My nighttime "logic"

Another middle of the night blog post coming your way because I want to jot this down before I forget. So tonight we got the babies down around 7:15. Then we had a super fancy dinner courtesy of our freezer. I know it sounds like I'm probably being sarcastic, but seriously, it was fancy! We had perfectly cooked filet mignon with a potato, mushroom, haricoverts veggie mix from Trader Joes and a glass of red wine.  We chatted with  Hope, hung up our pull up bar (more about our "get fit" plans later), and competed in a game of Dance Central 2 on Kinect. We haven't played Kinect in over a year so it was fun to bust that game out again!  And it gave us all a good laugh. I'm loving this earlier bedtime for the babies because I actually feel like I see glimpses of our former selves in that extra hour we get before we go to bed too!  But I digress from the point of this post!

So Michelle and I head to bed around nine and go to sleep around 9:30/9:45 (our typical bedtime these days).  Pretty much right at midnight I-man starts crying. Now, this next part I'm telling you is courtesy of a re-telling by Michelle because I don't actually remember this conversation, but it went something like this:

Michelle: "Should we get him (to feed him) or just give him the pacifier (to try soothing him)?"

Mari: "I thought we weren't doing the pacifier." 

Michelle: (very confused about this as we haven't discussed weaning from the pacifier yet) "Why?"

Mari: "Cuz they're not ready... We said they're not ready for solid foods..."

What?!? And when Michelle challenged me on this completely unrelated and ridiculous thing to say I got defensive, even mad!

About five minutes into nursing the babies (Michelle had him & I'd gotten Avery to eat), Michelle says to me "What's your mental capacity right now?"  When I respond with "Um fine??" In a questioning tone she goes on to tell me about the above conversation. Bits and pieces sound vaguely familiar but more clear than the actual conversation is the memory of a feeling. It's like I remember feeling like I was underwater and struggling to reach the surface. Like my brain knew that it wasn't working at full capacity and so at the same time as I was arguing with Michelle I was working incredibly hard to figure out if what I was saying actually made any sense, which clearly, as you can see, it did not! And as I was swimming back to the surface of full awareness I was struggling to remember what I'd just said, making it very hard to construct a logical argument.

As Michelle retold this conversation I just laughed and laughed and then apologized over and over because I was getting frustrated with her and not being my best kind living self as I worked my way back to full consciousness! I wonder now, is that maybe what it feels like for people with dementia? In the early stages do they know that what they're not quite making sense? Does it feel like they're always struggling to make sense? If so, I can imagine that it's very frustrating!  But enough of the serious middle of the night reflection. Conversations like this are why Michelle and I have to make a game plan for the night together before we go to sleep because I'm often useless when it comes to making decisions at night, at least for the first few minutes!  Here's hoping that this blog post makes more sense than my argument and that the babies start sleeping longer stretches soon!  I think Isaiah will be wearing this tomorrow!