I’ve lost count of the number of times Kate has had breakfast since we have been sheltered, but it happened again yesterday morning and was especially surprising because of how early she got up.
I got up around 6:30 and went to the bathroom. When I left to get dressed, I noticed that Kate wasn’t in the bed. I called to her and asked where she was. I heard her say, “I’m in here.” She was in the kitchen. As best I could determine, she had been looking for the bathroom. That’s where I took her. She was confused but not disturbed in the way I might have expected.
After finishing in the bathroom, she seemed unusually wide awake. I asked if she wanted to go back to bed or get dressed and eat breakfast. She said, “I don’t know.” I suggested she go ahead and get ready for the day. I think I was motivated by the fact that the past two days, I thought she was going to stay in bed most of the day. Fortunately, I was able to coax her to get up both days. The surprising thing the second day was how quickly her mood changed when she finally decided to get up. At first, she seemed rather resistant. Then I said something (don’t remember what) that got her attention, and she was ready to get up.
She was far more willing to follow my suggestion yesterday. As it turned out, this was a morning when we really did eat breakfast together. The other mornings, I had finished my breakfast and just enjoyed my coffee while she ate. When she finished, I took her into the family room where she wanted to rest. That worked for me because it gave me time to take my morning walk.
The next surprise was her wanting to go home after resting. It was over an hour before I planned to have lunch, so I thought that might make for a restful outing, and off we went. We were back home in just over thirty minutes, and she wanted to rest again. I welcomed that because I purchased a new computer, and that gave me time to setup a few remaining things on it.
This morning I had finished breakfast and my walk. A short time later as I was preparing to upload this post, I heard her say, “Hey, what do I do?” I went to her and found she was wide awake. I got her up and dressed and fixed her breakfast again. When she finished, I suggested we go to the family room. I mentioned Anne Frank’s Diary and asked if she would be interested in my reading some of it to her. It has been a long time since we had done this, so I started at the beginning. We didn’t get too far before she was tired although she seemed interested in the book. She has been resting about thirty minutes and appears to be asleep.
I always try to figure out what causes changes like the increased frequency of getting up so early. I am often left with only speculation. That seems to be the case this time. I do know, however, that it coincides with sheltering. That has affected her sleeping and resting. Some days she rests more than others. One possibility is that she wakes up earlier following a day when she has had more than enough sleep; however, she is ready to rest not too long after getting up. Of course, that is true no matter what time she gets up. One exception was this past Friday when she was awake the entire time the sitter was here. Saturday and Sunday she didn’t get up until around noon when I waked her, and she wasn’t eager to get up then.
There is another explanation that may be related to her sleep pattern. It seems to me that she drifts in and out of sleep more frequently than in the past. That has also been true during the night in the past week or so. I’ll continue to observe as carefully as I can. It will be interesting to see what, if any, other changes occur when (if?) we start to eat out for lunch and dinner again.
