Sounds I Love to Fall Asleep To

Days and days have gone by, and I haven't posted. I have so many good intentions. But sometimes I run out of time and sometimes I simply don't know what to blog about. Last night I went to bed at about 10:30, after hanging out at Lissa's house while she and our friend did some planning for G.'s Bar Mitzvah. I turned on the Red Sox game even though I knew I was going to sleep, because I absolutely love to fall asleep with the tv on when I'm awake through the game and they win, and I can hear the post-game as I'm falling asleep. It's less fun when they lose. And last night, because it was a West coast game, the game had just started when I was going to bed. And as I was falling asleep I realized I don't like to fall asleep when it's quiet. There are certain sounds that I just love to fall asleep to.

1. The sound of Ari snoring. I guess it’s not really healthy for a six-year old (yes, he’s six. Practically.) to snore. But he does, and the doctor says it’s healthy, he just has large tonsils. He may grow into them. Then again, he may not. But he snores, and he falls asleep while I read, and he usually curls himself up like a little shrimp, and leans on me, and snores behind my shoulder. I can tell be the snores if he’s asleep enough for me to get up and leave the room. It’s one of the best ways to fall asleep.

2. Listening to Halle chat about her day. I’m not allowed to read when I lie down with Halle. I have to lie in particular place, on a particular side, with my arm across her in a particular way. And then we chat. First she tells me how much I love her – more than all the stars in the sky, more than all the sand on the beach, more than all the water in the ocean, and all the way to the moon and back. I’ve been telling her that since the day she was born and now she tells me, and we have to go through it every night. After that she talks about her day; highs and lows, points of interest, etc. She often wakes me up to complain about my snoring, and sometime after I have fallen asleep she does too. I fight to stay awake but my days start awfully early, and she can get quite chatty. She never seems to mind if I fall asleep.

3. I am afraid, to a ridiculously high degree, of water. Any water. I do, however, love the beach. I won’t swim, and become uncomfortable when the water reaches my ankles. Yet I love the sand, the sun, the sound of the surf, the smell of the sea, and being outside with the kids. Any time I’m reclining, I’m extremely likely to fall asleep. All of the sounds of the beach – the waves, the seagulls, the kids yelling to each other as they run around – all put me to sleep almost instantly. Which, given my pasty complexion, leads to sunburns and blisters and peeling, regardless of the sunblock I slather myself with.

4 As previously mentioned, I love to fall asleep with the TV on, particularly the Red Sox. Usually it’s unintentional and I go upstairs to watch the shows on my DVR that I have accumulated. They are the shows that I don’t watch with Rich (because he makes fun of me), those are the ones we tape downstairs on the tv that he loves. The shows I watch are my faux-reality shows, and the cheesy crap on VH1 and MTV. I don’t start watching them until I’m in danger of falling asleep, so I never make it through a whole show. I usually fall asleep backwards on the bed, with my head towards the foot of the bed, which is how I watch TV. But sometimes I wake up and actually get into bed and leave the TV on. And the light on. That’s weird. Isn’t it?

5. We still use baby monitors for the kids because when they wake up in the middle of the night (thankfully it’s fairly infrequent) they don’t get up, they just call for me. Never for Rich, he can’t hear anything even when he’s awake, he sleeps like a dead person and snores so loud I’m lucky I can hear the kids. They have humidifiers that run at night so it’s not too quiet in their rooms (I project my love of night-noise on them I guess) and I can hear the humidifiers running through the monitors. I don’t particularly love that sound, but sometimes I hear Halle laugh in her sleep, or hear Ari say something, or hear the dog’s nails click on the hardwood floors as they check in on the kids (our dogs are very interested in knowing where everyone in the family is at random intervals). It’s just comforting to hear the regular household noises through the monitor, the ones that reassure me that everyone is in the right place, doing the right thing. You know?