption is that she wakes up and tries to get out of bed but in the process winds up just falling asleep again in transit, facing the other way. The funny thing is that I have noticed her getting fidgety at night and waking up as if she was having a hard time sleeping and then she suddenly stops. When I wake up, she is situated in this way. Somehow, this is more comfortable.

In the end, this usually amounts to her getting a decent night’s sleep but me waking up as if I spent the night fighting World War I all by myself with a pliers and a piece of cheese. I act like a zombie until I get my coffee and then again after that wears out. In fact, this sleep behavior has essentially led to my energy drink fixation as of late which is equally bad for me as missing sleep. All in all I hope that she’ll eventually sleep more often in her own space. I hate to be selfish, but I’m a pretty shitty dad on very little sleep. I’m just a grouchy grouch.

And not the fun kind like Oscar.