A few weeks ago, my husband said, "This has been the longest year of our lives... literally."

He was right.

We have spent more time awake during this past year than we had ever before. And it's all thanks to a diaper terrorist who is going to have his first birthday very soon.

And we're getting even less sleep now than we did three weeks ago, when my husband came up with this brilliant-for-him statement.

We thought my daughter was a bad sleeper. After the first three or four months of her life (which we can forgive because all newborn babies get up a lot to eat), my daughter woke up once per night. Until she was eleven months old, I nursed her back to sleep and she would stay asleep until seven or eight in the morning. When I stopped nursing, we would pop a binkie in her mouth, and she would go back to sleep straight away.

At the time, my husband thought our daughter was a terrible sleeper because she woke up every night. We heard stories from our "friends" about their children who slept through the night at six weeks of age and we were envious. We thought she had "sleep issues." She did not sleep through the night until she was fourteen months old. But she always went back to sleep when she did wake up. Sticking the binkie in her mouth, in retrospect, was a minor inconvenience.

My son... my adorable, little man. He is another story. God made him cute for a reason. And he is an undeniably gorgeous baby.

The diaper terrorist woke up at least three times a night until he was nine months old. I nursed him back to sleep but he never fell into a deep sleep. Whenever he aroused, he wanted to nurse. He slept in our bed because getting up to retreive him was so exhausting. I slept lightly because I was afraid he would fall out of the bed, and whenever I DID fall back to sleep, DT would wake up and want a cocktail from the boobie bar.

When I weaned him, he finally started sleeping through the night - if you can call it that.

For the past two months, my son woke up between 5:00 a.m. and 5:20 a.m. No matter what we tried to get him to sleep later - everything to delaying his bedtime, putting him to sleep earlier, napping him more, napping him less - he still woke up at the same time.

And we thought this was bad.

Then, this week happened. My son has a cold and has reactive airway disease. This basically means that whenever he gets sick, he has breathing difficulties (similar to asthma). He wheezes and coughs so hard that he frequently vomits (usually on me). Because of this, he takes an inhaled steroid called Pulmicort once a day, even when he is not sick. When he does get sick, he takes the Pulmicort twice a day and another drug called Xoponex up to three times a day. The Xoponex contains Albuterol, and is a "rescue" medication that is supposed to relieve symptoms within minutes. The problem is that it also causes hyperactivity.

I do believe this is why my son has woken up, rearing to go for the day, before 4:00 a.m. this past week.

Either that, or he just hates us.

I am serious.