Growing Pains - The "Mummy Needs a Nap" Edition

Oh the sick, evil, twisted irony of growing pains, I remember them well! The irony being that I always was and still to this day am a short arse and now my poor wee girl is suffering with them too. She's as much of a short arse petite as I was and yet I remember those pains being absolute agony and Chloe doesn't seem willing to let them pass as "mildly uncomfortable" either.

For anyone lucky enough to be unfamiliar with growing pains, they're a pain sometimes cramp like in nature which occurs in the muscles of the legs and arms, usually in the evening or at night when the child is tired and probably already a bit grumpy, they can occur earlier in the day but often because of a fairly fast paced or "on the go" sort of day with lots going on and tons of places to be.

In short they cause almost no problems during the day leaving kids to run and skip and hop and jump and play all day long and crumple in "agony" almost at the very mention of bedtime resulting in most parents (my own mum and even with 20/20 hindsight me included) thinking their kids are faking or laying it on a bit thick.

It's been going on for about ten days now with it either keeping Chloe awake until almost midnight or she's fallen asleep a bit earlier than normal only to be woken out of a sleep in pain for a couple of hours at half past daft o'clock. She's not been at her most reasonable for the past couple of weeks, neither have I for that matter.

I'm actually dreading the next couple of days, tomorrow her class is walking to the library in town in the morning then on Wednesday and Thursday night Chloe's in her class play. She'll need to go back to school at 7.00pm both nights, the play begins at 7.30pm and then she can go home at 8.00pm, so that's two fairly busy days considering that 8.00pm is already a good half hour past Chloe's usual bed time routine. I know she's six now and most kids stay up a bit later than that, but I've said before that this is her bedtime routine and we don't mess with it. She knows when she wants her shower and jammies and to curl up for the night. She just never has been a night owl, the kid loves her bed. I just know both nights are going to end in tears by the time we get her home and ready for bed the pains will have kicked in and it'll be a rough night for all involved. Thursday will definitely be worse than tomorrow.

And speaking of her being six now, the whole lack of sleep thing meant that the poor child's birthday passed as something of a non event. She did go to soft play hell with a few friends in the afternoon but she just couldn't seem to be bothered with the whole thing and didn't want to go running around with her friends. I'm fairly certain it's the lack of sleep catching up with her, we're just hoping now to cruise into the weekend and she can go to the cinema with a friend on Saturday and have cake and popcorn.

I just hope these growing pains realise Chloe isn't destined to be some great six footer and clear off sometime soon because there just isn't enough caffeine in the world:)